Title: The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion
Author: Brinton, Daniel Garrison, 1837-1899
Language: English
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_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._

  THE MYTHS OF THE NEW WORLD: A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology
    of the Red Race of America. _Second edition, revised._ Large 12mo,
    $2.50.

  THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT: Its Source and Aim. A Contribution to the
    Science and Philosophy of Religion. Large 12mo, $2.50.



  THE

  RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT

  ITS SOURCE AND AIM

  _A CONTRIBUTION TO THE SCIENCE AND
  PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION._

  BY

  DANIEL G. BRINTON, A.M., M.D.

  _Member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Philological
  Society, etc.; author of “The Myths of the New World,” etc._

  [Colophon]

  NEW YORK
  HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
  1876.



  COPYRIGHT,
  BY HENRY HOLT
  1876.

  JOHN F. TROW & SON, PRINTERS,
  205-213 EAST 12TH ST., NEW YORK.



PREFACE


Mythology, since it began to receive a scientific handling at all, has
been treated as a subordinate branch of history or of ethnology. The
“science of religion,” as we know it in the works of Burnouf, Müller,
and others, is a comparison of systems of worship in their historic
development. The deeper inquiry as to what in the mind of man gave birth
to religion in any of its forms, what spirit breathed and is ever
breathing life into these dry bones, this, the final and highest
question of all, has had but passing or prejudiced attention. To its
investigation this book is devoted.

The analysis of the religious sentiment I offer is an inductive one,
whose outlines were furnished by a preliminary study of the religions of
the native race of America, a field selected as most favorable by reason
of the simplicity of many of its cults, and the absence of theories
respecting them. This study was embodied in “The Myths of the New World;
a Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America”
(second edition, N. Y. 1876).

The results thus obtained I have in the present work expanded by
including in the survey the historic religions of the Old World, and
submitted the whole for solution to the Laws of Mind, regarded as
physiological elements of growth, and to the Laws of Thought, these, as
formal only, being held as nowise a development of those. This latter
position, which is not conceded by the reigning school of psychology, I
have taken pains to explain and defend as far as consistent with the
plan of this treatise; but I am well aware that to say all that can be
said in proof of it, would take much more space than here allowed.

The main questions I have had before me in writing this volume have an
interest beyond those which mere science propounds. What led men to
imagine gods at all? What still prompts enlightened nations to worship?
Is prayer of any avail, or of none? Is faith the last ground of
adoration, or is reason? Is religion a transient phase of development,
or is it the chief end of man? What is its warrant of continuance? If it
overlive this day of crumbling theologies, whence will come its
reprieve?

To such inquiries as these, answers satisfactory to thinking men of this
time can, I believe, be given only by an inductive study of religions,
supported by a sound psychology, and conducted in a spirit which
acknowledges as possibly rightful, the reverence which every system
claims. Those I propose, inadequate though they may be, can at any rate
pretend to be the result of honest labor.

PHILADELPHIA, _January, 1876_.



CONTENTS.


                                                          PAGE.
  CHAPTER I.

  THE BEARING OF THE LAWS OF MIND ON RELIGION                3

  CHAPTER II.

  THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT         47

  CHAPTER III.

  THE RATIONAL POSTULATES OF THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT        87

  CHAPTER IV.

  THE PRAYER AND ITS ANSWER                                117

  CHAPTER V.

  THE MYTH AND THE MYTHICAL CYCLES                         155

  CHAPTER VI.

  THE CULT, ITS SYMBOLS AND RITES                          199

  CHAPTER VII.

  THE MOMENTA OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT                         231



THE BEARING OF THE LAWS OF MIND ON RELIGION


SUMMARY.

     The distinction between the Science and the Philosophy of religion.
     It is assumed (1) that religions are products of thought, (2) that
     they have a unity of kind and purpose. They can be studied by the
     methods of natural science applied to Mind.

     Mind is co-extensive with organism. Sensation and Emotion are
     prominent marks of it. These are either pleasurable or painful; the
     latter _diminish_ vital motions, the former _increase_ them. This
     is a product of natural selection. A mis-reading of these facts is
     the fallacy of Buddhism and other pessimistic systems. Pleasure
     comes from continuous action. This is illustrated by the esthetic
     emotions, volition and consciousness.

     The climax of mind is Intellect. Physical changes accompany thought
     but cannot measure it. Relations of thought and feeling. _Truth_ is
     its only measure. Truth, like pleasure, is desired for its
     preservative powers. It is reached through the laws of thought.

     These laws are: (1) the natural order of the association of ideas,
     (2) the methods of applied logic, (3) the forms of correct
     reasoning. The last allow of mathematical expression. They are
     three in number, called those of Determination, Limitation and
     Excluded Middle.

     The last is the key-stone of religious philosophy. Its diverse
     interpretations. Its mathematical expres ion[TN-1] shows that it
     does not relate to contradictories. But certain concrete analytic
     propositions, relating to contraries, do have this form. The
     contrary as distinguished from the privative. The Conditioned and
     Unconditioned, the Knowable and Unknowable are not true
     contradictions. The synthesis of contraries is theoretic only.

     Errors as to the limits of possible explanation corrected by these
     distinctions. The formal law is the last and complete explanation.
     The relations of thought, belief and being.



THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT.



CHAPTER I.

THE BEARING OF THE LAWS OF MIND ON RELIGION.


The Science of Religion is one of the branches of general historical
science. It embraces, as the domain of its investigation, all recorded
facts relating to the displays of the Religious Sentiment. Its limits
are defined by those facts, and the legitimate inferences from them. Its
aim is to ascertain the constitutive laws of the origin and spread of
religions, and to depict the influence they have exerted on the general
life of mankind.

The question whether a given religion is true or false cannot present
itself in this form as a proper subject of scientific inquiry. The most
that can be asked is, whether some one system is best suited to a
specified condition of the individual or the community.

The higher inquiry is the object of the Philosophy of Religion. This
branch of study aims to pass beyond recorded facts and local adjustments
in order to weigh the theoretical claims of religions, and measure their
greater or less conformity with abstract truth. The formal or regulative
laws of religious thought occupy it.

Theology, dogmatic or polemic, is an explanatory defence of some
particular faith. Together with mythology and symbolism, it furnishes
the material from which the Science and Philosophy of Religion seek to
educe the laws and frame the generalizations which will explain the
source and aim of religion in general.

The common source of all devotional displays is the Religious Sentiment,
a complex feeling, a thorough understanding of which is an essential
preliminary to the study of religious systems.

Such a study proceeds on the assumption that all religions are products
of thought, commenced and continued in accordance with the laws of the
human mind, and, therefore, comprehensible to the extent to which these
laws are known. No one disputes this, except in reference to his own
religion. This, he is apt to assert, had something “supernatural” about
its origin. If this word be correctly used, it may stand without cavil.
The “natural” is that of which we know in whole or in part the laws; the
“supernatural” means that of which we do not at present know in any
degree the laws. The domain of the supernatural diminishes in the ratio
of the increase of knowledge; and the inference that it also is
absolutely under the control of law, is not only allowable but
obligatory.

A second assumption must be that there is a unity of kind and purpose in
all religions. Without this, no common law can exist for them. Such a
law must hold good in all ages, in every condition of society, and in
each instance. Hence those who explain religious systems as forms of
government, or as systems of ethics, or as misconceived history, or as
theories of natural philosophy, must be prepared to make their view good
when it is universally applied, or else renounce the possibility of a
Science of Religion; while those who would except their own system from
what they grant is the law of all others, violate the principles of
investigation and thereby the canons of truth.

The methods of science are everywhere alike. Has the naturalist to
explain an organism, he begins with its elements or proximate principles
as obtained by analysis; he thence passes to the tissues and fluids
which compose its members; these he considers first in a state of
repose, their structure and their connections; then he examines their
functions, the laws of their growth and action; and finally he has
recourse to the doctrine of relations, _la théorie des milieux_, to
define the conditions of its existence. Were such a method applied to a
religion, it would lead us first to study its psychological elements,
then the various expressions in word and act to which these give
occasion, next the record of its growth and decay, and finally from
these to gather the circumstantials of human life and culture which led
to its historic existence.

Some have urged that such a method should not be summoned to questions
in mental philosophy. To do so, say they, is to confound things
distinct, requiring distinct plans of study. Such a criticism might have
had weight in the days when the mind was supposed to inhabit the body as
a tenant a house, and have no relation to it other than that of a casual
occupant. But that opinion is antiquated. More than three-fourths of a
century ago the far-seeing thinker, Wilhelm von Humboldt, laid down the
maxim that the phenomena of mind and matter obey laws identical in
kind;[6-1] and a recent historian of science sums up the result of the
latest research in these words:

“The old dualism of mind and body, which for centuries struggled in vain
for reconciliation, finds it now, not indeed in the unity of substance,
but in the unity of laws.”[6-2]

It is, therefore, as a question in mental philosophy to be treated by
the methods of natural science, that I shall approach the discussion of
the religious sentiment. As it is a part, or at least a manifestation of
mind, I must preface its more particular consideration with some words
on the mind in general, words which I shall make as few and as clear as
possible.

At the beginning of this century, the naturalist Oken hazarded the
assertion: “The human mind is a memberment of infusorial
sensation,”[7-1] a phrase which has been the guiding principle of
scientific psychology ever since. That in the course of this memberment
or growth wholly new faculties are acquired, is conceded. As the union
of two inorganic substances may yield a third different in every respect
from either; or, as in the transition of inorganic to organic matter,
the power of reproduction is attained; so, positively new powers may
attend the development of mind. From sensations it progresses to
emotions, from emotions to reason. The one is the psychical climax of
the other. “We have still to do with the one mind,whose[TN-2] action
developes itself with perception, through discrimination, till it
arrives at notions, wherein its most general scheme, ‘truth and error,’
serves as the principle.”[8-1]

Extravagant as Oken’s expression seemed to many when it was published,
it now falls short of the legitimate demands of science, and I may add,
of religion. _Mind is co-extensive with organism_; in the language of
logic, one “connotes” the other; this statement, and nothing short of
it, satisfies the conditions of the problem. Wherever we see Form
preserved amid the change of substance, _there_ is mind; it alone can
work that miracle; only it gives Life. Matter suffers no increase;
therefore the new is but a redistribution of the old; it is new in
_form_ only; and the maintenance of form under changes of substance is
the one distinguishing mark of organism. To it is added the yet more
wonderful power of transmitting form by reproduction. Wherever these
are, are also the rudiments of mind. The distinction between the animal
and the vegetable worlds, between the reasoning and unreasoning animals,
is one of degree only. Whether, in a somewhat different sense, we should
not go yet further, and say that mind is co-extensive with motion, and
hence with phenomena, is a speculative inquiry which may have to be
answered in the affirmative, but it does not concern us here.

The first and most general mark of Mind is sensation or common feeling.
In technical language a sensation is defined to be the result of an
impression on an organism, producing some molecular change in its nerve
or life centres. It is the consequence of a contact with another
existence. Measured by its effects upon the individual the common law of
sensation is: Every impression, however slight, either adds to or takes
from the sum of the life-force of the system; in the former case it
produces a pleasurable, in the latter a painful sensation. The
exceptions to this rule, though many, are such in appearance only.[9-1]

In the human race the impression can often be made quite as forcibly by
a thought as by an act. “I am confident,” says John Hunter, the
anatomist, “that I can fix my attention to any part, until I have a
sensation in that part.” This is what is called the influence of the
mind upon the body. Its extent is much greater than used to be imagined,
and it has been a fertile source of religious delusions. Such sensations
are called subjective; those produced by external force, objective.

The immediate consequent of a sensation is _reflex action_, the object
of which is either to avoid pain or increase pleasure, in other words,
either to preserve or augment the individual life.

The molecular changes incident to a sensation leave permanent traces,
which are the physical bases of memory. One or several such remembered
sensations, evoked by a present sensation, combine with it to form an
Emotion. Characteristic of their origin is it that the emotions fall
naturally into a dual classification, in which the one involves
pleasurable or elevating, the other painful or depressing conditions.
Thus we have the pairs joy and grief, hope and fear, love and hate, etc.

The question of pleasure and pain is thus seen to be the primary one of
mental science. We must look to it to explain the meaning of sensation
as a common quality of organism. What is the significance of pleasure
and pain?

The question involves that of Life. Not to stray into foreign topics, it
may broadly be said that as all change resolves itself into motion,
and, as Helmholtz remarks, all science merges itself into mechanics, we
should commence by asking what vital motions these sensations stand for
or correspond to.

Every organism, and each of its parts, is the resultant of innumerable
motions, a composition of forces. As such, each obeys the first law of
motion, to wit, indefinite continuance of action until interfered with.
This is a modification of Newton’s “law of continuance,” which, with the
other primary laws of motion, must be taken as the foundation of biology
as well as of astronomy.[11-1]

The diminution or dispersion of organic motion is expressed in
physiological terms as _waste_; we are admonished of waste by _pain_;
and thus admonished we supply the waste or avoid the injury as far as we
can. But this connection of pain with waste is not a necessary one, nor
is it the work of a _Providentia particularis_, as the schoolmen said.
It is a simple result of natural selection. Many organisms have been
born, no doubt, in which waste did not cause pain; caused, perhaps,
pleasure. Consequently, they indulged their preferences and soon
perished. Only those lived to propagate their kind in whom a different
sensation was associated with waste, and they transmitted this
sensitiveness increased by ancestral impression to their offspring. The
curses of the human race to-day are alcohol, opium and tobacco, and they
are so because they cause waste, but do not immediately produce painful
but rather pleasurable feelings.

Pain, as the sensation of waste, is the precursor of death, of the part
or system. By parity of evolution, pleasure came to be the sensation of
continuance, of uninterrupted action, of increasing vigor and life.
Every action, however, is accompanied by waste, and hence every pleasure
developes pain. But it is all important to note that the latter is the
mental correlative not of the action but of its cessation, not of the
life of the part but of its ceasing to live. Pain, it is true, in
certain limits excites to action; but it is by awakening the
self-preservative tendencies, which are the real actors. This
physiological distinction, capable of illustration from sensitive
vegetable as well as the lowest animal organisms, has had an intimate
connection with religious theories. The problems of suffering and death
are precisely the ones which all religions set forth to solve in theory
and in practice. Their creeds and myths are based on what they make of
pain. The theory of Buddhism, which now has more followers than any
other faith, is founded on four axioms, which are called “the four
excellent truths.” The first and fundamental one is: “Pain is
inseparable from existence.” This is the principle of all pessimism,
ancient and modern. Schopenhauer, an out-and-out pessimist, lays down
the allied maxim, “All pleasure is negative, that is, it consists in
getting rid of a want or pain,”[13-1] a principle expressed before his
time in the saying “the highest pleasure is the relief from pain.”

Consistently with this, Buddhism holds out as the ultimate of hope the
state of Nirvana, in which existence is not, where the soul is “blown
out” like the flame of a candle.

But physiology demolishes the corner-stone of this edifice when it shows
that pain, so far from being inseparable from existence, has merely
become, through transmitted experience, nearly inseparable from the
progressive cessation of existence. While action and reaction are equal
in inorganic nature, the principle of life modifies the operation of
this universal law of force by bringing in _nutrition_, which, were it
complete, would antagonize reaction. In such a case, pleasure would be
continuous, pain null; action constant, reaction hypothetical. As,
however, nutrition in fact never wholly and at once replaces the
elements altered by vital action, both physicians and metaphysicians
have observed that pleasure is the fore-runner of pain, and has the
latter as its certain sequel.[14-1]

Physiologically and practically, the definition of pleasure is, _maximum
action with minimum waste_.

This latter generalization is the explanation of the esthetic emotions.
The modern theory of art rests not on a psychological but a
physiological, and this in turn on a physical basis. Helmholtz’s theory
of musical harmony depends on the experimental fact that a continued
impression gives a pleasant, a discontinuous an unpleasant sensation.
The mechanics of muscular structure prove that what are called graceful
motions are those which are the mechanical resultant of the force of
the muscle,--those which it can perform at least waste. The pleasure we
take in curves, especially “the line of beauty,” is because our eyes can
follow them with a minimum action of its muscles of attachment. The
popular figure called the Grecian figure or the walls of Troy, is
pleasant because each straight line is shorter, and at right angles to
the preceding one, thus giving the greatest possible change of action to
the muscles of the eye.

Such a mechanical view of physiology presents other suggestions. The
laws of vibratory motion lead to the inference that action in accordance
with those laws gives maximum intensity and minimum waste. Hence the
pleasure the mind takes in harmonies of sound, of color and of odors.

The correct physiological conception of the most perfect physical life
is that which will continue the longest in use, not that which can
display the greatest muscular force. The ideal is one of extension, not
of intension.

Religious art indicates the gradual recognition of these principles.
True to their ideal of inaction, the Oriental nations represent their
gods as mighty in stature, with prominent muscles, but sitting or
reclining, often with closed eyes or folded hands, wrapped in robes, and
lost in meditation. The Greeks, on the other hand, portrayed their
deities of ordinary stature, naked, awake and erect, but the limbs
smooth and round, the muscular lines and the veins hardly visible, so
that in every attitude an indefinite sense of repose pervades the whole
figure. Movement without effort, action without waste, is the
immortality these incomparable works set forth. They are meant to teach
that the ideal life is one, not of painless ease, but of joyous action.

The law of continuity to which I have alluded is not confined to simple
motions. It is a general mathematical law, that the longer anything
lasts the longer it is likely to last. If a die turns ace a dozen times
handrunning, the chances are large that it will turn ace again. The
Theory of Probabilities is founded upon this, and the value of
statistics is based on an allied principle. Every condition opposes
change through inertia. By this law, as the motion caused by a
pleasurable sensation excites by the physical laws of associated motions
the reminiscences of former pleasures and pains, a tendency to
permanence is acquired, which gives the physical basis for Volition.
Experience and memory are, therefore, necessary to volition, and
practically self restraint is secured by calling numerous past
sensations to mind, deterrent ones, “the pains which are indirect
pleasures,” or else pleasurable ones. The Will is an exhibition under
complex relations of the tendency to continuance which is expressed in
the first law of motion. Its normal action is the maintenance of the
individual life, the prolongation of the pleasurable sensations, the
support of the forces which combat death.

Whatever the action, whether conscious or reflex, its real though often
indirect and unaccomplished object is the preservation or the
augmentation of the individual life. Such is the dictum of natural
science, and it coincides singularly with the famous maxim of Spinoza:
_Unaquaeque res, quantum in se est, in suo esse perseverare conatur._

The consciousness which accompanies volitional action is derived from
the common feeling which an organism has, as the result of all its parts
deriving their nutrition from the same centre. Rising into the sphere of
emotions, this at first muscular sensation becomes “self-feeling.” The
Individual is another name for the boundaries of reflex action.

Through memory and consciousness we reach that function of the mind
called the intellect or reason, the product of which is _thought_. Its
physical accompaniments are chemical action, and an increase of
temperature in the brain. But the sum of the physical forces thus
evolved is not the measure of the results of intellectual action. These
differ from other forms of force in being incommensurate with extension.
They cannot be appraised in units of quantity, but in quality only. The
chemico-vital forces by which a thought rises into consciousness bear
not the slightest relation to the value of the thought itself. It is
here as in those ancient myths where an earthly maiden brings forth a
god. The power of the thought is dependent on another test than physical
force, to wit, its _truth_. This is measured by its conformity to the
laws of right reasoning, laws clearly ascertained, which are the common
basis of all science, and to which it is the special province of the
science of logic to give formal expression.

Physical force itself, in whatever form it appears, is only known to us
as feeling or as thought; these alone we know to be real; all else is at
least less real.[18-1] Not only is this true of the external world, but
also of that assumed something, the reason, the soul, the ego, or the
intellect. For the sake of convenience these words may be used; but it
is well to know that this introduction of something that thinks, back
of thought itself, is a mere figure of speech. We say, “_I_ think,” as
if the “I” was something else than the thinking. At most, it is but the
relation of the thoughts. Pushed further, it becomes the limitation of
thought by sensation, the higher by the lower. The Cartesian maxim,
_cogito ergo sum_, has perpetuated this error, and the modern philosophy
of the _ego_ and _non-ego_ has prevented its detection. A false reading
of self-consciousness led to this assumption of “a thinking mind.” Our
personality is but the perception of the solidarity of our thoughts and
feelings; it is itself a thought.

These three manifestations of mind--sensations, emotions and
thoughts--are mutually exclusive in their tendencies. The patient
forgets the fear of the result in the pain of the operation; in intense
thought the pulse falls, the senses do not respond, emotions and action
are absent. We may say that ideally the unimpeded exercise of the
intellect forbids either sensation or emotion.

Contrasting sensation and emotion, on the one side, with intellect
on the other, feeling with thought, they are seen to be polar or
antithetical manifestations of mind. Each requires the other for its
existence, yet in such wise that the one is developed at the expense
of the other. The one waxes as the other wanes. This is seen to
advantage when their most similar elements are compared. Thus
consciousness in sensation is keenest when impressions are strongest;
but this consciousness is a bar to intellectual self-consciousness,
as was pointed out by Professor Ferrier in his general Law of
consciousness.[20-1] When emotion and sensation are at their minimum,
one is most conscious of the solidarity of one’s thoughts; and just in
proportion to the vividness of self-consciousness is thought lucid and
strong. In an ideal intelligence, self-consciousness would be
infinite, sensation infinitesimal.

Yet there is a parallelism between feeling and thought, as well as a
contrast. As pain and pleasure indicate opposite tendencies in the
forces which guide sensation and emotion, so do the true and the untrue
direct thought, and bear the same relation to it. For as pain is the
warning of death, so the untrue is the detrimental, the destructive. The
man who reasons falsely, will act unwisely and run into danger thereby.
To know the truth is to be ready for the worst. Who reasons correctly
will live the longest. To love pleasure is not more in the grain of man
than to desire truth. “I have known many,” says St. Augustine, “who like
to deceive; to be deceived, none.” Pleasure, joy, truth, are the
respective measures of life in sensation, emotion, intellect; one or the
other of these every organism seeks with all its might, its choice
depending on which of these divisions of mind is prominently its own. As
the last mentioned is the climax, truth presents itself as in some way
the perfect expression of life.

We have seen what pleasure is, but what is truth? The question of Pilate
remains, not indeed unanswered, but answered vaguely and
discrepantly.[21-1] We may pass it by as one of speculative interest
merely, and turn our attention to its practical paraphrase, what is
true?

The rules of evidence as regards events are well known, and also the
principles of reaching the laws of phenomena by inductive methods. Many
say that the mind can go no further than this, that the truth thus
reached, if not the highest, is at least the highest for man. It is at
best relative, but it is real. The correctness of this statement may be
tested by analyzing the processes by which we acquire knowledge.

Knowledge reaches the mind in two forms, for which there are in most
languages, though not in modern English, two distinct expressions,
_connaitre_ and _savoir_, _kennen_ and _wissen_. The former relates to
knowledge through sensation, the latter through intellection; the former
cannot be rendered in words, the latter can be; the former is reached
through immediate perception, the latter through logical processes. For
example: an odor is something we may certainly know and can identify,
but we cannot possibly describe it in words; justice on the other hand
may be clearly defined to our mind, but it is equally impossible to
translate it into sensation. Nevertheless, it is generally agreed that
the one of these processes is, so far as it goes, as conclusive as the
other, and that they proceed on essentially the same principles.[22-1]
Religious philosophy has to do only with the second form of knowledge,
that reached through notions or thoughts.

The enchainment or sequence of thoughts in the mind is at first an
accidental one. They arise through the two general relations of nearness
in time or similarity in sensation. Their succession is prescribed by
these conditions, and without conscious effort cannot be changed. They
are notions about phenomena only, and hence are infinitely more likely
to be wrong than right. Of the innumerable associations of thought
possible, only one can yield the truth. The beneficial effects of this
one were felt, and thus by experience man slowly came to distinguish the
true as what is good for him, the untrue as what is injurious.

After he had done this for a while, he attempted to find out some plan
in accordance with which he could so arrange his thoughts that they
should always produce this desirable result. He was thus led to
establish the rules for right reasoning, which are now familiarly known
as Logic. This science was long looked upon as a completed one, and at
the commencement of this century we find such a thinker as Coleridge
expressing an opinion that further development in it was not to be
expected. Since then it has, however, taken a fresh start, and by its
growth has laid the foundation for a system of metaphysics which will be
free from the vagaries and unrealities which have thrown general
discredit on the name of philosophy.

In one direction, as applied logic and the logic of induction, the
natural associations of ideas have been thoroughly studied, and the
methods by which they can be controlled and reduced have been taught
with eminent success. In this branch, Bentham, Mill, Bain, and others
have been prominent workers.

Dealing mainly with the subjects and materials of reasoning, with
thoughts rather than with thinking, these writers, with the tendency of
specialists, have not appreciated the labors of another school of
logicians, who have made the investigation of the process of thinking
itself their especial province. This is abstract logic, or pure logic,
sometimes called, inasmuch as it deals with forms only, “formal logic,”
or because it deals with names and not things, “the logic of names.” It
dates its rise as an independent science from the discovery of what is
known as “the quantification of the predicate,” claimed by Sir William
Hamilton. Of writers upon it may be mentioned Professor De Morgan, W.
Stanley Jevons, and especially Professor George Boole of Belfast. The
latter, one of the subtlest thinkers of this age, and eminent as a
mathematician, succeeded in making an ultimate analysis of the laws of
thinking, and in giving them a symbolic notation, by which not only the
truth of a simple proposition but the relative degree of truth in
complex propositions may be accurately estimated.[24-1]

This he did by showing that the laws of correct thinking can be
expressed in algebraic notation, and, thus expressed, will be subject to
all the mathematical laws of an algebra whose symbols bear the uniform
value of unity or nought (1 or 0)--a limitation required by the fact
that pure logic deals in notions of quality only, not of quantity.

This mathematical form of logic was foreseen by Kant when he declared
that all mathematical reasoning derives its validity from the logical
laws; but no one before Professor Boole had succeeded in reaching the
notation which subordinated these two divisions of abstract thought to
the same formal types. His labors have not yet borne fruit in proportion
to their value, and they are, I believe, comparatively little known. But
in the future they will be regarded as epochal in the science of mind.
They make us to see the same law governing mind and matter, thought and
extension.

Not the least important result thus achieved was in emphasizing the
contrast between the natural laws of mental association, and the laws of
thinking which are the foundation of the syllogism.

By attending to this distinction we are enabled to keep the form and the
matter of thought well apart--a neglect to do which, or rather a studied
attempt to ignore which, is the radical error of the logic devised by
Hegel, as I shall show more fully a little later.

All applied logic, inductive as well as deductive, is based on formal
logic, and this in turn on the “laws of thought,” or rather of thinking.
These are strictly regulative or abstract, and differ altogether from
the natural laws of thought, such as those of similarity, contiguity and
harmony, as well as from the rules of applied logic, such as those of
agreement and difference. The fundamental laws of thinking are three in
number, and their bearing on all the higher questions of religious
philosophy is so immediate that their consideration becomes of the last
moment in such a study as this. They are called the laws of
Determination, Limitation and Excluded Middle.

The first affirms that every object thought about must be conceived as
itself, and not as some other thing. “A is A,” or “_x_ = _x_,” is its
formal expression. This teaches us that whatever we think of, must be
thought as one or a unity. It is important, however, to note that this
does not mean a mathematical unit, but a logical one, that is, identity
and not contrast. So true is this that in mathematical logic the only
value which can satisfy the formula is a concept which does not admit of
increase, to wit, a Universal.

From this necessity of conceiving a thought under unity has arisen the
interesting tendency, so frequently observable even in early times, to
speak of the universe as one whole, the το παν of the Greek philosophers;
and also the monotheistic leaning of all thinkers, no matter what their
creed, who have attained very general conceptions. Furthermore, the
strong liability of confounding this speculative or logical unity with
the concrete notion of individuality, or mathematical unity, has been,
as I shall show hereafter, a fruitful source of error in both religious
and metaphysical theories. Pure logic deals with quality only, not with
quantity.

The second law is that of Limitation. As the first is sometimes called
that of Affirmation, so this is called that of Negation. It prescribes
that a thing is not that which it is not. Its formula is, “A is not
not-A.” If this seems trivial, it is because it is so familiar.

These two laws are two aspects of the same law. The old maxim is, _omnis
determinatio est negatio_; a quality can rise into cognition only by
being limited by that which it is not. It is not a comparison of two
thoughts, however, nor does it limit the quality itself. For the
negative is not a thought, and the quality is not _in suo genere
finita_, to use an expression of the old logicians; it is limited not by
itself but by that which it is not. These are not idle distinctions, as
will soon appear.

The third law comes into play when two thoughts are associated and
compared. There is qualitative identity, or there is not. A is either B
or not B. An animal is either a man or not a man. There is no middle
class between the two to which it can be assigned. Superficial truism as
this appears, we have now come upon the very battle ground of the
philosophies. This is the famous “Law of the contradictories and
excluded middle,” on the construction of which the whole fabric of
religious dogma, and I may add of the higher metaphysics, must depend.
“One of the principal retarding causes of philosophy,” remarks Professor
Ferrier, “has been the want of a clear and developed doctrine of the
contradictory.”[28-1] The want is as old as the days of Heraclitus of
Ephesus, and lent to his subtle paradoxes that obscurity which has not
yet been wholly removed.

Founding his arguments on one construction of this law, expressed in the
maxim, “The conceivable lies between two contradictory extremes,” Sir
William Hamilton defended with his wide learning those theories of the
Conditioned and the Unconditioned, the Knowable and Unknowable, which
banish religion from the realm of reason and knowledge to that of faith,
and cleave an impassable chasm between the human and the divine
intelligence. From this unfavorable ground his orthodox followers,
Mansel and Mozley, defended with ability but poor success their
Christianity against Herbert Spencer and his disciples, who also
accepted the same theories, but followed them out to their legitimate
conclusion--a substantially atheistic one.

Hamilton in this was himself but a follower of Kant, who brought this
law to support his celebrated “antinomies of the human understanding,”
warnings set up to all metaphysical explorers to keep off of holy
ground.

On another construction of it, one which sought to escape the dilemma of
the contradictories by confining them to matters of the understanding,
Hegel and Schelling believed they had gained the open field. They taught
that in the highest domain of thought, there where it deals with
questions of pure reason, the unity and limits which must be observed in
matters of the understanding and which give validity to this third law,
do not obtain. This view has been closely criticized, and, I think, with
justice. Pretending to deal with matters of pure reason, it constantly
though surreptitiously proceeds on the methods of applied logic; its
conclusions are as fallacious logically as they are experimentally. The
laws of thought are formal, and are as binding in transcendental
subjects as in those which concern phenomena.

The real bearing of this law can, it appears to me, best be derived from
a study of its mathematical expression. This is, according to the
notation of Professor Boole, _x_^{2}=_x_. As such, it presents a
fundamental equation of thought, and it is because it is of the second
degree that we classify in pairs or opposites. This equation can only be
satisfied by assigning to _x_ the value of 1 or 0. The “universal type
of form” is therefore _x_(1-_x_)=0.

This algebraic notation shows that there is, not two, but only one
thought in the antithesis; that it is made up of a thought and its
expressed limit; and, therefore, that the so-called “law of
contradictories” does not concern contradictories at all, in pure logic.
This result was seen, though not clearly, by Dr. Thompson, who indicated
the proper relation of the members of the formula as a positive and a
privative. He, however, retained Hamilton’s doctrine that “privative
conceptions enter into and assist the higher processes of the reason in
all that it can know of the absolute and infinite;” that we must, “from
the seen realize an unseen world, not by extending to the latter the
properties of the former, but by assigning to it attributes entirely
opposite.”[31-1]

The error that vitiates all such reasoning is the assumption that the
privative is an independent thought, that a thought and its limitation
are two thoughts; whereas they are but the two aspects of the one
thought, like two sides to the one disc, and the absurdity of speaking
of them as separate thoughts is as great as to speak of a curve seen
from its concavity as a different thing from the same curve regarded
from its convexity. The privative can help us nowhere and to nothing;
the positive only can assist our reasoning.

This elevation of the privative into a contrary, or a contradictory, has
been the bane of metaphysical reasoning. From it has arisen the doctrine
of the synthesis of an affirmative and a negative into a higher
conception, reconciling them both. This is the maxim of the Hegelian
logic, which starts from the synthesis of Being and Not-being into the
Becoming, a very ancient doctrine, long since offered as an explanation
of certain phenomena, which I shall now touch upon.

A thought and its privative alone--that is, a quality and its
negative--cannot lead to a more comprehensive thought. It is devoid of
relation and barren. In pure logic this is always the case, and must be
so. In concrete thought it may be otherwise. There are certain
propositions in which the negative is a reciprocal quality, quite as
positive as that which it is set over against. The members of such a
proposition are what are called “true contraries.” To whatever they
apply as qualities, they leave no middle ground. If a thing is not one
of them, it is the other. There is no third possibility. An object is
either red or not red; if not red, it may be one of many colors. But if
we say that all laws are either concrete or abstract, then we know that
a law not concrete has all the properties of one which is abstract. We
must examine, then, this third law of thought in its applied forms in
order to understand its correct use.

It will be observed that there is an assumption of space or time in many
propositions having the form of the excluded middle. They are only true
under given conditions. “All gold is fusible or not,” means that some is
fusible at the time. If all gold be already fused, it does not hold
good. This distinction was noted by Kant in his discrimination between
_synthetic_ judgments, which assume other conditions; and _analytic_
judgments, which look only at the members of the proposition.

Only the latter satisfy the formal law, for the proposition must not
look outside of itself for its completion. Most analytic propositions
cannot extend our knowledge beyond their immediate statement. If A is
either B or not B, and it is shown not to be B, it is left uncertain
what A may be. The class of propositions referred to do more than this,
inasmuch as they present alternative conceptions, mutually exhaustive,
each the privative of the other. Of these two contraries, the one always
evokes the other; neither can be thought except in relation to the
other. They do not arise from the dichotomic process of classification,
but from the polar relations of things. Their relation is not in the
mind but in themselves, a real externality. The distinction between such
as spring from the former and the latter is the most important question
in philosophy.

To illustrate by examples, we familiarly speak of heat and cold, and to
say a body is not hot is as much as to say it is cold. But every
physicist knows that cold is merely a diminution of heat, not a distinct
form of force. The absolute zero may be reached by the abstraction of
all heat, and then the cold cannot increase. So, life and death are not
true contraries, for the latter is not anything real but a mere
privative, a quantitative diminution of the former, growing less to an
absolute zero where it is wholly lost.

Thus it is easy to see that the Unconditioned exists only as a part of
the idea of the Conditioned, the Unknowable as the foil of the Knowable;
and the erecting of these mere privatives, these negatives, these
shadows, into substances and realities, and then setting them up as
impassable barriers to human thought, is one of the worst pieces of work
that metaphysics has been guilty of.

The like does not hold in true contrasts. Each of them has an existence
as a positive,and[TN-3] is never lost in a zero of the other. The one is
always thought in relation to the other. Examples of these are subject
and object, absolute and relative, mind and matter, person and
consciousness, time and space. When any one of these is thought, the
other is assumed. It is vain to attempt their separation. Thus those
philosophers who assert that all knowledge is relative, are forced to
maintain this assertion, to wit, All knowledge is relative, is
nevertheless absolute, and thus they falsify their own position. So
also, those others who say all mind is a property of matter, assume in
this sentence the reality of an idea apart from matter. Some have argued
that space and time can be conceived independently of each other; but
their experiments to show it do not bear repetition.

All true contraries are universals. A universal concept is one of
“maximum extension,” as logicians say, that is, it is without limit. The
logical limitation of such a universal is not its negation, but its
contrary, which is itself also a universal. The synthesis of the two can
be in theory only, yet yields a real product. To illustrate this by a
geometrical example, a straight line produced indefinitely is, logically
considered, a universal. Its antithesis or true contrary is not a
crooked line, as might be supposed, but the straight line which runs at
right angles to it. Their synthesis is not the line which bisects their
angle but that formed by these contraries continually uniting, that is,
the arc of a circle, the genesis of which is theoretically the union of
two such lines. Again, time can only be measured by space, space by
time; they are true universals and contraries; their synthesis is
_motion_, a conception which requires them both and is completed by
them. Or again, the philosophical extremes of downright materialism and
idealism are each wholly true, yet but half the truth. The insoluble
enigmas that either meets in standing alone are kindred to those which
puzzled the old philosophers in the sophisms relating to motion, as, for
instance, that as a body cannot move where it is and still less where it
is not, therefore it cannot move at all. Motion must recognise both time
and space to be comprehensible. As a true contrary constantly implies
the existence of its opposite, we cannot take a step in right reasoning
without a full recognition of both.

This relation of contraries to the higher conception which logically
must include them is one of the well-worn problems of the higher
metaphysics.

The proper explanation would seem to be, as suggested above, that the
synthesis of contraries is capable of formal expression only, but not of
interpretation. In pursuing the search for their union we pass into a
realm of thought not unlike that of the mathematician when he deals with
hypothetical quantities, those which can only be expressed in symbols--,
√1 for example,--but uses them to good purpose in reaching
real results. The law does not fail, but its operations can no longer be
expressed under material images. They are symbolic and for speculative
thought alone, though pregnant with practical applications.

As I have hinted, in all real contraries it is theoretically possible to
accept either the one or the other. As in mathematics, all motion can be
expressed either under formulas of initial motion (mechanics), or of
continuous motion (kinematics), or as all force can be expressed as
either static or as dynamic force; in either case the other form
assuming a merely hypothetical or negative position; so the logic of
quality is competent to represent all existence as ideal or as material,
all truth as absolute or all as relative, or even to express the
universe in formulæ of being or of not-being. This perhaps was what
Heraclitus meant when he propounded his dark saying: “All things are
_and_ are not.” He added that “All is not,” is truer than “All is.”
Previous to his day, Buddha Sakyamuni had said: “He who has risen to the
perception of the not-Being, to the Unconditioned, the Universal, his
path is difficult to understand, like the flight of birds in the
air.”[37-1] Perhaps even he learned his lore from some older song of the
Veda, one of which ends, “Thus have the sages, meditating in their
souls, explained away the fetters of being by the not-being.”[37-2] The
not-being, as alone free from space and time, impressed these sages as
the more real of the two, the only absolute.

The error of assigning to the one universal a preponderance over the
other arose from the easy confusion of pure with applied thought. The
synthesis of contraries exists in the formal law alone, and this is
difficult to keep before the mind. In concrete displays they are forever
incommensurate. One seems to exclude the other. To see them correctly we
must there treat them as alternates. We may be competent, for instance,
to explain all phenomena of mind by organic processes; and equally
competent to explain all organism as effects of mind; but we must never
suppose an immediate identity of the two; this is only to be found in
the formal law common to both; still less should we deny the reality of
either. Each exhausts the universe; but at every step each presupposes
the other; their synthesis is life, a concept hopelessly puzzling unless
regarded in all its possible displays as made up of both.

This indicates also the limits of explanation. By no means every man’s
reason knows when it has had enough. The less it is developed, the
further is it from such knowledge. This is plainly seen in children, who
often do not rest satisfied with a really satisfactory explanation. It
is of first importance to be able to recognize what is a good reason.

I may first say what it is _not_. It is not a _cause_. This is nothing
more than a prior arrangement of the effect; the reason for an
occurrence is never assigned by showing its cause. Nor is it a
_caprice_, that is, motiveless volition, or will as a motor. In this
sense, the “will of God” is no good reason for an occurrence. Nor is it
_fate_, or physical necessity. This is denying there is any explanation
to give.

The reason can only be satisfied with an aliment consubstantial with
itself. Nothing material like cause, nor anything incomprehensible like
caprice, meets its demands. Reason is allied to order, system and
purpose above all things. That which most completely answers to these
will alone satisfy its requirements. They are for an ideal of order.
Their complete satisfaction is obtained in universal types and measures,
pure abstractions, which are not and cannot be real. The _formal law_ is
the limit of explanation of phenomena, beyond which a sound intellect
will ask nothing. It fulfils all the requirements of reason, and leaves
nothing to be desired.

Those philosophers, such as Herbert Spencer, who teach that there is
some incogitable “nature” of something which is the immanent “cause” of
phenomena, delude themselves with words. The history and the laws of a
phenomenon _are_ its nature, and there is no chimerical something beyond
them. They are exhaustive. They fully answer the question _why_, as well
as the question _how_.[39-1]

For it is important to note that the word “law” is not here used in the
sense which Blackstone gives to it, a “rule of conduct;” nor yet in that
which science assigns to it, a “physical necessity.” Law in its highest
sense is the type or form, perceived by reason as that toward which
phenomena tend, but which they always fail to reach. It was shown by
Kant that all physical laws depend for their validity on logical laws.
These are not authoritative, like the former, but purposive only. But
their purpose is clear, to wit, the attainment of proportion,
consistency or truth. As this purpose is reached only in the abstract
form, this alone gives us the absolutely true in which reason can rest.

In the concrete, matter shows the law in its efforts toward form, mind
in its struggle for the true. The former is guided by physical force,
and the extinction of the aberrant. The latter, in its highest
exhibition in a conscious intelligence, can alone guide itself by the
representation of law, by the sense of Duty. Such an intelligence has
both the faculty to see and the power to choose and appropriate to its
own behoof, and thus to build itself up out of those truths which are
“from everlasting unto everlasting.”

A purely formal truth of this kind as something wholly apart from
phenomena, not in any way connected with the knowledge derived through
the senses, does not admit of doubt and can never be changed by future
conquests of the reasoning powers. We may rest upon it as something more
permanent than matter, greater than Nature.

Such was the vision that inspired the noble lines of Wordsworth:--

    “What are things eternal?--Powers depart,
    Possessions vanish, and opinions change,
    And passions hold a fluctuating seat;
    But, by the storms of circumstance unshaken,
    And subject neither to eclipse nor wane,
    Duty exists; immutably survive
    For our support, the measures and the forms
    Which an abstract intelligence supplies;
    Whose kingdom is where time and space are not.”

There is no danger that we shall not know what is thus true when we see
it. The sane reason cannot reject it. “The true,” says Novalis, “is that
which we cannot help believing.” It is the _perceptio per solam
essentiam_ of Spinoza. It asks not faith nor yet testimony; it stands in
need of neither.

Mathematical truth is of this nature. We cannot, if we try, believe
that twice two is five. Hence the unceasing effort of all science is to
give its results mathematical expression. Such truth so informs itself
with will that once received, it is never thereafter alienated;
obedience to it does not impair freedom. Necessity and servitude do not
arise from correct reasoning, but through the limitation of fallacies.
They have nothing to do with

          “Those transcendent truths
    Of the pure intellect, that stand as laws
    Even to Thy Being’s infinite majesty.”

It is not derogatory, but on the contrary essential to the conception of
the Supreme Reason, the Divine Logos, to contemplate its will as in
accord and one with the forms of abstract truth. “The ‘will of God’”
says Spinoza, “is the refuge of ignorance; the true Will is the spirit
of right reasoning.”

This identification of the forms of thought with the Absolute is almost
as old as philosophy itself. The objections to it have been that no
independent existence attaches to these forms; that they prescribe the
conditions of thought but are not thought itself, still less being; that
they hold good to thought as known to man’s reason, but perchance not to
thought in other intelligences; and, therefore, that even if through the
dialectical development of thought a consistent idea of the universe
were framed, that is, one wherein every fact was referred to its
appropriate law, still would remain the inquiry, Is this the last and
absolute truth?

The principal points in these objections are that abstract thought does
not postulate being; and that possibly all intelligence is not one in
kind. To the former objection the most satisfactory, reply has been
offered by Professor J. F. Ferrier. He has shown that the conception of
object, even ideal object, implies the conception of self in the
subject; and upon this proposition which has been fully recognized even
by those who differ from him widely, he grounds the existence of Supreme
Thought as a logical unity. Those who would pursue this branch of the
subject further, I would refer to his singularly able work.[43-1]

The latter consideration will come up in a later chapter. If it be shown
that all possible intelligence proceeds on the same laws as that of man,
and that the essence of this is activity, permanence, or
truth--synonymous terms--then the limitation of time ceases, and
existence not in time but without regard to time, is a necessary
consequence. Knowledge through intellection can alone reach a truth
independent of time; that through sensation is always relative, true
for the time only. The former cannot be expressed without the
implication of the conceptions of the universal and the eternal as
“dominant among the subjects of thought with which Logic is
concerned;”[44-1] and hence the relation which the intellect bears to
the absolute is a real and positive one.


FOOTNOTES:

[6-1] In his essay entitled, _Ueber den Geschlechtsunterschied und
dessen Einfluss auf die organische Natur_, first published in 1795.

[6-2] “Der alte Dualismus von Geist und Körper, der Jahrhunderte
hindurch nach Versöhnung gerungen, findet diese heute nicht
zwar in der Einheit der Substanz, wohl aber in der Einheit des
Gesetzes.” Dr. Heinrich Boehmer, _Geschichte der Entwickelung der
Naturwissenschaftlichen Weltanschauung in Deutschland_, s. 201 (Gotha,
1872).

[7-1] _Elements of Physio-Philosophy_, §3589. Eng. trans., London, 1847.

[8-1] Von Feuchtersleben, _The Principles of Medical Psychology_, p. 130
(Eng. trans., London, 1847).

[9-1] “The fundamental property of organic structure is to seek what is
beneficial, and to shun what is hurtful to it.” Dr. Henry Maudsley,
_Body and Mind_, p. 22.

“The most essential nature of a sentient being is to move _to_ pleasure
and _from_ pain.” A. Bain, _On the Study of Character_, p. 292 (London,
1861).

“States of Pleasure are connected with an increase, states of Pain with
an abatement of some or all of the vital functions.” A. Bain, _Mind and
Body_, p. 59.

“Affectus est confusa idea, quâ Mens majorem, vel minorem sui corporis,
vel alicujus ejus partis, existendi vim affirmat.” Spinoza, _Ethices_,
Lib. III. _ad finem_.

[11-1] The extension of the mechanical laws of motion to organic motion
was, I believe, first carried out by Comte. His biological form of the
first law is as follows: “Tout état, statique ou dynamique, tend à
persister spontanément, sans aucune altération, en resistant aux
perturbations extérieures.” _Système de Politique Positive_, Tome iv. p.
178. The metaphysical ground of this law has, I think, been very well
shown by Schopenhauer to be in the Kantian principle that time is not a
force, nor a quality of matter, but a condition of perception, and hence
it can exert no physical influence. See Schopenhauer, _Parerga und
Paralipomena_, Bd. II, s. 37.

[13-1] “Aller Genuss, seiner Natur nach, ist negativ, d. h., in
Befreiung von einer Noth oder Pein besteht.” _Parerga und Paralipomena._
Bd. II, s. 482.

[14-1] “No impression whatever is pleasant beyond the instant of its
realization; since, at that very instant, commences the change of
susceptibility, which suggests the desire for a change of impression or
for a renewal of that impression which is fading away.” Dr. J. P.
Catlow, _The Principles of Aesthetic Medicine_, p. 155 (London, 1867).

“Dum re, quem appetamus fruimur, corpus ex ea fruitione novam acquirat
constitutionem, á quá aliter determinatur, et aliæ rerum imagines in eo
excitantur,” etc. Spinoza, _Ethices_, Pars III, Prop. lix.

[18-1] “Feeling and thought are much more real than anything else; they
are the only things which we directly know to be real.”--John Stuart
Mill.--_Theism_, p. 202. How very remote external objects are from what
we take them to be, is constantly shown in physiological studies. As
Helmholtz remarks: “No kind and no degree of similarity exists between
the quality of a sensation, and the quality of the agent inducing it and
portrayed by it.”--_Lectures on Scientific Subjects_, p. 390.

[20-1] _The Philosophy of Consciousness_, p. 72.

[21-1] The Gospel of John (ch. xviii.) leaves the impression that Pilate
either did not wait for an answer but asked the question in contempt, as
Bacon understood, or else that waiting he received no answer. The Gospel
of Nicodemus, however, written according to Tischendorf in the second
century, probably from tradition, gives the rest of the conversation as
follows: “Pilate says to him: What is truth? Jesus says: Truth is from
heaven. Pilate says: Is not there truth upon earth? Jesus says to
Pilate: See how one who speaks truth is judged by those who have power
upon earth!” [ch. iii.]

[22-1] The most acute recent discussion of this subject is by Helmholtz,
in his essay entitled, “_Recent Progress in the Theory of Vision_.”

[24-1] George Boole, Professor of Mathematics in Queen’s College, Cork,
was born Nov. 2, 1815, died Dec. 8, 1864. He was the author of several
contributions to the higher mathematics, but his principal production is
entitled: _An Investigation into the Laws of Thought, on which are
founded the mathematical Theories of Logic and Probabilities_ [London,
1854.] Though the reputation he gained was so limited that one may seek
his name in vain in the _New American Cyclopedia_ [1875], or the
_Dictionnaire des Contemporains_ [1859], the few who can appreciate his
treatise place the very highest estimate upon it. Professor Todhunter,
in the preface to his _History of the Theory of Probabilities_, calls it
“a marvellous work,” and in similar language Professor W. Stanley Jevons
speaks of it as “one of the most marvellous and admirable pieces of
reasoning ever put together” (_Pure Logic_, p. 75). Professor Bain, who
gives a synopsis of it in his _Deductive Logic_, wholly misapprehends
the author’s purpose, and is unable to appraise justly his conclusions.

[28-1] _The Institutes of Metaphysic_, p. 459, (2nd edition.)

[31-1] _An Outline of the Necessary Laws of Thought_, p. 113 (New York,
1860).

[37-1] _The Dhamapada_, verse 93.

[37-2] Koppen, _Der Buddhismus_, s. 30.

[39-1] Spencer in assuming an “unknowable universal causal agent and
source of things,” as “the nature of the power manifested in phenomena,”
and in calling this the idea common to both religion and “ideal
science,” fell far behind Comte, who expressed the immovable position,
not only of positive science but of all intelligence, in these words:
“Le véritable esprit positif consiste surtout à substituer toujours
l’étude des _lois_ invariables des phénomènes à celles de leurs _causes_
proprement dites, premières ou finales, en un mot la determination du
_comment_ à celle du _pourquoi_.”--_Systèmede[TN-4] Politique Positive_,
i. p. 47. Compare Spencer’s Essay entitled, “Reasons for dissenting from
Comte.” The purposive law is the only final cause which reason allows.
Comte’s error lay in ignoring this class of laws.

[43-1] _The Institutes of Metaphysic_, 2d Ed. See also Bain, _The
Emotions and the Will_, the closing note.

[44-1] Boole, _Laws of Thought_, p. 401.



THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT.


SUMMARY.

     The Religious Sentiment is made up of emotions and thoughts. The
     emotions are historically first and most prominent. Of all
     concerned, Fear is the most obvious. Hope is its correlate. Both
     suppose Experience, and a desire to repeat or avoid it. Hence a
     Wish is the source of both emotions, and the proximate element of
     religion. The significance of desire as the postulate of
     development. The influence of fear and hope. The conditions which
     encourage them.

     The success of desire fails to gratify the religious sentiment. The
     alternative left is eternal repose, or else action, unending yet
     which aims at nothing beyond. The latter is reached through Love.
     The result of love is _continuance_. Illustrations of this. Sexual
     love and the venereal sense in religions. The hermaphrodite gods.
     The virgin mother. Mohammed was the first to proclaim a deity above
     sex. The conversion of sexual and religious emotion exemplified
     from insane delusions. The element of fascination. The love of God.
     Other emotional elements in religions.

     The religious wish defined to be one _whose fruition depends upon
     unknown power_. To be religious, one must desire and be ignorant.
     The unknown power is of religious interest only in so far as it is
     believed to be in relation to men’s desires. In what sense
     ignorance is the mother of devotion.



CHAPTER II.

THE EMOTIONAL ELEMENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT.


The discussion in the last chapter illustrated how closely pain and
pleasure, truth and error, and thought and its laws have been related to
the forms of religions, and their dogmatic expressions. The character of
the relatively and absolutely true was touched upon, and the latter, it
was indicated, if attainable at all by human intelligence, must be found
in the formal laws of that intelligence, those which constitute its
nature and essence, and in the conclusions which such a premise forces
upon the reason. The necessity of this preliminary inquiry arose from
the fact that every historical religion claims the monopoly of the
absolutely true, and such claims can be tested only when we have decided
as to whether there is such truth, and if there is, where it is to be
sought. Moreover, as religions arise from some mental demand, the
different manifestations of mind,--sensation, emotion and
intellect--must be recognized and understood.

Passing now to a particular description of the Religious Sentiment, it
may roughly be defined to be the feeling which prompts to thoughts or
acts of worship. It is, as I have said, a complex product, made up of
emotions and ideas, developing with the growth of mind, wide-reaching in
its maturity, but meagre enough at the start. We need not expect to find
in its simplest phases that insight and tender feeling which we
attribute to the developed religious character. “The scent of the
blossom is not in the bulb.” Its early and ruder forms, however, will
best teach the mental elements which are at its root.

The problem is, to find out why the primitive man figured to himself any
gods at all; what necessity of his nature or his condition led him so
universally to assume their existence, and seek their aid or their
mercy? The conditions of the solution are, that it hold good everywhere
and at all times; that it enable us to trace in every creed and cult the
same sentiments which first impelled man to seek a god and adore him.
Why is it that now and in remotest history, here and in the uttermost
regions, there is and always has been this that we call _religion_?
There must be some common reason, some universal peculiarity in man’s
mental formation which prompts, which forces him, him alone of animals,
and him without exception, to this discourse and observance of religion.
What this is, it is my present purpose to try to find out.

In speaking of the development of mind through organism, it was seen
that the emotions precede the reason in point of time. This is daily
confirmed by observation. The child is vastly more emotional than the
man, the savage than his civilized neighbor. Castren, the Russian
traveller, describes the Tartars and Lapps as a most nervous folk. When
one shocks them with a sudden noise, they almost fall into convulsions.
Among the North American Indians, falsely called a phlegmatic race,
nervous diseases are epidemic to an almost unparalleled extent. Intense
thought, on the other hand, as I have before said, tends to lessen and
annul the emotions. Intellectual self-consciousness is adverse to them.

But religion, we are everywhere told, is largely a matter of the
emotions. The pulpit constantly resounds with appeals to the feelings,
and not unfrequently with warnings against the intellect. “I acknowledge
myself,” says the pious non-juror, William Law, “a declared enemy to the
use of reason in religion;” and he often repeats his condemnation of
“the labor-learned professors of far-fetched book-riches.”[49-1] As the
eye is the organ of sight, says one whose thoughts on such matters equal
in depth those of Pascal, so the heart is the organ of religion.[49-2]
In popular physiology, the heart is the seat of the emotions as the
brain is that of intellect. It is appropriate, therefore, that we
commence our analysis of the religious sentiment with the emotions which
form such a prominent part of it.

Now, whether we take the experience of an individual or the history of a
tribe, whether we have recourse to the opinions of religious teachers or
irreligious philosophers, we find them nigh unanimous that the emotion
which is the prime motor of religious thought is _fear_. I need not
depend upon the well-known line of Petronius Arbiter,

    Primus in orbe deos fecit timor;

for there is plenty of less heterodox authority. The worthy Bishop Hall
says, “Seldom doth God seize upon the heart without a vehement
concussion going before. There must be some blustering and flashes of
the law. We cannot be too awful in our fear.”[50-1] Bunyan, in his
beautiful allegory of the religious life, lets Christian exclaim: “Had
even Obstinate himself felt what I have felt of the terrors of the yet
unseen, he would not thus lightly have given us the _back_.” The very
word for God in the Semitic tongues means “fear;”[50-2] Jacob swore to
Laban, “by Him whom Isaac feared;” and Moses warned his people that
“God is come, that his fear may be before your faces.” To _venerate_ is
from a Sanscrit root (_sêv_), to be afraid of.

But it is needless to amass more evidence on this point. Few will
question that fear is the most prominent emotion at the awakening of the
religious sentiments. Let us rather proceed to inquire more minutely
what fear is.

I remarked in the previous chapter that “the emotions fall naturally
into a dual classification, in which the one involves pleasurable or
elevating, the other painful or depressing conditions.” Fear comes of
course under the latter category, as it is essentially a painful and
depressing state of mind. But it corresponds with and implies the
presence of Hope, for he who has nothing to hope has nothing to
fear.[51-1] “There is no hope without fear, as there is no fear without
hope,” says Spinoza. “For he who is in fear has some doubt whether what
he fears will take place, and consequently hopes that it will not.”

We can go a step further, and say that in the mental process the hope
must necessarily precede the fear. In the immediate moment of losing a
pleasurable sensation we hope and seek for its repetition. The mind,
untutored by experience, confidently looks for its return. The hope only
becomes dashed by fear when experience has been associated with
disappointment. Hence we must first look to enjoy a good before we can
be troubled by a fear that we shall not enjoy it; we must first lay a
plan before we can fear its failure. In modern Christianity hope, hope
of immortal happiness, is more conspicuous than fear; but that hope is
also based on the picture of a pleasant life made up from experience.

Both hope and fear, therefore, have been correctly called secondary or
derived emotions, as they presuppose experience and belief, experience
of a pleasure akin to that which we hope, belief that we can attain such
a pleasure. “We do not hope first and enjoy afterwards, but we enjoy
first and hope afterwards.”[52-1] Having enjoyed, we seek to do so
again. A desire, in other words, must precede either Hope or Fear. They
are twin sisters, born of a Wish.

Thus my analysis traces the real source of the religious sentiment, so
far as the emotions are concerned, to a Wish; and having arrived there,
I find myself anticipated by the words of one of the most reflective
minds of this century: “All religion rests on a mental want; we hope,
we fear, because we wish.”[53-1] And long before this conclusion was
reached by philosophers, it had been expressed in unconscious religious
thought in myths, in the Valkyria, the Wish-maidens, for instance, who
carried the decrees of Odin to earth.

This is no mean origin, for a wish, a desire, conscious or unconscious,
in sensation only or in emotion as well, is the fundamental postulate of
every sort of development, of improvement, of any possible future, of
life of any kind, mental or physical. In its broadest meaning, science
and history endorse the exclamation of the unhappy Obermann: “_La perte
vraiment irréparable est celle des désirs._”[53-2]

The sense of unrest, the ceaseless longing for something else, which is
the general source of all desires and wishes, is also the source of all
endeavor and of all progress. Physiologically, it is the effort of our
organization to adapt itself to the ever varying conditions which
surround it; intellectually, it is the struggle to arrive at truth; in
both, it is the effort to attain a fuller life.

As stimuli to action, therefore, the commonest and strongest of all
emotions are Fear and Hope. They are the emotional correlates of
pleasure and pain, which rule the life of sensation. Their closer
consideration may well detain us awhile.

In the early stages of religious life, whether in an individual or a
nation, the latter is half concealed. Fear is more demonstrative, and as
it is essentially destructive, its effects are more sudden and visible.
In its acuter forms, as Fright and Terror, it may blanch the hair in a
night, blight the mind and destroy the life of the individual. As Panic,
it is eminently epidemic, carrying crowds and armies before it; while in
the aggravated form of Despair it swallows up all other emotions and
prompts to self destruction. Its physiological effect is a direct
impairment of vitality.

Hope is less intense and more lasting than fear. It stimulates the
system, elates with the confidence of control, strengthens with the
courage derived from a conviction of success, and bestows in advance the
imagined joy of possession. As Feuchtersleben happily expresses it:
“Hope preserves the principle of duration when other parts are
threatened with destruction, and is a manifestation of the innermost
psychical energy of Life.”[54-1]

Both emotions powerfully prompt to action, and to that extent are
opposed to thought. Based on belief, they banish uncertainty, and
antagonize doubt and with it investigation. The religion in which they
enter as the principal factors will be one intolerant of opposition,
energetic in deed, and generally hostile to an unbiased pursuit of the
truth.

Naturally those temperaments and those physical conditions which chiefly
foster these emotions will tend to religious systems in which they are
prominent. Let us see what some of these conditions are.

It has always been noticed that impaired vitality predisposes to fear.
The sick and feeble are more timorous than the strong and well. Further
predisposing causes of the same nature are insufficient nourishment,
cold, gloom, malaria, advancing age and mental worry. For this reason
nearly invariably after a general financial collapse we witness a
religious “revival.” Age, full of care and fear, is thus prompted to
piety, willing, as La Rochefoucauld remarks, to do good by precept when
it can no longer do evil by example. The inhabitants of swampy,
fever-ridden districts are usually devout. The female sex, always the
weaker and often the worsted one in the struggle for existence, is when
free more religious than the male; but with them hope is more commonly
the incentive than fear.

Although thus prominent and powerful, desire, so far as its fruition is
pleasure, has expressed but the lowest emotions of the religious
sentiment. Something more than this has always been asked by sensitively
religious minds. Success fails to bring the gratification it promises.
The wish granted, the mind turns from it in satiety. Not this, after
all, was what we sought.

The acutest thinkers have felt this. Pascal in his _Pensées_ has such
expressions as these: “The present is never our aim. The future alone is
our object.” “Forever getting ready to be happy, it is certain we never
can be.” “’Tis the combat pleases us and not the victory. As soon as
that is achieved, we have had enough of the spectacle. So it is in play,
so it is in the search for truth. We never pursue objects, but we pursue
the pursuit of objects.” But no one has stated it more boldly than
Lessing when he wrote: “If God held in his right hand all truth, and in
his left the one unceasingly active desire for truth, although bound up
with the law that I should forever err, I should choose with humility
the left and say: ‘Give me this, Father. The pure truth is for thee
alone.’”[56-1] The pleasure seems to lie not in the booty but in the
battle, not in gaining the stakes but in playing the game, not in the
winning but in the wooing, not in the discovery of truth but in the
search for it.

What is left for the wise, but to turn, as does the preacher, from this
delusion of living, where laughter is mad and pleasure is vain, and
praise the dead which are dead more than the living which are yet alive,
or to esteem as better than both he that hath never been?

Such is the conclusion of many faiths. Wasted with combat, the mortal
longs for the rest prepared for the weary. Buddha taught the
extinguishment in Nirvana; the Brahman portrays the highest bliss as
_shanti_, complete and eternal repose; and that the same longing was
familiar to ancient Judaism, and has always been common to Christianity,
numerous evidences testify.[57-1] Few epitaphs are more common than
those which speak of the mortal resting _in pace, in quiete_.

The supposition at the root of these longings is that action must bring
fatigue and pain, and though it bring pleasure too, it is bought too
dearly. True in fact, I have shown that this conflicts with the theory
of perfect life, even organic life. The highest form of life is the most
unceasing living; its functions ask for their completest well being
constant action, not satisfaction. That general feeling of health and
strength, that _sens de bien être_, which goes with the most perfect
physical life, is experienced only when all the organs are in complete
working order and doing full duty. They impart to the whole frame a
desire of motion. Hence the activity of the young and healthy as
contrasted with the inertness of the exhausted and aged.

How is it possible to reconcile this ideal of life, still more the hope
of everlasting life, with the acknowledged vanity of desire? It is
accomplished through the medium of an emotion which more than any I have
touched upon reveals the character of the religious sentiment--Love.
This mighty but protean feeling I shall attempt to define on broader
principles than has hitherto been done. The vague and partial meanings
assigned it have led to sad confusion in the studies of religions. In
the language of feeling, love is a passion; but it does not spring from
feeling alone. It is far more fervid when it rises through intellect
than through sense. “Men have died from time to time, and worms have
eaten them, but not for love,” says the fair Rosalind; and though her
saying is not very true as to the love of sense, it is far less true as
to the love of intellect. The martyrs to science and religion, to
principles and faith, multiply a hundred-fold those to the garden god.
The spell of the idea is what

  “Turns ruin into laughter and death into dreaming.”

Such love destroys the baser passion of sense, or transfigures it so
that we know it no longer. The idea-driven is callous to the
blandishments of beauty, for his is a love stronger than the love to
woman. The vestal, the virgin, the eunuch for the kingdom of heaven’s
sake are the exemplars of the love to God.

What common trait so marks these warring products of mind, that we call
them by one name? In what is all love the same? The question is
pertinent, for the love of woman, the love of neighbor, the love of
country, the love of God, have made the positive side of most religions,
the burden of their teachings. The priests of Cotytto and Venus, Astarte
and Melitta, spoke but a more sensuous version of the sermon of the aged
apostle to the Ephesians,--shortest and best of all sermons--“Little
children, love one another.”[59-1]

The earliest and most constant sign of reason is “working for a remote
object.”[59-2] Nearly everything we do is as a step to something beyond.
Forethought, conscious provision, is the measure of intelligence. But
there must be something which is the object, the aim, the end-in-view of
rational action, which is sought for itself alone, not as instrumental
to something else. Such an object, when recognized, inspires the
sentiment of love. It springs from the satisfaction of reason.

This conclusion as to the nature of love has long been recognized by
thinkers. Richard Baxter defined it as “the volition of the end,” “the
motion of the soul that tendeth to the end,” and more minutely, “the
will’s volition of good apprehended by the understanding.”[60-1] In
similar language Bishop Butler explains it as “the resting in an object
as an end.”[60-2] Perhaps I can better these explanations by the phrase,
_Love is the mental impression of rational action whose end is in
itself_.

Now this satisfaction is found only in one class of efforts, namely,
those whose result is continuity, persistence, in fine, _preservation_.
This may be toward the individual, self-love, whose object is the
continuance of personal existence; toward the other sex, where the
hidden aim is the perpetuation of the race; toward one’s fellows, where
the giving of pleasure and the prevention of pain mean the maintenance
of life; toward one’s country, as patriotism; and finally toward the
eternally true, which as alone the absolutely permanent and
preservative, inspires a love adequate and exhaustive of its conception,
casting out both hope and fear, the pangs of desire as well as the
satiety of fruition.

In one or other of these forms love has at all times been the burden of
religion: the glad tidings it has always borne have been “love on
earth.” The Phœnix in Egyptian myth appeared yearly as newly risen,
but was ever the same bird, and bore the egg from which its _parent_ was
to have birth. So religions have assumed the guise in turn of self-love,
sex-love, love of country and love of humanity, cherishing in each the
germ of that highest love which alone is the parent of its last and only
perfect embodiment.

Favorite of these forms was sex-love. “We find,” observes a recent
writer, “that all religions have engaged and concerned themselves with
the sexual passion. From the times of phallic worship through Romish
celibacy down to Mormonism, theology has linked itself with man’s
reproductive instincts.”[61-1] The remark is just, and is most
conspicuously correct in strongly emotional temperaments. “The
devotional feelings,” writes the Rev. Frederick Robertson in one of his
essays, “are often singularly allied to the animal nature; they conduct
the unconscious victim of feelings that appear divine into a state of
life at which the world stands aghast.” Fanaticism is always united with
either excessive lewdness or desperate asceticism. The physiological
performance of the generative function is sure to be attacked by
religious bigotry.

So prominent is this feature that attempts have been made to explain
nearly all symbolism and mythology as types of the generative procedure
and the reproductive faculty of organism. Not only the pyramids and
sacred mountains, the obelisks of the Nile and the myths of light have
received this interpretation, but even such general symbols as the
spires of churches, the cross of Christendom and the crescent of
Islam.[62-1]

Without falling into the error of supposing that any one meaning or
origin can be assigned such frequent symbols, we may acknowledge that
love, in its philosophical sense, is closely akin to the mystery of
every religion. That, on occasions, love of sex gained the mastery over
all other forms, is not to be doubted; but that at all times this was
so, is a narrow, erroneous view, not consistent with a knowledge of the
history of psychical development.

Sex-love, as a sentiment, is a cultivated growth. All it is at first is
a rude satisfaction of the erethism. The wild tribes of California had
their pairing seasons when the sexes were in heat, “as regularly as the
deer, the elk and the antelope.”[63-1] In most tongues of the savages of
North America there are no tender words, as “dear,” “darling,” and the
like.[63-2] No desire of offspring led to their unions. The women had
few children, and their fathers paid them little attention. The family
instinct appears in conditions of higher culture, in Judea, Greece, Rome
and ancient Germany. Procreation instead of lust was there the aim of
marriage. To-day, mere sentiment is so much in the ascendant that both
these elements are often absent. There is warm affection without even
instinctive knowledge of the design of the bond assumed.[63-3]

Those who would confine the promptings of the passion of reproduction as
it appears in man to its objects as shown in lower animals, know little
how this wondrous emotion has acted as man’s mentor as well as paraclete
in his long and toilsome conflict with the physical forces.

The venereal sense is unlike the other special senses in that it is
general, as well as referable to special organs and nerves. In its
psychological action it “especially contributes to the development of
sympathies which connect man not only with his coevals, but with his
fellows of all preceding and succeeding generations as well. Upon it is
erected this vast superstructure of intellect, of social and moral
sentiment, of voluntary effort and endeavor.”[64-1] Of all the
properties of organized matter, that of transmitting form and life is
the most wonderful; and if we examine critically the physical basis of
the labors and hopes of mankind, if we ask what prompts its noblest and
holiest longings, we shall find them, in the vast majority of instances,
directly traceable to this power. No wonder then that religion, which we
have seen springs from man’s wants and wishes, very often bears the
distinct trace of their origin in his reproductive functions. The liens
of the family are justly deemed sacred, and are naturally associated
with whatever the mind considers holy.

The duty of a citizen to become a father was a prominent feature in
many ancient religions. How much honor the sire of many sons had in Rome
and Palestine is familiar to all readers. No warrior, according to
German faith, could gain entrance to Valhalla unless he had begotten a
son. Thus the preservation of the species was placed under the immediate
guardianship of religion.

Such considerations explain the close connection of sexual thoughts with
the most sacred mysteries of faith. In polytheisms, the divinities are
universally represented as male or female, virile and fecund. The
processes of nature were often held to be maintained through such
celestial nuptials.

Yet stranger myths followed those of the loves of the gods. Religion, as
the sentiment of continuance, finding its highest expression in the
phenomenon of generation, had to reconcile this with the growing concept
of a divine unity. Each separate god was magnified in praises as
self-sufficient. Earth, or nature, or the season is one, yet brings
forth all. How embody this in concrete form?

The startling refuge was had in the image of a deity at once of both
sexes. Such avowedly were Mithras, Janus, Melitta, Cybele, Aphrodite,
Agdistis; indeed nearly all the Syrian, Egyptian, and Italic gods, as
well as Brahma, and, in the esoteric doctrine of the Cabala, even
Jehovah, whose female aspect is represented by the “Shekinah.” To this
abnormal condition the learned have applied the adjectives epicene,
androgynous, hermaphrodite, arrenothele. In art it is represented by a
blending of the traits of both sexes. In the cult it was dramatically
set forth by the votaries assuming the attire of the other sex, and
dallying with both.[66-1] The phallic symbol superseded all others; and
in Cyprus, Babylonia and Phrygia, once in her life, at least, must every
woman submit to the embrace of a stranger.

Such rites were not mere sensualities. The priests of these divinities
often voluntarily suffered emasculation. None but a eunuch could become
high priest of Cybele. Among the sixteen million worshippers of Siva,
whose symbol is the Lingam, impurity is far less prevalent than among
the sister sects of Hindoo religions.[66-2] To the Lingayets, the member
typifies abstractly the idea of life. Therefore they carve it on
sepulchres, or, like the ancient nations of Asia Minor, they lay clay
images of it on graves to intimate the hope of existence beyond the
tomb.

This notion of a hermaphrodite deity is not “monstrous,” as it has been
called. There lies a deep meaning in it. The gods are spirits, beings
of another order, which the cultivated esthetic sense protests against
classing as of one or the other gender. Never can the ideal of beauty,
either physical or moral, be reached until the characteristics of sex
are lost in the concept of the purely human. In the noblest men of
history there has often been noted something feminine, a gentleness
which is not akin to weakness; and the women whose names are ornaments
to nations have displayed a calm greatness, not unwomanly but something
more than belongs to woman. Art acknowledges this. In the Vatican Apollo
we see masculine strength united with maidenly softness; and in the
traditional face and figure of Christ a still more striking example how
the devout mind conjoins the traits of both sexes to express the highest
possibility of the species. “Soaring above the struggle in which the
real is involved with its limitations, and free from the characteristics
of gender, the ideal of beauty as well as the ideal of humanity, alike
maintain a perfect sexual equilibrium.”[67-1]

Another and more familiar expression of the religious emotion, akin to
the belief in double-sexed deities,--nay, in its physiological aspect
identical with it, as assuming sexual self-sufficiency, is the myth of
the Virgin-Mother.

When Columbus first planted the cross on the shores of San Domingo, the
lay brother Roman Pane, whom he sent forth to convert the natives of
that island, found among them a story of a virgin Mamóna, whose son
Yocaúna, a hero and a god, was chief among divinities, and had in the
old times taught this simple people the arts of peace and guided them
through the islands.[68-1] When the missionaries penetrated to the
Iroquois, the Aztecs, the Mayas, and many other tribes, this same story
was told them with such startling likeness to one they came to tell,
that they felt certain either St. Thomas or Satan had got the start of
them in America.

But had these pious men known as well as we do the gentile religions of
the Old World, they would have seasoned their admiration. Long before
Christianity was thought of, the myth of the Virgin-Mother of God was in
the faith of millions, as we have had abundantly shown us of late years
by certain expounders of Christian dogmas.

How is this strange, impossible belief to be explained? Of what secret,
unconscious, psychological working was it the expression? Look at its
result. It is that wherever this doctrine is developed the _status
matrimonialis_ is held to be less pure, less truly religious, than the
_status virginitatis_. Such is the teaching to-day in Lhassa, in Rome;
so it was in Yucatan, where, too, there were nunneries filled with
spouses of God. I connect it with the general doctrine that chastity in
either sex is more agreeable to God than marriage, and this belief, I
think, very commonly arises at a certain stage of development of the
religious sentiment, when it unconsciously recognises the indisputable
fact that sex-love, whether in its form of love of woman, family, or
nation, is not what that sentiment craves. This is first shown by
rejecting the idea of sex-love in the birth of the god; then his priests
and priestesses refuse its allurements, and deny all its claims, those
of kindred, of country, of race, until the act of generation itself is
held unholy and the thought of sex a sin. By such forcible though rude
displays do they set forth their unconscious acknowledgment of that
eternal truth: “He that loveth son or daughter more than Me, is not
worthy of Me.”

The significance of these words is not that there is an antagonism in
the forms of love. It is not that man should hate himself, as Pascal,
following the teachings of the Church, so ably argued; nor that the one
sex should be set over against the other in sterile abhorrence; nor yet
that love of country and of kindred is incompatible with that toward the
Supreme of thought; but it is that each of these lower, shallower,
evanescent forms of emotion is and must be lost in, subordinated to,
that highest form to which these words have reference. Reconciliation,
not abnegation, is what they mean.

Even those religions which teach in its strictness the oneness of God
have rarely separated from his personality the attribute of sex. He is
the father, _pater et genitor_, of all beings. The monotheism which we
find in Greece and India generally took this form. The ancient Hebrews
emphasized the former, not the latter sense of the word, and thus
depriving it of its more distinctive characteristics of sex, prepared
the way for the teachings of Christianity, in which the Supreme Being
always appears with the attributes of the male, but disconnected from
the idea of generation.

Singularly enough, the efforts to which this latent incongruity prompts,
even in persons speaking English, in which tongue the articles and
adjectives have no genders, point back to the errors of an earlier age.
A recent prayer by an eminent spiritualist commences:--“Oh Eternal
Spirit, our Father and our Mother!” The expression illustrates how
naturally arises the belief in a hermaphrodite god, when once sex is
associated with deity.

Of all founders of religions, Mohammed first proclaimed a divinity
without relation to sex. One of his earliest suras reads:

    “He is God alone,
    God the eternal.
    He begetteth not, and is not begotten;
    And there is none like unto him.”

And elsewhere:--

    “He hath no spouse, neither hath he any offspring.”[71-1]

While he expressly acknowledged the divine conception of Jesus, he
denied the coarse and literal version of that doctrine in vogue among
the ignorant Christians around him. Enlightened christendom, to-day,
does not, I believe, differ from him on this point.

Such sexual religions do not arise, as the theory has hitherto been,
from study and observation of the generative agencies in nature, but
from the identity of object between love in sense and love in intellect,
profane and sacred passion. The essence of each is _continuance_,
preservation; the origin of each is subjective, personal; but the former
has its root in sensation, the latter in reason.

The sex-difference in organisms, the “abhorrence of self-fertilization”
which Mr. Darwin speaks of as so conspicuous and inexplicable a
phenomenon, is but one example of the sway of a law which as action and
reaction, thesis and antithesis, is common to both elementary motion and
thought. The fertile and profound fancy of Greece delighted to prefigure
this truth in significant symbols and myths. Love, Eros, is shown
carrying the globe, or wielding the club of Hercules; he is the unknown
spouse of Psyche, the soul; and from the primitive chaos he brings forth
the ordered world, the Kosmos.

The intimate and strange relation between sensuality and religion, so
often commented upon and denied, again proven, and always
misinterpreted, thus receives a satisfactory explanation. Some singular
manifestations of it, of significance in religious history, are
presented by the records of insane delusions. They confirm what I have
above urged, that the association is not one derived from observation
through intellectual processes, but is a consequence of physiological
connections, of identity of aim in the distinct realms of thought and
emotion.

That eminent writer on mental diseases, Schroeder van der Kolk, when
speaking of the forms of melancholy which arise from physical
conditions, remarks: “The patient who is melancholy from disorders of
the generative organs considers himself sinful. His depressed tone of
mind passes over into religious melancholy; ‘he is forsaken by God; he
is lost.’ All his afflictions have a religious color.” In a similar
strain, Feuchtersleben says: “In the female sex especially, the erotic
delusion, unknown to the patient herself, often assumes the color of the
religious.”[73-1] “The unaccomplished sexual designs of nature,”
observes a later author speaking of the effects of the single life,
“lead to brooding over supposed miseries which suggest devotion and
religious exercise as the nepenthe to soothe the morbid longings.”[73-2]

Stimulate the religious sentiment and you arouse the passion of love,
which will be directed as the temperament and individual culture prompt.
Develope very prominently any one form of love, and by a native affinity
it will seize upon and consecrate to its own use whatever religious
aspirations the individual has. This is the general law of their
relation.

All the lower forms of love point to one to which they are the gradual
ascent, both of the individual and on a grander scale of the race, to
wit, the love of God. This is the passion for the highest attainable
truth, a passion which, as duty, prompts to the strongest action and to
the utter sacrifice of all other longings. No speculative acquaintance
with propositions satisfies it, no egotistic construction of systems,
but the truth expressed in life, the truth as that which alone either
has or can give being and diuturnity, this is its food, for which it
thirsts with holy ardor. Here is the genuine esoteric gnosis, the sacred
secret, which the rude and selfish wishes of the savage, the sensual
rites of Babylon, “mother of harlots,” and the sublimely unselfish
dreams of a “religion of humanity,” have alike had in their hearts, but
had no capacity to interpret, no words to articulate.

Related to this emotional phase of the religious sentiment is the
theurgic power of certain natural objects over some persons. The
biblical scholar Kitto confesses that the moon exerted a strange
influence on his mind, stirring his devotional nature, and he owns that
it would not have been hard for him to join the worshippers of the
goddess of the night. Wilhelm von Humboldt in one of his odes refers to
similar feelings excited in him by the gloom and murmur of groves. The
sacred poets and the religious arts generally acknowledge this
_fascination_, as it has been called, which certain phenomena have for
religious temperaments.

The explanation which suggests itself is that of individual and
ancestral association. In the case of Kitto it was probably the latter.
His sensitively religious nature experienced in gazing at the moon an
impression inherited from some remote ancestor who had actually made it
the object of ardent worship. The study of the laws of inherited memory,
so successfully pursued of late by Professor Laycock, take away anything
eccentric about this explanation, though I scarcely expect it will be
received by one unacquainted with those laws.

The emotional aspect of religion is not exhausted by the varieties of
fear and hope and love. Wonder, awe, admiration, the æsthetic emotions,
in fact all the active principles of man’s mental economy are at times
excited and directed by the thought of supernatural power. Some have
attempted to trace the religious sentiment exclusively to one or the
other of these. But they are all incidental and subsidiary emotions.

Certain mental diseases, by abnormally stimulating the emotions,
predispose strongly to religious fervor. Epilepsy is one of these, and
in Swedenborg and Mohammed, both epileptics, we see distinguished
examples of religious mystics, who, no doubt honestly, accepted the
visions which accompanied their disease as revelations from another
world. Very many epileptics are subject to such delusions, and their
insanity is usually of a religious character.

On the other hand, devotional excitement is apt to bring about mental
alienation. Every violent revival has left after it a small crop of
religious melancholies and lunatics. Competent authorities state that in
modern communities religious insanity is most frequent in those sects
who are given to emotional forms of religion, the Methodists and
Baptists for example; whereas it is least known among Roman Catholics,
where doubt and anxiety are at once allayed by an infallible referee,
and among the Quakers, where enthusiasm is discouraged and with whom the
restraint of emotion is a part of discipline.[76-1] Authoritative
assurance in many disturbed conditions of mind is sufficient to relieve
the mental tension and restore health.

If, by what has been said, it is clear that the religious sentiment has
its origin in a wish, it is equally clear that not every wish is
concerned in it. The objects which a man can attain by his own unaided
efforts, are not those which he makes the subjects of his prayers; nor
are the periodic and regular occurrences in nature, how impressive they
may be, much thought of in devotional moods. The moment that an event is
recognized to be under fixed law, it is seen to be inappropriate to seek
by supplication to alter it. No devotee, acquainted with the theory of
the tides, would, like Canute the King, think of staying their waves
with words. Eclipses and comets, once matters of superstitious terror,
have been entirely shorn of this attribute by astronomical discovery.
Even real and tragic misfortunes, if believed to be such as flow from
fixed law, and especially if they can be predicted sometime before they
arrive, do not excite religious feeling. As Bishop Hall quaintly
observes, referring to a curious medieval superstition: “Crosses, after
the nature of the cockatrice, die if they be foreseen.”

Only when the event suggests the direct action of _mind_, of some free
intelligence, is it possible for the religious sentiment to throw around
it the aureole of sanctity. Obviously when natural law was little known,
this included vastly more occurrences than civilized men now think of
holding to be of religious import. Hence the objective and material form
of religion is always fostered by ignorance, and this is the form which
prevails exclusively in uncultivated societies.

The manifestations of motion which the child first notices, or which the
savage chiefly observes, relate to himself. They are associated with the
individuals around him who minister to his wants; the gratification of
these depend on the volitions of others. As he grows in strength he
learns to supply his own wants, and to make good his own volitions as
against those of his fellows. But he soon learns that many events occur
to thwart him, out of connection with any known individual, and these
of a dreadful nature, hurricanes and floods, hunger, sickness and death.
These pursue him everywhere, foiling his plans, and frustrating his
hopes. It is not the show of power, the manifestations of might, that he
cares for in these events, but that they touch _him_, that they spoil
_his_ projects, and render vain _his_ desires; _this_ forces him to cast
about for some means to protect himself against them.

In accordance with the teaching of his experience, and true moreover to
the laws of mind, he refers them, collectively, to a mental source, to a
vague individuality. This loose, undefined conception of an unknown
volition or power forms the earliest notion of Deity. It is hardly
associated with personality, yet it is broadly separated from the human
and the known. In the languages of savage tribes, as I have elsewhere
remarked, “a word is usually found comprehending all manifestations of
the unseen world, yet conveying no sense of personal unity.”[78-1]

By some means to guard against this undefined marplot to the
accomplishment of his wishes, is the object of his religion. Its
primitive forms are therefore defensive and conciliatory. The hopes of
the savage extend little beyond the reach of his own arm, and the tenor
of his prayers is that the gods be neuter. If they do not interfere he
can take care of himself. His religion is a sort of assurance of life.

Not only the religion of the savage, but every religion is this and not
much but this. With nobler associations and purer conceptions of life,
the religious sentiment ever contains these same elements and depends
upon them for its vigor and growth. It everywhere springs from _a desire
whose fruition depends upon unknown power_. To give the religious wish a
definition in the technic of psychology, I define it as: _Expectant
Attention, directed toward an event not under known control, with a
concomitant idea of Cause or Power_.

Three elements are embraced in this definition, a wish, an idea of
power, ignorance of the nature of that power. The first term prompts the
hope, the third suggests the fear, and the second creates the
personality, which we see set forth in every religious system. Without
these three, religion as dogma becomes impossible.

If a man wishes for nothing, neither the continuance of present comforts
nor future blessings, why need he care for the gods? Who can hurt him,
so long as he stays in his frame of mind? He may well shake off all
religions and every fear, for he is stronger than God, and the universe
holds nothing worth his effort to get. This was the doctrine taught by
Buddha Sakyanuni, a philosopher opposed to every form of religion, but
who is the reputed founder of the most numerous sect now on the globe.
He sought to free the minds of his day from the burden of the Brahmanic
ritual, by cultivating a frame of mind beyond desire or admiration, and
hence beyond the need of a creed.

The second element, the idea of power, is an intellectual abstraction.
Its character is fluctuating. At first it is most vague, corresponding
to what in its most general sense we term “the supernatural.” Later, it
is regarded under its various exhibitions as separable phenomena, as in
polytheisms, in which must be included trinitarian systems and the
dualistic doctrine of the Parsees. But among the Egyptians, Greeks and
Aztecs, as well as in the words of Zarathustra and in the theology of
Christianity, we frequently meet with the distinct recognition of the
fundamental unity of all power. At core, all religions have seeds of
monotheism. When we generalize the current concepts of motion or force
beyond individual displays and relative measures of quantity, we
recognize their qualitative identity, and appreciate the logical unity
under which we must give them abstract expression. This is the process,
often unconscious, which has carried most original thinkers to
monotheistic doctrines, no matter whence they started.

The idea of power controlling the unknown would of itself have been of
no interest to man had he not assumed certain relations to exist between
him and it on the one hand, and it and things on the other. A
dispassionate inquiry disproves entirely the view maintained by various
modern writers, prominently by Bain, Spencer and Darwin, that the
contemplation of power or majesty in external nature prompts of itself
the religious sentiment, or could have been its historical origin. Such
a view overlooks the most essential because the personal factor of
religion--the wish. Far more correct are the words of David Hume, in the
last century, by which he closes his admirable _Natural History of
Religions_: “We may conclude, therefore, that in all nations the first
ideas of religion arose not from a contemplation of the works of nature,
but from a concern with regard to the events of life, and from the
incessant hopes and fears which actuate the human mind.” A century
before him Hobbes had written in his terse way: “The natural seed of
religion lies in these four things: the fear of spirits, ignorance of
secondary causes, the conciliation of those we fear, and the assumption
of accidents for omens.”[81-1] The sentiment of religion is in its
origin and nature purely personal and subjective. The aspect of power
would never have led man to worship, unless he had assumed certain
relations between the unseen author or authors of that power and
himself. What these assumptions were, I shall discuss in the next
chapter.

Finally, as has so often been remarked in a flippant and contemptuous
way,[82-1] which the fact when rightly understood nowise justifies,
religion cannot exist without the aid of ignorance. It is really and
truly the mother of devotion. The sentiment of religious fear does not
apply to a _known_ power--to the movement of an opposing army, or the
action of gravity in an avalanche for example. The prayer which under
such circumstances is offered, is directed to an unknown intelligence,
supposed to control the visible forces. As science--which is the
knowledge of physical laws--extends, the object of prayer becomes more
and more intangible and remote. What we formerly feared, we learn to
govern. No one would pray God to avert the thunderbolt, if lightning
rods invariably protected houses. The Swiss clergy opposed the system of
insuring growing crops because it made their parishioners indifferent to
prayers for the harvest. With increasing knowledge and the security
which it brings, religious terror lessens, and the wants which excite
the sentiment of devotion diminish in number and change in character.

This is apt to cast general discredit on religion. When we make the
discovery that so many events which excited religious apprehension in
the minds of our forefathers are governed by inflexible laws which we
know all about, we not only smile in pity at their superstitions, but
make the mental inference that the diminished emotion of this kind we
yet experience is equally groundless. If at the bottom of all displays
of power lies a physical necessity, our qualms are folly. Therefore, to
the pious soul which still finds the bulk of its religious aspirations
and experiences in the regions of the emotions and sensations, the
progress of science seems and really does threaten its cherished
convictions. The audacious mind of man robs the gods of power when he
can shield himself from their anger. The much-talked-of conflict between
religion and science is no fiction; it exists, and is bound to go on,
and religion will ever get the worst of it until it learns that the
wishes to which it is its proper place to minister are not those for
pleasure and prosperity, not for abundant harvests and seasonable
showers, not success in battle and public health, not preservation from
danger and safety on journeys, not much of anything that is spoken of
in litanies and books of devotion.

Let a person who still clings to this form of religion imagine that
science had reached perfection in the arts of life; that by skilled
adaptations of machinery, accidents by sea and land were quite avoided;
that observation and experience had taught to foresee with certainty and
to protect effectively against all meteoric disturbances; that a
perfected government insured safety of person and property; that a
consummate agriculture rendered want and poverty unknown; that a
developed hygiene completely guarded against disease; and that a
painless extinction of life in advanced age could surely be calculated
upon; let him imagine this, and then ask himself what purpose religion
would subserve in such a state of things? For whatever would occupy it
then--if it could exist at all--should _alone_ occupy it now.


FOOTNOTES:

[49-1] _Address to the Clergy_, pp. 42, 43, 67, 106, etc.

[49-2] E. von Hardenberg [Novalis], _Werke_, s. 364.

[50-1] _Treatises Devotional and Practical_, p. 188. London, 1836.

[50-2] In Aramaic _dachla_ means either a god or fear. The Arabic Allah
and the Hebrew Eloah are by some traced to a common root, signifying to
tremble, to show fear, though the more usual derivation is from one
meaning to be strong.

[51-1] “Wen die Hoffnung, den hat auch die Furcht verlassen.” Arthur
Schopenhauer, _Parerga und Paralipomena_. Bd. ii. s. 474.

[52-1] Alexander Bain, _On the Study of Character_, p. 128. See also his
remarks in his work, _The Emotions and the Will_, p. 84, and in his
notes to James Mill’s _Analysis of the Mind_, vol. i., pp. 124-125.

[53-1] Wilhelm von Humboldt’s _Gesammelte Werke_, Bd. vii., s. 62.

[53-2] De Senancourt, _Obermann_, Lettre xli.

[54-1] _Elements of Medical Psychology_, p. 331.

[56-1] Lessing’s _Gesammelte Werke_. B. ii. s. 443 (Leipzig, 1855).

[57-1] See Exodus, xxiii. 12; Psalms, lv. 6; Isaiah, xxx. 15; Jeremiah,
vi. 16; Hebrews, v. 9. So St. Augustine: “et nos post opera nostra
sabbato vitæ eternæ requiescamus in te.” _Confessionum Lib._ xiii. cap.
36.

[59-1] “Filioli, diligite alterutrum.” This is the “testamentum
Johannis,” as recorded from tradition by St. Jerome in his notes to the
Epistle to the Galatians.

[59-2] Alexander Bain, _The Senses and the Intellect_, Chap. I.

[60-1] _A Christian Directory._ Part I. Chap. III.

[60-2] “The very nature of affection, the idea itself, necessarily
implies resting in its object as an end.” _Fifteen Sermons by Joseph
Butler, late Lord Bishop of Durham_, Preface, and p. 147 (London, 1841).

[61-1] Dr. J. Milner Fothergill, _Journal of Mental Science_, Oct. 1874,
p. 198.

[62-1] The most recent work on the topic is that of Messrs. Westropp and
Wake, _The Influence of the Phallic Idea on the Religions of Antiquity_,
London, 1874.

[63-1] Schoolcraft’s _History and Statistics of the Indian Tribes_, Vol.
iv. p. 224.

[63-2] Richardson, _Arctic Expedition_, p. 412.

[63-3] Most physicians have occasion to notice the almost entire loss in
modern life of the instinctive knowledge of the sex relation. Sir James
Paget has lately treated of the subject in one of his _Clinical
Lectures_ (London, 1875).

[64-1] Dr. J. P. Catlow, _Principles of Aesthetic Medicine_, p. 112.
This thoughtful though obscure writer has received little recognition
even in the circle of professional readers.

[66-1] This is probably what was condemned in Deuteronomy xxii. 5, and
Romans, i. 26.

[66-2] “The worship of Siva is too severe, too stern for the softer
emotions of love, and all his temples are quite free from any allusions
to it.”--Ferguson, _Tree and Serpent Worship_, p. 71.

[67-1] W. von Humboldt, in his admirable essay _Ueber die Männliche und
Weibliche Form_ (_Werke, Bd. I._). Elsewhere he adds: “In der Natur des
Gœttlichen strebt alles der Reinheit und Vollkommenheit des
Gattungsbegriff entgegen.”

[68-1] I have collected the Haitian myths, chiefly from the manuscript
_Historia Apologetica de las Indias Occidentales_ of Las Casas, in an
essay published in 1871, _The Arawack Language of Guiana in its
Linguistic and Ethnological Relations_.

[71-1] _The Koran_, Suras,[TN-5] cxii., lxii., and especially xix.

[73-1] _Elements of Medical Psychology_, p. 281.

[73-2] J. Thompson Dickson, _The Science and Practice of Medicine in
relation to Mind_, p. 383 (New York, 1874).

[76-1] Dr. Joseph Williams, _Insanity, its Causes, Prevention and Cure_,
pp. 68, 69; Dr. A. L. Wigan, _The Duality of the Mind_, p. 437.

[78-1] _The Myths of the New World, a Treatise on the Symbolism and
Mythology of the Red Race of America_, p. 145.

[81-1] _Leviathan, De Homine_, cap. xii.

[82-1] For instance, of later writers from whom we might expect better
things, Arthur Schopenhauer. He says in his _Parerga_ (Bd. ii. s. 290):
“Ein gewisser Grad allgemeiner Unwissenheit ist die Bedingung aller
Religionen;” a correct remark, and equally correct of the pursuit of
science and philosophy. But the ignorance which is the condition of such
pursuit is not a part of science or philosophy, and no more is it of
religion.



THE RATIONAL POSTULATES OF THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT.


SUMMARY.

     Religion often considered merely an affair of the feelings. On the
     contrary, it must assume at least three premises in reason, its
     “rational postulates.”

     I. There is Order in things.

     The religious wish involves the idea of cause. This idea not
     exhausted by uniformity of sequence, but by quantitative relation,
     that is, Order as opposed to Chance. Both science and religion
     assume order in things; but the latter includes the Will of God in
     this order, while the former rejects it.

     II. This order is one of Intelligence.

     The order is assumed to be a comprehensible one, whether it be of
     law wholly or of volition also.

     III. All Intelligence is one in kind.

     This postulate indispensable to religion, although it has been
     attacked by religious as well as irreligious philosophers. Its
     decision must rest on the absoluteness of the formal laws of
     thought. The theory that these are products of natural selections
     disproved by showing, (1) that they hold true throughout the
     material universe, and (2) that they do not depend on it for their
     verity. Reason sees beyond phenomena, but descries nothing alien to
     itself.

     The formal laws of reason are purposive. They therefore afford a
     presumption of a moral government of the Universe, and point to an
     Intelligence fulfilling an end through the order in physical laws.
     Such an assumption, common to all historic religions, is thus
     justified by induction.



CHAPTER III.

THE RATIONAL POSTULATES OF THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT.


In philosophical discussions of religion as well as in popular
exhortations upon it, too exclusive stress has been laid upon its
emotional elements. “It is,” says Professor Bain, “an affair of the
feelings.”[87-1] “The essence of religion,” observes John Stuart Mill,
“is the strong and earnest direction of the emotions and desires towards
an ideal object.” “It must be allowed,” says Dr. Mansel,[87-2] “that it
is not through reasoning that men obtain their first intimation of their
relation to a deity.” In writers and preachers of the semi-mystical
school, which embraces most of the ardent revivalists of the day, we
constantly hear the “feeling of dependence” quoted as the radical
element of religious thought.[87-3] In America Theodore Parker, and in
Germany Schleiermacher, were brilliant exponents of this doctrine. To
the latter the philosopher Hegel replied that if religion is a matter of
feeling, an affectionate dog is the best Christian.

This answer was not flippant, but founded on the true and only worthy
conception of the religious sentiment. We have passed in review the
emotions which form a part of it, and recognize their power. But neither
these nor any other mere emotions, desires or feelings can explain even
the lowest religion. It depends for its existence on the essential
nature of reason. We cannot at all allow, as Dr. Mansel asks of us, that
man’s first intimations of Deity came in any other way than as one of
the ripest fruits of reason. Were such the case, we should certainly
find traces of them among brutes and idiots, which we do not. The slight
signs of religious actions thought to have been noticed by some in the
lower animals, by Sir John Lubbock in ants, and by Charles Darwin in
dogs, if authenticated, would vindicate for these species a much closer
mental kinship to man than we have yet supposed.

If we dispassionately analyze any religion whatever, paying less
attention to what its professed teachers say it is, than to what the
mass of the votaries believe it to be, we shall see that every form of
adoration unconsciously assumes certain premises in reason, which give
impulse and character to its emotional and active manifestations. They
are its data or axioms, or, as I shall call them, its “rational
postulates.” They can, I believe, be reduced to three, but not to a
lesser number.

Before the religious feeling acquires the distinctness of a notion and
urges to conscious action, it must assume at least these three
postulates, and without them it cannot rise into cognition. These, their
necessary character and their relations, I shall set forth in this
chapter.

They are as follows:--

    I. There is Order in things.
   II. This order is one of Intelligence.
  III. All Intelligence is one in kind.

I. The conscious or unconscious purpose of the religious sentiment, as
I have shown in the last chapter, is the _fruition of a wish_, the
success of which depends upon unknown power. The votary asks help where
he cannot help himself. He expects it through an exertion of power,
through an efficient cause. Obviously therefore, he is acting on the
logical idea of Causality. This underlies and is essential to the
simplest prayer. He extends it, moreover, out of the limits of
experience into the regions of hypothesis. He has carried the analogy
of observation into the realm of abstract conceptions. No matter if he
does believe that the will of God is the efficient cause. Perhaps he is
right; at any rate he cannot be denied the privilege of regarding
volition as a co-operating cause. Limited at first to the transactions
which most concerned men, the conception of order as a divine act
extended itself to the known universe. Herodotus derives the Greek word
for God θεος from a root which gives the meaning “to set in order,” and
the Scandinavians gave the same sense to their word, _Regin_.[90-1]
Thus the abstract idea of cause or power is a postulate of all
religious thought. Let us examine its meaning.

Every reader, the least versed in the history of speculative thought for
the last hundred years, knows how long and violent the discussions have
been of the relations of “cause and effect.” Startled by the criticisms
of Hume, Kant sought to elude them by distinguishing between two spheres
of thought, the understanding and the reason. Sir William Hamilton at
first included the “principle of sufficient reason’[TN-6] in the laws of
thought, but subsequently rejected it as pertaining to judgments, and
therefore material, not formal. Schopenhauer claimed to have traced it
to a fourfold root, and Mill with most of the current English schools,
Bain, Austin, Spencer, &c., maintained that it meant nothing but
“uniformity of sequence.”

It would be vain to touch upon a discussion so extended as this. In the
first chapter I have remarked that the idea of cause does not enter into
the conceptions of pure logic or thought. It is, as Hamilton saw,
material. I shall only pause to show what is meant by the term “cause”
in the physical sciences. When one event follows another, time after
time, we have “uniformity of sequence.” Suppose the constitution of the
race were so happy that we slept at night only, and always awoke a few
moments before sunrise. Such a sequence quite without exception, should,
if uniform experience is the source of the idea of cause, justly lead to
the opinion that the sun rises because man awakes. As we know this
conclusion would be erroneous, some other element beside sequence must
complete a real cause. If now, it were shown that the relation of cause
to effect which we actually entertain and cannot help entertaining is in
some instances flatly contrary to all experience, then we must
acknowledge that the idea of cause asks to confirm it something quite
independent of experience, that is abstract. But such examples are
common. We never saw two objects continue to approach without meeting;
but we are constrained to believe that lines of certain descriptions can
forever approach and never meet.

The uniformity of sequence is, in fact, in the physical sciences never
assumed to express the relation of cause and effect, until the
connection between the antecedent and consequent can be set forth
abstractly in mathematical formulæ. The sequence of the planetary
motions was discovered by Kepler, but it was reserved for Newton to
prove the theoretical necessity of this motion and establish its
mathematical relations. The sequence of sensations to impressions is
well known, but the law of the sequence remains the desideratum in
psychology.[92-1]

Science, therefore, has been correctly defined as “the knowledge of
system.” Its aim is to ascertain the laws of phenomena, to define the
“order in things.” Its fundamental postulate is that order exists, that
all things are “lapped in universal law.” It acknowledges no exception,
and it considers that all law is capable of final expression in
quantity, in mathematical symbols. It is the manifest of reason, “whose
unceasing endeavor is to banish the idea of Chance.”[93-1]

We thus see that its postulate is the same as that of the religious
sentiment. Wherein then do they differ? Not in the recognition of
chance. Accident, chance, does not exist for the religious sense in any
stage of its growth. Everywhere religion proclaims in the words of
Dante:--

              “le cose tutte quante,
    Hann’ ordine tra loro;”

everywhere in the more optimistic faiths it holds this order, in the
words of St. Augustine, to be one “most fair, of excellent
things.”[93-2]

What we call “the element of chance” is in its scientific sense that of
which we do not know the law; while to the untutored religious mind it
is the manifestation of divine will. The Kamschatkan, when his boat is
lost in the storm, attributes it to the vengeance of a god angered
because he scraped the snow from his shoes with a knife, instead of
using a piece of wood; if a Dakota has bad luck in hunting, he says it
is caused by his wife stepping over a bone and thus irritating a
spirit. The idea of cause, the sentiment of order, is as strong as ever,
but it differs from that admitted by science in recognizing as a
possible efficient motor that which is incapable of mathematical
expression, namely, a volition, a will. _Voluntas Dei asylum
ignorantiæ_, is no unkind description of such an opinion.

So long as this recognition is essential to the life of a religious
system, just so long it will and must be in conflict with science, with
every prospect of the latter gaining the victory. Is the belief in
volition as an efficient cause indispensable to the religious sentiment
in general? For this vital question we are not yet prepared, but must
first consider the remaining rational postulates it assumes. The second
is

II. This order is one of intelligence.

By this is not meant that the order is one of _an_ Intelligence, but
simply that the order which exists in things is conformable to man’s
thinking power,--that if he knows the course of events he can appreciate
their relations,--that facts can be subsumed under thoughts. Whatever
scheme of order there were, would be nothing to him unless it were
conformable to his intellectual functions. It could not form the matter
of his thought.[94-1]

Science, which deals in the first instance exclusively with phenomena,
also assumes this postulate. It recognizes that when the formal laws,
which it is its mission to define, are examined apart from their
material expression, when they are emptied of their phenomenal contents,
they show themselves to be logical constructions, reasoned truths, in
other words, forms of intelligence. The votary who assumes the order one
of volition alone, or volition with physical necessity, still assumes
the volitions are as comprehensible as are his own; that they are
purposive; that the order, even if not clear to him, is both real and
reasonable. Were it not so, did he believe that the gods carried out
their schemes through a series of caprices inconceivable to
intelligence, through absolute chance, insane caprice, or blind fate, he
could neither see in occurrences the signs of divine rule, nor hope for
aid in obtaining his wishes. In fact, order is only conceivable to man
at all as an order conformable to his own intelligence.

This second postulate embraces what has been recently called the
“Principle of continuity,” indispensable to sane thought of any kind. A
late work defines it as “the trust that the Supreme Governor of the
Universe will not put us to permanent intellectual confusion.”[96-1]
Looked at closely, it is the identification of order with reason.

The third and final postulate of the religious sentiment is that

III. All intelligence is one in kind.

Religion demands that there be a truth which is absolutely true, and
that there be a goodness which is universally and eternally good. Each
system claims the possession, and generally the exclusive possession,
of this goodness and truth. They are right in maintaining these views,
for unless such is the case, unless there is an absolute truth,
cognizable to man, yet not transcended by any divine intelligence, all
possible religion becomes mere child’s play, and its professed
interpretation of mysteries but trickery.

The Grecian sophists used to meet the demonstrations of the
mathematicians and philosophers by conceding that they did indeed set
forth the truth, so far as man’s intelligence goes, but that to the
intelligence of other beings--a bat or an angel, for example--they might
not hold good at all; that there is a different truth for different
intelligences; that the intelligence makes the truth; and that as for
the absolutely true, true to every intelligence, there is no such thing.
They acknowledged that a simple syllogism, constructed on these
premises, made their own assertions partake of the doubtful character
that was by them ascribed to other human knowledge. But this they
gracefully accepted as the inevitable conclusion of reasoning. Their
position is defended to-day by the advocates of “positivism,” who
maintain the relativity of all truth.

But such a conclusion is wholly incompatible with the religious mind. It
must assume that there are some common truths, true infinitely, and
therefore, that in all intelligence there is an essential unity of kind.
“This postulation,” says a close thinker, “is the very foundation and
essence of religion. Destroy it, and you destroy the very possibility of
religion.”[97-1]

Clear as this would seem to be to any reflective mind, yet, strange to
say, it is to-day the current fashion for religious teachers to deny it.
Scared by a phantasm of their own creation, they have deserted the only
position in which it is possible to defend religion at all. Afraid of
the accusation that they make God like man, they have removed Him
beyond the pale of all intelligence, and logically, therefore,
annihilated every conception of Him.

Teachers and preachers do not tire of telling their followers that God
is incomprehensible; that his ways are past finding out; that he is the
Unconditioned, the Infinite, the Unknowable. They really mean that he is
another order of intelligence, which, to quote a famous comparison of
Spinoza, has the same name as ours, but is no more one with it than the
dog is one with his namesake, the dog-star!

They are eagerly seconded in this position by a school of writers who
distinctly see where such a doctrine leads, and who do not hesitate to
carry it home. Mr. Mill is right in his scorn for those who “erect the
incurable limitations of the human conceptive faculty into laws of the
outward universe,” if there are such limitations. And Mr. Spencer is
justified in condemning “the transcendent audacity which passes current
as piety,” if his definition of the underlying verity of religion is
admitted--that it is “the consciousness of an inscrutable power which,
in its nature, transcends intuition, and is beyond imagination.”[98-1]
They are but following the orthodox Sir William Hamilton, who says:
“Creation must be thought as the incomprehensible evolution of power
into energy.”[99-1] We are to think that which by the terms of the
proposition is unthinkable! A most wise master!

Let it be noted that the expressions such as inscrutable,
incomprehensible, unknowable, etc., which such writers use, are avowedly
not limited to man’s intelligence in its present state of cultivation,
but are applied to his _kind_ of intelligence, no matter how far
trained. They mean that the inscrutable, etc., is not merely not _at
present_ open to man’s observation--that were a truism--but that it
cannot be subsumed under the laws of his reasoning powers. In other
words, they deny that all intelligence is one in _kind_. Some accept
this fully, and concede that what are called the laws of order, as shown
by science, are only matters of experience, true here and now, not
necessarily and absolutely true.

This is a consistent inference, and applies, of course, with equal force
to all moral laws and religious dogmas.

The arguments brought against such opinions have been various. The old
reply to the sophists has been dressed in modern garb, and it has been
repeatedly put that if no statement is really true, then this one, to
wit “no statement is really true,” also is not true; and if that is the
case, then there are statements which really are true. The theory of
evolution as a dogma has been attacked by its own maxims; in asserting
that all knowledge is imperfect, it calls its own verity into question.
If all truth is relative, then this at least is absolutely true.

It has also been noted that all such words as incomprehensible,
unconditioned, infinite, unknowable, are in their nature privatives,
they are not a thought but are only one element of a thought. As has
been shown in the first chapter, every thought is made up of a positive
and a privative, and it is absurd and unnatural to separate the one from
the other. The concept man, regarded as a division of the higher concept
animal, is made up of man and not-man. In so far as other animals are
included under the term “not-man” they do not come into intelligent
cognition; but that does not mean that they cannot do so. So “the
unconditioned” is really a part of the thought of “the conditioned,” the
“unknowable” a part of the “knowable,” the “infinite” a part of the
thought of the “finite.” Under material images these privatives, as
such, cannot be expressed; but in pure thought which deals with symbols
and types alone, they can be.

But if the abstract laws of thought themselves are confined in the
limits of one kind of intelligence, then we cannot take an appeal to
them to attack this sophism. Therefore on maintaining their integrity
the discussion must finally rest. This has been fully recognized by
thinkers, one of whom has not long since earnestly called attention to
“the urgent necessity of fathoming the psychical mechanism on which
rests all our intellectual life.”[101-1]

In this endeavor the attempt has been made to show that the logical laws
are derived in accordance with the general theory of evolution from the
natural or material laws of thinking. These, as I have previously
remarked, are those of the association of ideas, and come under the
general heads of contiguity and similarity. Such combinations are
independent of the aim of the logical laws, which is _correct_ thinking.
A German writer, Dr. Windelband, has therefore argued that as
experience, strengthened by hereditary transmission, continued to show
that the particular combinations which are in accord with what we call
the laws of thought furnished the best, that is, the most useful
results, they were adopted in preference to others and finally assumed
as the criteria of truth.

Of course it follows from this that as these laws are merely the outcome
of human experience they can have no validity outside of it.
Consequently, adds the writer I have quoted, just as the study of optics
teaches us that the human eye yields a very different picture of the
external world from that given by the eye of a fly, for instance, and
as each of them is equally far from the reality, so the truth which our
intelligence enables us to reach is not less remote from that which is
the absolutely true. He considers that this is proven by the very nature
of the “law of contradiction” itself, which must be inconsistent with
the character of absolute thought. For in the latter, positive truth
only can exist, therefore no negation, and no law about the relation of
affirmative to negative.[102-1]

The latter criticism assumes that negation is of the nature of error, a
mistake drawn from the use of the negative in applied logic. For in
formal logic, whether as quantity or quality, that is, in pure
mathematics or abstract thought, the reasoning is just as correct when
negatives are employed as when positives, as I have remarked before. The
other criticism is more important, for if we can reach the conclusion
that the real laws of the universe are other than as we understand them,
then our intelligence is not of a kind to represent them.

Such an opinion can be refuted directly. The laws which we profess to
know are as operative in the remotest nebulae as in the planet we
inhabit. It is altogether likely that countless forms of intelligent
beings inhabit the starry wastes, receiving through sensory apparatus
widely different from ours very diverse impressions of the external
world. All this we know, but we also know that if those beings have
defined the laws which underlie phenomena, they have found them to be
the same that we have; for were they in the least different, in
principle or application, they could not furnish the means, as those we
know do, of predicting the recurrence of the celestial motions with
unfailing accuracy. Therefore the demonstrations of pure mathematics,
such as the relation of an absciss to an ordinate, or of the diameter to
the circumference, must be universally true; and hence the logical laws
which are the ultimate criteria of these truths must also be true to
every intelligence, real or possible.[103-1]

Another and forcible reply to these objections is that the laws which
our intelligence has reached and recognizes as universally true are not
only not derived from experience, but are in direct opposition to and
are constantly contradicted by it. Neither sense nor imagination has
ever portrayed a perfect circle in which the diameter bore to the
circumference the exact proportion which we know it does bear. The very
fact that we have learned that our senses are wholly untrustworthy, and
that experience is always fallacious, shows that we have tests of truth
depending on some other faculty. “Each series of connected facts in
nature furnishes the intimation of an order more exact than that which
it directly manifests.”[104-1]

But, it has been urged, granted that we have reached something like
positive knowledge of those laws which are the _order_ of the
manifestation of phenomena, the real Inscrutable, the mysterious
Unknowable, escapes us still; this is the _nature_ of phenomenal
manifestation, “the secret of the Power manifested in Existence.”[104-2]
At this point the physicist trips and falls; and here, too, the
metaphysician stumbles.

I have already spoken of our aptitude to be frightened by a chimera, and
deceived by such words as “nature” and “cause.” Laws and rules, by which
we express Order, are restrictive only in a condition of intelligence
short of completeness, only therefore in that province of thought which
concerns itself with material facts. The musician is not fettered by the
laws of harmony, but only by those of discord. The truly virtuous man,
remarks Aristotle, never has occasion to practise self-denial. Hence,
mathematically, “the theory of the intellectual action involves the
recognition of a sphere of thought from which all limits are
withdrawn.”[105-1] True freedom, real being, is only possible when law
as such is inexistent. Only the lawless makes the law. When the idea of
the laws of order thus disappears in that of free function consistent
with perfect order, when, as Kant expresses it, we ascend from the
contemplation of things acting according to law, to action according to
the representation of law,[105-2] we can, without audacity, believe that
we have penetrated the secret of existence, that we have reached the
limits of explanation and found one wholly satisfying the highest
reason. Intelligence, not apart from phenomena, but parallel with them,
not under law, but through perfect harmony above it, _power one with
being_, the will which is “the essence of reason,” the emanant cause of
phenomena, immanent only by the number of its relations we have not
learned, this is the satisfying and exhaustive solution. The folly lies
not in claiming reason as the absolute, but in assuming that the
absolute is beyond and against reason.

There is nothing new in this explanation; and it is none the worse for
being old. If Anaxagoras discerned it dimly, and many a one since him
has spoken of Intelligence, Reason, Nous or Logos as the constructive
factor of the creation; if “all the riper religions of the Orient
assumed as their fundamental principle that unless the Highest
penetrates all parts of the Universe, and itself conditions whatever is
conditioned, no universal order, no Kosmos, no real existence is
thinkable;”[106-1] such inadequate expressions should never obscure the
truth that reason in its loftiest flights descries nothing nobler than
itself.

The relative, as its name implies, for ever presupposes and points to
the absolute, the latter an Intelligence also, not one that renders ours
futile and fallacious, but one that imparts to ours the capacity we
possess of reaching eternal and ubiquitous truth. The severest
mathematical reasoning forces us to this conclusion, and we can dispense
with speculation about it.

Only on the principle which here receives its proof, that man has
something in him of God, that the norm of the true holds good
throughout, can he know or care anything about divinity. “It takes a
god to discern a god,” profoundly wrote Novalis.

When a religion teaches what reason disclaims, not through lack of
testimony but through a denial of the rights of reason, then that
religion wars against itself and will fall. Faith is not the acceptance
of what intelligence rejects, but a suspension of judgment for want of
evidence. A thoroughly religious mind will rejoice when its faith is
shaken with doubt; for the doubt indicates increased light rendering
perceptible some possible error not before seen.

Least of all should a believer in a divine revelation deny the oneness
of intelligence. For if he is right, then the revealed truth he talks
about is but relative and partial, and those inspired men who claimed
for it the sign manual of the Absolute were fools, insane or liars.

If the various arguments I have rehearsed indicate conclusively that in
the laws of thought we have the norms of absolute truth--and skepticism
on this point can be skepticism and not belief only by virtue of the
very law which it doubts--some important corollaries present themselves.

Regarding in the first place the nature of these laws, we find them very
different from those of physical necessity--those which are called the
laws of nature. The latter are authoritative, they are never means to an
end, they admit no exception, they leave no room for error. Not so with
the laws of reasoning. Man far more frequently disregards than obeys
them; they leave a wide field for fallacy. Wherein then lies that
theoretical necessity which is the essence of law? The answer is that
the laws of reasoning are _purposive_ only, they are regulative, not
constitutive, and their theoretical necessity lies in the end, the
result of reasoning, that is, in the knowing, in the recognition of
truth. They are what the Germans call _Zweckgesetze_.[108-1]

But in mathematical reasoning and in the processes of physical nature
the absolute character of the laws which prevail depends for its final
necessity on their consistency, their entire correspondence with the
laws of right reasoning. Applied to them the purposive character of the
laws is not seen, for their ends are fulfilled. We are brought,
therefore, to the momentous conclusion that the manifestation of Order,
whether in material or mental processes, “affords a presumption, not
measurable indeed but real, of the fulfilment of an end or
purpose;”[108-1][TN-7] and this purpose, one which has other objects in
view than the continuance of physical processes. The history of mind,
from protoplasmic sensation upward, must be a progression, whose end
will be worth more than was its beginning, a process, which has for its
purpose the satisfaction of the laws of mind. This is nothing else than
correct thinking, the attainment of truth.

But this conclusion, reached by a searching criticism of the validity of
scientific laws, is precisely that which is the postulate of all
developed creeds. “The faith of all historical religions,” says Bunsen,
“starts from the assumption of a universal moral order, in which the
good is alone the true, and the true is the only good.”[109-1]

The purposive nature of the processes of thought, as well as the manner
in which they govern the mind, is illustrated by the history of man. His
actions, whether as an individual or as a nation, are guided by ideas
not derived from the outer world, for they do not correspond to actual
objects, but from mental pictures of things as he wants them to exist.
These are his hopes, his wishes, his ideals; they are the more potent,
and prompt to more vigorous action, the clearer they are to his mind.
Even when he is unconscious of them, they exist as tendencies, or
instincts, inherited often from some remote ancestor, perhaps even the
heir-loom of a stage of lower life, for they occur where sensation
alone is present, and are an important factor in general evolution.

It is usually conceded that this theory of organic development very much
attenuates the evidence of what is known as the argument from design in
nature, by which the existence of an intelligent Creator is sought to be
shown. If the distinction between the formal laws of mathematics, which
are those of nature, and logic, which are those of mind, be fully
understood, no one will seek such an argument in the former but in the
latter only, for they alone, as I have shown, are purposive, and they
are wholly so. The only God that nature points to is an adamantine Fate.

If religion has indeed the object which Bunsen assigns it, physical
phenomena cannot concern it. Its votaries should not look to change the
operation of natural laws by incantations, prayers or miracles.

Whenever in the material world there presents itself a seeming
confusion, it is certain to turn out but an incompleteness of our
observation, and on closer inspection it resolves itself into some
higher scheme of Order. This is not so in the realm of thought. Wrong
thinking never can become right thinking. A profound writer has said:
“One explanation only of these facts can be given, viz., that the
distinction between _true_ and _false_, between _correct_ and
_incorrect_, exists in the processes of the intellect, but not in the
region of a physical necessity.”[111-1] A religion therefore which
claims as its mission the discovery of the true and its identification
with the good,--in other words the persuading man that he should always
act in accordance with the dictates of right reasoning--should be
addressed primarily to the intellect.

As man can attain to certain truths which are without any mixture of
fallacy, which when once he comprehends them he can never any more
doubt, and which though thus absolute do not fetter his intellect but
first give it the use of all its powers to the extent of those truths;
so he can conceive of an Intelligence in which all truth is thus without
taint of error. Not only is such an Intelligence conceivable, it is
necessary to conceive it, in order to complete the scientific induction
of “a sphere of thought from which all limits are withdrawn,” forced
upon us by the demonstrations of the exact sciences.[111-2]

Thus do we reach the foundation for the faith in a moral government of
the world, which it has been the uniform characteristic of religions to
assert; but a government, as thus analytically reached, not easily
corresponding with that which popular religion speaks of. Such feeble
sentiments as mercy, benevolence and effusive love, scarcely find place
in this conception of the source of universal order. In this cosmical
dust-cloud we inhabit, whose each speck is a sun, man’s destiny plays a
microscopic part. The vexed question whether ours is the best possible
or the worst possible world, drops into startling insignificance.
Religion has taught the abnegation of self; science is first to teach
the humiliation of the race. Not for man’s behoof were created the
greater and the lesser lights, not for his deeds will the sun grow dark
or the stars fall, not with any reference to his pains or pleasure was
this universe spread upon the night. That Intelligence which pursues its
own ends in this All, which sees from first to last the chain of causes
which mould human action, measures not its purposes by man’s halting
sensations. Such an Intelligence is fitly described by the
philosopher-poet as one,

    “Wo die Gerechtigkeit so Wurzel schläget,
    Und Schuld und Unschuld so erhaben wäget
    Dass sie vertritt die Stelle aller Güte.”[112-1]

In the scheme of the universe, pain and pleasure, truth and error, has
each its fitness, and no single thought or act can be judged apart from
all others that ever have been and ever shall be.

Such was the power that was contemplated by the Hebrew prophet, one from
which all evil things and all good things come, and who disposes them
all to the fulfilment of a final purpose:

     “I am the Lord and there is none else. I form the light and create
     darkness; I make peace and create evil.”

     “I am God and there is none like me, declaring the end from the
     beginning, and from ancient times the things which are not yet
     done.”[113-1]

In a similar strain the ancient Aryan sang:--

    “This do I ask thee, tell me, O Ahura!
    Who is he, working good, made the light and also darkness?
    Who is he, working good, made the sleep as well as waking?
    Who the night, as well as noon and the morning?”

And the reply came:

     “Know also this, O pure Zarathustra: through my wisdom, through
     which was the beginning of the world, so also its end shall
     be.”[113-2]

Or as the Arabian apostle wrote, inspired by the same idea:--

    “Praise the name of thy Lord, the Most High,
    Who hath created and balanced all things,
    Who hath fixed their destinies and guideth them.”

     “The Revelation of this book is from the Mighty, the Wise. We have
     not created the Heavens and the Earth and all that is between them
     otherwise than with a purpose and for a settled term.”[113-3]


FOOTNOTES:

[87-1] _The Emotions and Will_, p. 594. So Professor Tyndall speaks of
confining the religious sentiment to “the region of emotion, which is
its proper sphere.”

[87-2] H. L. Mansel, _The Limits of Religious Thought_, p. 115. (Boston,
1859.)

[87-3] “The _one relation_ which is the ground of all true religion is a
total dependence upon God.” William Law, _Address to the Clergy_, p. 12.
“The essential germ of the religious life is concentrated in the
absolute feeling of dependence on infinite power.” J. D. Morell, _The
Philosophy of Religion_, p. 94. (New York, 1849.) This accomplished
author, well known for his _History of Philosophy_, is the most able
English exponent of the religious views of Schleiermacher and Jacobi.

[90-1] “Weil sie die Welt _eingerichtet_ haben.” Creuzer, _Symbolik und
Mythologie der alten Vœlker_, Bd. I. s. 169. It is not of any importance
that Herodotus’ etymology is incorrect: what I wish to show is that he
and his contemporaries entertained the conception of the gods as the
authors of order.

[92-1] This distinction is well set forth by A. von Humboldt, _Kosmos_,
p. 388 (Phila., 1869).

[93-1] “Ueberall den Zufall zu verbannen, zu verhindern, dass in dem
Gebiete des Beobachtens und Denkens er nicht zu herrschen scheine, im
Gebiete des Handelns nicht herrsche, ist das Streben der Vernunft.”
Wilhelm von Humboldt, _Ueber Goethe’s Hermann und Dorothea_, iv.

[93-2] “Iste ordo pulcherrimus rerum valde bonarum.” _Confessiones_,
Lib. xiii. cap. xxxv.

[94-1] “The notion of a God is not contained in the mere notion of
Cause, that is the notion of Fate or Power. To this must be added
Intelligence,” etc. Sir Wm. Hamilton, _Lectures on Metaphysics_, Lecture
ii.

[96-1] _The Unseen Universe_, p. 60.

[97-1] James Frederick Ferrier, _Lectures on Greek Philosophy_, p. 13
(Edinburgh, 1866). On a question growing directly out of this, to wit,
the relative character of good and evil, Mr. J. S. Mill expresses
himself thus: “My opinion of this doctrine is, that it is beyond all
others which now engage speculative minds, the decisive one between
moral good and evil for the Christian world.” _Examination of Hamilton’s
Philosophy_, p. 90.

[98-1] _First Principles_, pp. 108, 127.

[99-1] _Lectures on Metaphysics_, Vol. I., p. 690.

[101-1] Professor Steinthal in the _Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie_.

[102-1] Dr. W. Windelband, _Die Erkenntnissiehre unter dem
voelkerpsychologischem Gesichtspunkte_, in the _Zeitschrift für
Völkerpsychologie_, 1874, _Bd. VIII._ S. 165 _sqq._

[103-1] I would ask the reader willing to pursue this reasoning further,
to peruse the charming essay of Oersted, entitled _Das ganze Dasein Ein
Vernunftreich_.

[104-1] Geo. Boole, _An Investigation of the Laws of Thought_, p. 407.

[104-2] Herbert Spencer, _First Principles_, p. 112. Spinoza’s famous
proposition, previously quoted, _Unaquæque res quantum in se est, in suo
esse perseverare conatur_, (_Ethices, Pars III., Prop. VI._,) expresses
also the ultimate of modern investigation. A recent critic considers it
is a fallacy because the conatus “surreptitiously implies a sense of
effort or struggle for existence,” whereas the logical concept of a res
does not involve effort (S. N. Hodgson, _The Theory of Practice_, vol.
I. pp. 134-6, London, 1870.) The answer is that identity implies
continuance. In organic life we have the fact of nutrition, a function
whose duty is to supply waste, and hence offer direct opposition to
perturbing forces.

[105-1] Geo. Boole, _The Laws of Thought_, p. 419.

[105-2] Kant, _The Metaphysic of Ethics_, p. 23 (Eng. Trans. London,
1869.)

[106-1] Creuzer, _Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Voelker_, Bd. I. s.
291.

[108-1] See this distinction between physical and thought laws fully set
forth by Prof. Boole in the appendix to _The Laws of Thought_, and by
Dr. Windelband, _Zeitschrift für Voelkerpsychologie_, Bd. VIII., s. 165
sqq.

[108-2] Geo. Boole, u. s. p. 399.

[109-1] “Der Glaube aller geschichtlichen Religionen geht aus von dieser
Annahme einer sittlichen, in Gott bewusst lebenden, Weltordnung, wonach
das Gute das allein Wahre ist, and das Wahre das allein Gute.” _Gott in
der Geschichte_, Bd. I. s. xl. Leipzig, 1857.

[111-1] Geo. Boole, _Laws of Thought_, p. 410.

[111-2] The latest researches in natural science confirm the expressions
of W. von Humboldt: “Das Streben der Natur ist auf etwas Unbeschränktes
gerichtet.” “Die Natur mit endlichen Mitteln unendliche Zwecke
verfolgt.” _Ueber den Geschlechtsunterschied, etc._

[112-1] Wilhelm von Humboldt, _Sonnette_, “Höchste Gerechtigkeit.”

[113-1] Isaiah, xlv. 7; xlvi. 10.

[113-2] _Khordah--avesta_, _Ormazd--Yasht_, 38, and _Yaçna_, 42.

[113-3] _The Koran_, Suras lxxxvii., xlvi.



THE PRAYER AND ITS ANSWER.


SUMMARY.

     Religion starts with a Prayer. This is an appeal to the unknown,
     and is indispensable in religious thought. The apparent exceptions
     of Buddhism and Confucianism.

     All prayers relate to the fulfilment of a wish. At first its direct
     object is alone thought of. This so frequently fails that the
     indirect object rises into view. This stated to be the increase of
     the pleasurable emotions. The inadequacy of this statement.

     The answers to prayer. As a form of Expectant Attention, it exerts
     much subjective power. Can it influence external phenomena? It is
     possible. Deeply religious minds reject both these answers,
     however. They claim the objective answer to be Inspiration. All
     religions unite in this claim.

     Inspirations have been contradictory. That is genuine which teaches
     truths which cannot be doubted concerning duty and deity. A certain
     mental condition favors the attainment of such truths. This
     simulated in religious entheasm. Examples. It is allied to the most
     intense intellectual action, but its steps remain unknown.



CHAPTER IV.

THE PRAYER AND ITS ANSWER.


The foregoing analysis of the religious sentiment results in finding it,
even in its simplest forms, a product of complicated reasoning forced
into action by some of the strongest emotions, and maintaining its
position indefeasibly through the limitations of the intellect. This it
does, however, with a certain nobleness, for while it wraps the unknown
in sacred mystery, it proclaims man one in nature with the Highest, by
birthright a son of the gods, of an intelligence akin to theirs, and
less than they only in degree. Through thus presenting at once his
strength and his feebleness, his grandeur and his degradation, religion
goes beyond philosophy or utility in suggesting motives for exertion,
stimuli to labor. This phase of it will now occupy us.

The Religious Sentiment manifests itself in thought, in word and in act
through the respective media of the Prayer, the Myth and the Cult. The
first embraces the personal relations of the individual to the object
of his worship, the second expresses the opinions current in a community
about the nature and actions of that object, the last includes the
symbols and ceremonies under and by which it is represented and
propitiated.

The first has the logical priority. Man cares nothing for God--_can_
care nothing for him practically--except as an aid to the fulfilment of
his desires, the satisfaction of his wants, as the “ground of his
hopes.” The root of the religious sentiment, I have said, is “a wish
whose fruition depends upon unknown power.” An appeal for aid to this
unknown power, is the first form of prayer in its religious sense. It is
not merely “the soul’s sincere desire.” This may well be and well
directed, and yet not religious, as the devotion of the mathematician to
the solution of an important problem. With the desire must be the
earnest appeal to the unknown. A theological dictionary I have at hand
almost correctly defines it as “a petition for spiritual or physical
benefits which [we believe] we cannot obtain without divine
co-operation.” The words in brackets must be inserted to complete the
definition.

It need not be expressed in language. Rousseau, in his _Confessions_,
tells of a bishop who, in visiting his diocese, came across an old woman
who was troubled because she could frame no prayer in words, but only
cry, “Oh!” “Good mother,” said the wise bishop, “Pray always so. Your
prayers are better than ours.”[119-1]

A petition for assistance is, as I have said, one of its first forms;
but not its only one. The assistance asked in simple prayers is often
nothing more than the neutrality of the gods, their non-interference;
“no preventing Providence,” as the expression is in our popular
religion. Prayers of fear are of this kind:

    “And they say, God be merciful,
    Who ne’er said, God be praised.”

Some of the Egyptian formulæ even threaten the gods if they prevent
success.[119-2] The wish accomplished, the prayer may be one of
gratitude, often enough of that kind described by La Rochefoucauld, of
which a prominent element is “a lively sense of possible favors to
come.”[119-3]

Or again, self-abasement being so natural a form of flattery that to
call ourselves “obedient and humble servants” of others, has passed
into one of the commonest forms of address, many prayers are made up of
similar expressions of humility and contrition, the votary calling
himself a “miserable sinner” and a “vile worm,” and on the other hand
magnifying his Lord as greater than all other gods, mighty and helpful
to those who assiduously worship him.

In some form or other, as of petition, gratitude or contrition, uttered
in words or confined to the aspirations of the soul, prayer is a
necessary factor in the religious life. It always has been, and it must
be present.

The exceptions which may be taken to this in religious systems are
chiefly two, those supposed to have been founded by Buddha Sakyamuni and
Confucius.

It is undoubtedly correct that Buddha discouraged prayer. He permitted
it at best in the inferior grades of discipleship. For himself, and all
who reached his stage of culture, he pronounced it futile.

But Buddha did not set out to teach a religion, but rather the inutility
of all creeds. He struck shrewdly at the root of them by placing the
highest condition of man in the total extinguishment of desire. He bound
the gods in fetters by establishing a theory of causal connection (the
twelve Nidana) which does away with the necessity of ruling powers. He
then swept both matter and spirit into unreality by establishing the
canon of ignorance, that the highest knowledge is to know that nothing
is; that there is neither being nor not-being, nor yet the becoming.
After this wholesale iconoclasm the only possible object in life for the
sage is the negative one of avoiding pain, which though as unreal as
anything else, interferes with his meditations on its unreality. To this
negative end the only aid he can expect is from other sages who have
gone farther in self-cultivation. Self, therefore, is the first, the
collective body of sages is the second, and the written instruction of
Buddha is the third; and these three are the only sources to which the
consistent Buddhist looks for aid.

This was Buddha’s teaching. But it is not Buddhism as professed by the
hundreds of millions in Ceylon, in Thibet, China, Japan, and Siberia,
who claim Sakyamuni under his names Buddha, the awakened, Tathagata,
thus gone, or gone before, Siddartha, the accomplisher of the wish, and
threescore and ten others of like purport, as their inspired teacher.
Millions of saints, holy men, Buddhas, they believe, are ready to aid in
every way the true believer, and incessant, constant prayer is, they
maintain, the one efficient means to insure this aid. Repetition,
dinning the divinities and wearying them into answering, is their
theory. Therefore they will repeat a short formula of four words (_om
mani padme hum_--Om! the jewel in the lotus, amen) thousands of times a
day; or, as they correctly think it not a whit more mechanical, they
write it a million times on strips of paper, fasten it around a
cylinder, attach this to a water or a wind-wheel, and thus sleeping or
waking, at home or abroad, keep up a steady fire of prayer at the gods,
which finally, they sanguinely hope, will bring them to submission.

No sect has such entire confidence in the power of prayer as the
Buddhists. The most pious Mahometan or Christian does not approach their
faith. After all is said and done, the latter has room to doubt the
efficacy of his prayer. It may be refused. Not so the Buddhists. They
have a syllogism which covers the case completely, as follows:--

    All things are in the power of the gods.
    The gods are in the power of prayer.
    Prayer is at the will of the saint.
    Therefore all things are in the power of the saint.

The only reason that any prayer fails is that it is not repeated often
enough--a statement difficult to refute.

The case with Confucius was different.[122-1] No speculative dreamer,
but a practical man, bent on improving his fellows by teaching them
self-reliance, industry, honesty, good feeling and the attainment of
material comfort, he did not see in the religious systems and doctrines
of his time any assistance to these ends. Therefore, like Socrates and
many other men of ancient and modern times, without actually condemning
the faiths around him, or absolutely neglecting some external respect to
their usages, he taught his followers to turn away from religious topics
and occupy themselves with subjects of immediate utility. For questions
of duty, man, he taught, has a sufficient guide within himself. “What
you do not like,” he said, “when done to yourself, do not to others.”
The wishes, he adds, should be limited to the attainable; thus their
disappointment can be avoided by a just estimate of one’s own powers. He
used to compare a wise man to an archer: “When the archer misses the
target, he seeks for the cause of his failure within himself.” He did
not like to talk about spiritual beings. When asked whether the dead had
knowledge, he replied: “There is no present urgency about the matter. If
they have, you will know it for yourself in time.” He did not deny the
existence of unseen powers; on the contrary, he said: “The _kwei shin_
(the most general term for supernatural beings) enter into all things,
and there is nothing without them;” but he added, “We look for them and
do not see them; we listen, but do not hear them.” In speaking of deity,
he dropped the personal syllable (_te_) and only spoke of heaven, in the
indefinite sense. Such was this extraordinary man. The utilitarian
theory, what we call the common sense view of life, was never better
taught. But his doctrine is not a religion. His followers erect temples,
and from filial respect pay the usual honors to their ancestors, as
Confucius himself did. But they ignore religious observances, strictly
so-called.

These examples, therefore, do not at all conflict with the general
statement that no religion can exist without prayer. On the contrary, it
is the native expression of the religious sentiment, that to which we
must look for its most hidden meaning. The thoughtful Novalis, whose
meditations are so rich in reflections on the religious nature of man,
well said: “Prayer is to religion what thought is to philosophy. To pray
is to make religion. The religious sense prays with like necessity that
the reason thinks.”

Whatever the form of the prayer, it has direct or indirect relation to
the accomplishment of a wish. David prays to the Lord as the one who
“satisfies the desire of every living thing,” who “will fulfil the
desire of them that fear him,” and it is with the like faith that the
heart of every votary is stirred when he approaches in prayer the
divinity he adores.

Widely various are the things wished for. Their character is the test of
religions. In primitive faiths and in uncultivated minds, prayers are
confined to the nearest material advantages; they are directed to the
attainment of food, of victory in combat, of safety in danger, of
personal prosperity. They may all be summed up in a line of one which
occurs in the Rig Veda: “O Lord Varuna! Grant that we may prosper in
_getting and keeping_!”

Beyond this point of “getting and keeping,” few primitive prayers take
us. Those of the American Indians, as I have elsewhere shown, remained
in this stage among the savage tribes, and rose above it only in the
civilized states of Mexico and Peru. Prayers for health, for plenteous
harvests, for safe voyages and the like are of this nature, though from
their familiarity to us they seem less crude than the simple-hearted
petition of the old Aryan, which I have quoted. They mean the same.

The more thoughtful votaries of the higher forms of religion have,
however, frequently drawn the distinction between the direct and
indirect fulfilment of the wish. An abundant harvest, restoration to
health, or a victory in battle is the object of our hopes, not in
itself, but for its results upon ourselves. These, in their final
expression, can mean nothing else than agreeable sensations and
pleasurable emotions. These, therefore, are the real though indirect
objects of such prayers; often unconsciously so, because the ordinary
devotee has little capacity and less inclination to analyze the nature
of his religious feelings.

A recent writer, Mr. Hodgson, has said: “The real answer to prayer is
the increase of the joyful emotions, the decrease of the painful
ones.”[126-1] It would seem a simpler plan to make this directly the
purport of our petitions; but to the modern mind this naked simplicity
would be distasteful.

Nor is the ordinary supplicant willing to look so far. The direct, not
the indirect object of the wish, is what he wants. The lazzarone of
Naples prays to his patron saint to favor his choice of a lottery
ticket; if it turn out an unlucky number he will take the little leaden
image of the saint from his pocket, revile it, spit on it, and trample
it in the mud. Another man, when his prayer for success is not followed
by victory, sends gifts to the church, flogs himself in public and
fasts. Xenophon gives us in his _Economics_ the prayer of a pious
Athenian of his time, in the person of Ischomachus. “I seek to obtain,”
says the latter, “from the gods by just prayers, strength and health,
the respect of the community, the love of my friends, an honorable
termination to my combats, and riches, the fruit of honest industry.”
Xenophon evidently considered these appropriate objects for prayer, and
from the petitions in many recent manuals of devotion, I should suppose
most Christians of to-day would not see in them anything inappropriate.

In spite of the effort that has been made by Professor Creuzer[127-1] to
show that the classical nations rose to a higher use of prayer, one
which made spiritual growth in the better sense of the phrase its main
end; I think such instances were confined to single philosophers and
poets. They do not represent the prayers of the average votary. Then and
now he, as a rule, has little or no idea of any other answer to his
prayer than the attainment of his wish.

As such petitions, however, more frequently fail than succeed in their
direct object, and as the alternative of considering them impotent is
not open to the votary, some other explanation of their failure was
taught in very early day. At first, it was that the god was angered, and
refused the petition out of revenge. Later, the indirect purpose of such
a prayer asserted itself more clearly, and aided by a nobler conception
of Divinity, suggested that the refusal of the lower is a preparation
for a higher reward. Children, in well-ordered households, are
frequently refused by parents who love them well; this present analogy
was early seized to explain the failure of prayer. Unquestioning
submission to the divine will was inculcated. Some even went so far as
to think it improper to define any wish at all, and subsumed all prayer
under the one formula, “Thy will be done.” Such was the teaching of St.
Augustine, whose favorite prayer was _Da quod jubes, et jube quod vis_,
a phrase much criticized by Pelagius and others of his time as too
quietistic.[128-1] The usual Christian doctrine of resignation proceeds
in theory to this extent. Such a notion of the purpose of prayer leads
to a cheerful acceptance of the effects of physical laws, effects which
an enlightened religious mind never asks to be altered in its favor, for
the promises and aims of religion should be wholly outside the arena of
their operation. The ideal prayer has quite other objects than to work
material changes.

To say, as does Mr. Hodgson, that its aim is the increase of the joyful
emotions is far from sufficient. The same may be said of most human
effort, the effort to make money, for instance. The indirect object of
money-making is also the increase of the agreeable feelings. The
similarity of purpose might lead to a belief that the aims of religion
and business are identical.

Before we can fully decide on what, in the specifically religious sense
of the word, is the answer to prayer, we should inquire as a matter of
fact what effect it actually exerts, and to do this we should understand
what it is as a psychological process. The reply to this is that prayer,
in its psychological definition, is a form of Expectant Attention. It is
always urged by religious teachers that it must be very earnest and
continuous to be successful. “Importunity is of the essence of
successful prayer,” says Canon Liddon in a recent sermon. In the New
Testament it is likened to a constant knocking at a door; and by a
curious parity of thought the Chinese character for prayer is composed
of the signs for a spirit and an axe or hammer.[129-1] We must “keep
hammering” as a colloquial phrase has it. Strong belief is also
required. To pray with faith we must expect with confidence.

Now that such a condition of expectant attention, prolonged and earnest,
will have a very powerful subjective effect, no one acquainted with the
functions of the human economy can doubt. “Any state of the body,”
observes the physiologist Müller, “expected with certain confidence is
very prone to ensue.” A pill of bread-crumbs, which the patient supposes
to contain a powerful cathartic, will often produce copious evacuations.
No one who studies the history of medicine can question that scrofulous
swellings and ulcerations were cured by the royal touch, that paralytics
have regained the use of their limbs by touching the relics of the
saints, and that in many countries beside Judea the laying on of hands
and the words of a holy man have made issues to heal and the lame to
walk.[130-1]

Such effects are not disputed by physicians as probable results of
prayer or faith considered as expectant attention. The stigmata of St.
Francis d’Assisi are more than paralleled by those of Louise Lateau, now
living at Bois d’Haine in Belgium, whose hands, feet and side bleed
every Friday like those of Christ on the cross. A commission of medical
men after the most careful precautions against deception attributed
these hemorrhages to the effect of expectation (prayer) vastly
increased in force by repetition.[131-1] If human testimony is worth
anything, the cures of Porte Royale are not open to dispute.[131-2]

The mental consequences of a prayerful condition of mind are to inspire
patience under afflictions, hope in adversity, courage in the presence
of danger and a calm confidence in the face of death itself. How
mightily such influences have worked in history is shown in every
religious war, and in the lives of the martyrs of all faiths. It matters
not what they believed, so only that they believed it thoroughly, and
the gates of Hades could not prevail against them.

No one will question that these various and momentous results are the
legitimate effects or answers to prayers. But whether prayer can
influence the working of the material forces external to the individual
is a disputed point. If it cannot in some way do this, prayers for rain,
for harvests, for safety at sea, for restoration to health, for delivery
from grasshoppers[131-3] and pestilence, whether for our own benefit or
others, are hardly worth reciting. A physicist expresses the one opinion
in these words: “Science asserts that without a disturbance of natural
law, quite as serious as the stoppage of an eclipse or the rolling of
the St. Lawrence up the Falls of Niagara, no act of humiliation,
individual or national, could call one shower from heaven or deflect
toward us a single beam of the sun.” “Assuming the efficacy of free
prayer to produce changes in external nature, it necessarily follows
that natural laws are more or less at the mercy of man’s
volition.”[132-1]

This authoritative statement, much discussed at the time it was
published, does not in fact express the assertion of science. To the
scientific apprehension, man’s volitions and his prayers are states of
emotion, inseparably connected in their manifestations with changes in
his cerebral structure, with relative elevation of temperature, and with
the elimination of oxygen and phosphorus, in other words with
chemico-vital phenomena and the transformation of force. Science also
adds that there is a constant interaction of all force, and it is not
prepared to deny that the force expended by a national or individual
prayer may become a co-operating cause in the material change asked
for, even if the latter be a rain shower. This would not affect a
natural law but only its operation, and that much every act of our life
does. The fact that persistency and earnestness in prayer--_i. e._, the
increased development of force--add to its efficacy, would accord with
such a scientific view. It would further be very materially corroborated
by the accepted doctrine of the orders of force. A unit of electrical or
magnetic force equals many of the force of gravity; a number of
electrical units are required to make one of chemical force; and
chemico-vital or “metabolic” force is still higher; whereas thought
regarded as a form of force must be vastly beyond this again.

To render a loadstone, which lifts filings of iron by its magnetic
force, capable of doing the same by the force of gravity, its density
would have to be increased more than a thousand million times. All
forces differ in like degree. Professor Faraday calculated that the
force latent in the chemical composition of one drop of water, equals
that manifested in an average thunderstorm. In our limited knowledge of
the relation of forces therefore, a scientific man is rash to deny that
the chemico-vital forces set loose by an earnest prayer may affect the
operation of natural laws outside the body as they confessedly do in
it.

Experience alone can decide such a question, and I for one, from theory
and from observation, believe in the material efficacy of prayer. In a
certain percentage of the cases where the wished-for material result
followed, the physical force of the active cerebral action has seemed to
me a co-operating cause. A physician can observe this to best advantage
in the sickness of children, as they are free from subjective bias,
their constitutions are delicately susceptible, and the prayers for them
are in their immediate vicinity and very earnest.

But this admission after all is a barren one to the truly devout mind.
The effect gained does not depend on the God to whom the prayer is
offered. Blind physical laws bring it about, and any event that comes
through their compulsive force is gelded of its power to fecundate the
germs of the better religious life. The knowledge of this would paralyze
faith.

Further to attenuate the value of my admission, another consideration
arises, this time prompted not by speculative criticism, but by
reverence itself. A scholar whom I have already quoted justly observes:
“Whenever we prefer a request as a means of obtaining what we wish for,
we are not praying in the religious sense of the term.”[134-1] Or, as a
recent theologian puts the same idea: “Every true prayer prays to be
refused, if the granting of it would be hurtful to us or subversive of
God’s glory.”[135-1] The real answer to prayer can never be an event or
occurrence. Only in moments of spiritual weakness and obscured vision,
when governed by his emotions or sensations, will the reverent soul ask
a definite transaction, a modification in the operation of natural laws,
still less such vulgar objects as victory, wealth or health.

The prayer of faith finds its only true objective answer in itself, in
accepting whatever befalls as the revelation of the will of God as to
what is best. This temper of mind as the real meaning of prayer was
beautifully set forth by St. John: “If we know that he hear us,
whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of
him.”[135-2]

But this solution of the problem does not go far enough. Prayer is
claimed to have a positive effect on the mind other than resignation.
Joyful emotions are its fruits, _spiritual enlightenment_ its reward.
These are more than cheerful acquiescence, nor can the latter come from
objects of sense.

The most eminent teachers agree in banishing material pleasure and
prosperity from holy desires. They are of one mind in warning against
what the world and the flesh can offer, against the pursuit of riches,
power and lust. Many counsel poverty and deliberate renunciation of all
such things. Nor is the happiness they talk of that which the pursuit of
intellectual truth brings. This, indeed, confers joy, of which whoever
has tasted will not hastily return to the fleshpots of the senses, but
it is easy to see that it is not religious. Prayer and veneration have
not a part in it. Great joy is likewise given by the exercise of the
imagination when stirred by art in some of its varied forms, and a joy
more nearly allied to religion than is that of scientific investigation.
But the esthetic emotions are well defined, and are distinctly apart
from those concerned with the religious sentiment. Their most complete
satisfaction rather excludes than encourages pious meditations. That
which prayer ought to seek outside of itself is different from all of
these, its dower must be divine.

We need not look long for it. Though hidden from the wise, it has ever
been familiar to the unlearned. Man has never been in doubt as to what
it is. He has been only too willing to believe he has received it.

In barbarism and civilization, in the old and new worlds, the final
answer to prayer has ever been acknowledged to be _inspiration_,
revelation, the thought of God made clear to the mind of man, the
mystical hypostasis through which the ideas of the human coincide with
those of universal Intelligence. This is what the Pythian priestess, the
Siberian shaman, the Roman sibyl, the Voluspan prophetess, the Indian
medicine-man, all claimed in various degrees along with the Hebrew seers
and the Mahometan teacher.[137-1]

The TRUTH, the last and absolute truth, is what is everywhere recognized
as, if not the only, at least the completest, the highest answer to
prayer. “Where I found the truth, there I found my God, himself the
truth,” says St. Augustine; and in a prayer by St. Chrysostom, the
“Golden Mouth,” unsurpassed in its grand simplicity, it is said:
“Almighty Father, * * grant us in this world _knowledge of Thy truth_,
and in the world to come, life everlasting.” Never has the loftiest
purpose of prayer been more completely stated. This it was that had been
promised them by Him, to whom they looked as an Intercessor for their
petitions, who had said: “I will send unto you the Comforter. * * When
he, the Spirit of Truth, is come, he will guide you unto all truth.”

The belief that this answer is at all times attainable has always been
recognized by the Christian Church, Apostolic, Catholic, and Protestant.
Baptism was called by the Greek fathers, “enlightenment” (Φωτισμος), as
by it the believer received the spirit of truth. The Romanist, in the
dogma of infallibility, proclaims the perpetual inspiration of a living
man; the Protestant Churches in many creeds and doctrinal works extend a
substantial infallibility to all true believers, at least to the extent
that they can be inspired to recognize, if not to receive divine verity.

The Gallican Confession of Faith, adopted in 1561, rests the principal
evidence of the truth of the Scriptures on “_le témoignage et
l’intérieure persuasion du Saint Esprit_,” and the Westminster
Confession on “the inward work of the holy spirit.” The Society of
Friends maintain it as “a leading principle, that the work of the Holy
Spirit in the soul is not only immediate and direct, but perceptible;”
that it imparts truth “without any mixture of error;” and thus is
something quite distinct from conscience, which is common to the race,
while this “inward light” is given only to the favored of God.[138-1]

The non-juror, William Law, emphatically says: “The Christian that
rejects the necessity of immediate divine inspiration, pleads the whole
cause of infidelity; he has nothing to prove the goodness of his own
Christianity, but that which equally proves to the Deist the goodness of
his infidelity.”[139-1] That by prayer the path of duty will be made
clear, is a universal doctrine.

The extent to which the gift of inspiration is supposed to be granted is
largely a matter of church government. Where authority prevails, it is
apt to be confined to those in power. Where religion is regarded as
chiefly subjective and individual, it is conceded that any pious votary
may become the receptacle of such special light.

Experience, however, has too often shown that inspiration teaches such
contradictory doctrines that they are incompatible with any standard.
The indefinite splitting of Protestant sects has convinced all clear
thinkers that the claim of the early Confessions to a divinely given
power of distinguishing the true from the false has been a mistaken
supposition. As a proof to an unbeliever, such a gift could avail
nothing; and as evidence to one’s own mind, it can only be accepted by
those who deliberately shut their eyes to the innumerable contradictions
it offers.[140-1]

While, therefore, in this, if anywhere, we perceive the only at once fit
and definite answer to prayer, and find that this is acknowledged by all
faiths, from the savage to the Christian, it would seem that this answer
is a fallacious and futile one. The teachings of inspiration are
infinitely discrepant and contradictory, and often plainly world-wide
from the truth they pretend to embody. The case seems hopeless; yet, as
religion of any kind without prayer is empty, there has been a proper
unwillingness to adopt the conclusion just stated.

The distinction has been made that “the inspiration of the Christian is
altogether _subjective_, and directed to the moral improvement of the
individual,”[140-2] not to facts of history or questions of science,
even exegetic science. The term _illumination_ has been preferred for
it, and while it is still defined as “a spiritual intelligence which
brings truth within the range of mental apprehension by a kind of
intuition,”[141-1] this truth has reference only to immediate matters of
individual faith and practice. The Roman church allows more latitude
than this, as it sanctions revelations concerning events, but not
concerning doctrines.[141-2]

Looked at narrowly, the advantage which inspiration has been to
religions has not so much depended on what it taught, as on its strength
as a psychological motive power. As a general mental phenomenon it does
not so much concern knowledge as belief; its province is to teach faith
rather than facts. No conviction can equal that which arises from an
assertion of God directly to ourselves. The force of the argument lies
not in the question whether he did address us, but whether we believe he
did. As a stimulus to action, prayer thus rises to a prime power.

Belief is considered by Professor Bain and his school to be the ultimate
postulate, the final ground of intellection. It is of the utmost
importance, however,--and this Professor Bain fails to do--to
distinguish between two kinds of belief. There are men who believe and
others who disbelieve the Koran or the Bible; I can accept or reject
the historical existence of King Arthur or Napoleon; but, if I
understand them, I cannot disbelieve the demonstrations of Euclid, nor
the relations of subject and object, nor the formal laws of thought. No
sane man, acquainted with the properties of numbers, can believe that
twice three are ten, or that a thing can be thought as other than
itself. These truths that “we cannot help believing,” I have defined in
the first chapter as absolute truths. They do not come to us through
testimony and induction, but through a process variously called
“immediate perception,” “apprehension,” or “intuition,” a process long
known but never satisfactorily explained.

All such truths are analytic, that is, they are true, not merely for a
given time or place, but at all times and places conceivable, or, time
and space out of the question, they still remain formally true. Of
course, therefore, they cannot refer to historic occurrences nor
phenomena. The modern position, that truth lies in facts, must be
forsaken, and with the ancients, we must place it in ideas.

If we define inspiration as that condition of mind which is in the
highest degree sensitive to the presence of such truth, we have of it
the only worthy idea which it is possible to frame. The object of
scientific investigation is to reach a truth which can neither be denied
nor doubted. If religion is willing to content itself with any lower
form of truth, it cannot support its claims to respect, let alone
reverence.

It may be said that the subjects with which the religious sentiment
concerns itself are not such as are capable of this absolute expression.
This is, however, disclaimed by all great reformers, and by none more
emphatically than by him who said: “Heaven and earth shall pass away,
but my statements (λογοι) shall not pass away.” There is clear reference
here to absolute truths. If what we know of God, duty and life, is not
capable of expression except in historic narrative and synthetic terms,
the sooner we drop their consideration the better. That form sufficed
for a time, but can no longer, when a higher is generally known. As the
mathematical surpasses the historic truth, so the former is in turn
transcended by the purely logical, and in this, if anywhere, religion
must rest its claims for recognition. Here is the arena of the theology
of the future, not in the decrees of councils, nor in the records of
past time.

Inspiration, in its religious sense, we may, therefore, define to be
that condition of mind in which the truths relating to deity and duty
become in whole or in part the subjects of immediate perception.

That such a condition is possible will be granted. Every reformer who
has made a permanent betterment in the religion of his time has
possessed it in some degree. He who first conceived the Kosmos under
logical unity as an orderly whole, had it in singular power; so too had
he who looking into the mind became aware of its purposive laws which
are the everlasting warrants of duty. Some nations have possessed it in
remarkable fulness, none more so than the descendants of Abraham, from
himself, who left his kindred and his father’s house at the word of God,
through many eminent seers down to Spinoza, who likewise forsook his
tribe to obey the inspirations vouchsafed him; surpassing them all,
Jesus of Nazareth, to whose mind, as he waxed in wisdom, the truth
unfolded itself in such surpassing clearness that neither his immediate
disciples nor any generations since have fathomed all the significance
of his words.

Such minds do not need development and organic transmission of thought
to enrich their stores. We may suppose the organization of their brains
to be so perfect that their functions are always accordant with true
reasoning, so self-prompting, that a hint of the problem is all they ask
to arrive at its demonstration. Blaise Pascal, when a boy of twelve,
whose education had been carefully restrained, once asked his father
what is geometry. The latter replied that it is a method devised to draw
figures correctly, but forbade any further inquiry about it. On this
hint Pascal, by himself, unassisted, without so much as knowing the name
of a line or circle, reached in a few weeks to the demonstration of the
thirty-second problem of the first book of Euclid! Is it not possible
for a mind equally productive of religious truth to surpass with no less
ease its age on such subjects?

As what Newton so well called “patient thought,” constant application,
prolonged attention, is the means on which even great minds must rely in
order to reach the sempiternal verities of science, so earnest continued
prayer is that which all teachers prescribe as the only avenue to
inspiration in its religious sense. While this may be conceded,
collaterals of the prayer have too often been made to appear trivial and
ridiculous.

In the pursuit of inspiration the methods observed present an
interesting similarity. The votary who aspires to a communion with the
god, shuts himself out from the distraction of social intercourse and
the disturbing allurements of the senses. In the solitude of the forest
or the cell, with complete bodily inaction, he gives himself to fasting
and devotion, to a concentration of all his mind on the one object of
his wish, the expected revelation. Waking and sleeping he banishes all
other topics of thought, perhaps by an incessant repetition of a
formula, until at last the moment comes, as it surely will come in some
access of hallucination, furor or ecstasy, the unfailing accompaniments
of excessive mental strain, when the mist seems to roll away from the
mortal vision, the inimical powers which darkened the mind are baffled,
and the word of the Creator makes itself articulate to the creature.

Take any connected account of the revelation of the divine will, and
this history is substantially the same. It differs but little whether
told of Buddha Sakyamuni, the royal seer of Kapilavastu, or by Catherine
Wabose, the Chipeway squaw,[146-1] concerning the _Revelations_ of St.
Gertrude of Nivelles or of Saint Brigida, or in the homely language of
the cobbler George Fox.

For six years did Sakyamuni wander in the forest, practising the
mortifications of the flesh and combatting the temptations of the
devil,before[TN-8] the final night when, after overcoming the crowning
enticements of beauty, power and wealth, at a certain moment he became
the “awakened,” and knew himself in all his previous births, and with
that knowledge soared above the “divine illusion” of existence. In the
cave of Hari, Mohammed fasted and prayed until “the night of the divine
decisions;” then he saw the angel Gabriel approach and inspire him:

    “A revelation was revealed to him:
    One terrible in power taught it him,
    Endowed with wisdom. With firm step stood he,
    There, where the horizon is highest,
    Then came he near and nearer,
    A matter of two bowshots or closer,
    And he revealed to his servant a revelation;
    He has falsified not what he saw.”[147-1]

With not dissimilar preparation did George Fox seek the “openings” which
revealed to him the hollowness of the Christianity of his day, in
contrast to the truth he found. In his _Journal_ he records that for
months he “fasted much, walked around in solitary places, and sate in
hollow trees and lonesome places, and frequently in the night walked
mournfully about.” When the word of truth came to him it was of a
sudden, “through the immediate opening of the invisible spirit.” Then a
new life commenced for him: “Now was I come up in Spirit through the
flaming sword into the Paradise of God. All things were new: all the
creation gave another smell unto me than before.” The healing virtues of
all herbs were straightway made known to him, and the needful truths
about the kingdom of God.[147-2]

These are portraitures of the condition of _entheasm_. Its lineaments
are the same, find it where we may.

How is this similarity to be explained? Is it that this alleged
inspiration is always but the dream of a half-crazed brain? The deep and
real truths it has now and then revealed, the noble results it has
occasionally achieved, do not allow this view. A more worthy explanation
is at hand.

These preliminaries of inspiration are in fact but a parody, sometimes a
caricature, of the most intense intellectual action as shown in the
efforts of creative thought. The physiological characteristics of such
mental episodes indicate a lowering of the animal life, the respiration
is faint and slow, the pulse loses in force and frequency, the nerves of
special sense are almost inhibited, the eye is fixed and records no
impression, the ear registers no sound, necessary motions are performed
unconsciously, the condition approaches that of trance. There is also an
alarming similarity at times between the action of genius and of
madness, as is well known to alienists.

When the creative thought appears, it does so suddenly; it breaks upon
the mind when partly engaged with something else as an instantaneous
flash, apparently out of connection with previous efforts. This is the
history of all great discoveries, and it has been abundantly illustrated
from the lives of inventors, artists, poets and mathematicians. The
links of such a mental procedure we do not know. “The product of
inspiration, genius, is incomprehensible to itself. Its activity
proceeds on no beaten track, and we seek in vain to trace its footsteps.
There is no warrant for the value of its efforts. This it can alone
secure through voluntary submission to law. All its powers are centred
in the energy of production, and none is left for idle watching of the
process.”[149-1]

The prevalent theory of the day is that this mental action is one
essentially hidden from the mind itself. The name “unconscious
cerebration” has been proposed for it by Dr. Carpenter, and he has amply
and ably illustrated its peculiarities. But his theory has encountered
just criticism, and I am persuaded does not meet the requirements of the
case. Whether at such moments the mind actually receives some impulse
from without, as is the religious theory, or, as science more willingly
teaches, certain associations are more easily achieved when the mind is
partially engaged with other trains of ideas, we cannot be sure. We can
only say of it, in the words of Dr. Henry Maudsley, the result “is truly
an inspiration, coming we know not whence.” Whatever it is, we recognize
in it the original of that of which religious hallucination is the
counterfeit presentment. So similar are the processes that their
liability to be confounded has been expressly guarded against.[150-1]

The prevalence of such caricatures does not prove the absence of the
sterling article. They rather show that the mind is conscious of the
possibility of reaching a frame or mood in which it perceives what it
seeks, immediately and correctly. Buddhism distinctly asserts this to be
the condition of “the stage of intuitive insight;” and Protestant
Christianity commenced with the same opinion. Every prayer for guidance
in the path of duty assumes it. The error is in applying such a method
where it is incompatible, to facts of history and the phenomena of
physical force. Confined to the realm of ideas, to which alone the norm
of the true and untrue is applicable, there is no valid evidence
against, and many theoretical reasons for, respecting prayer as a fit
psychological preparation for those obscure and unconscious processes,
through which the mind accomplishes its best work.

The intellect, exalted by dwelling upon the sublimest subjects of
thought, warmed into highest activity by the flames of devotion,
spurning as sterile and vain the offers of time and the enticements of
sense, may certainly be then in the mood fittest to achieve its greatest
victories. But no narrowed heaven must cloud it, no man-made god
obstruct its gaze. Free from superstition and prejudice, it must be
ready to follow wherever the voice of reason shall lead it. All inspired
men have commenced by freeing themselves from inherited forms of Belief
in order that with undiverted attention they might listen to the
promptings of the divinity within their souls. One of the greatest of
them and one the most free from the charge of prejudice, has said that
to this end prayer is the means.[151-1]

He who believes that the ultimate truth is commensurate with reason,
finds no stumbling-block in the doctrine that there may be laws through
whose action inspiration is the enlightenment of mind as it exists in
man, by mind as it underlies the motions which make up matter. The truth
thus reached is not the formulæ of the Calculus, nor the verbiage of the
Dialectic, still less the events of history, but that which gives what
validity they have to all of these, and moreover imparts to the will and
the conscience their power to govern conduct.


FOOTNOTES:

[119-1] The “silent worship” of the Quakers is defended by the writers
of that sect, on the ground that prayer is “often very imperfectly
performed and sometimes materially interrupted by the use of words.”
Joseph John Gurney, _The Distinguishing Views and Practice of the
Society of Friends_, p. 300. (London, 1834.)

[119-2] Creuzer, _Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker_, Bd. I., s.
162.

[119-3] The learned Bishop Butler, author of the _Analogy of Religion_,
justly gives prominence to “our expectation of future benefits,” as a
reason for gratitude to God. _Sermons_, p. 155. (London, 1841.)

[122-1] The expressions of Confucius’ religious views may be found in
_The Doctrine of the Mean_, chaps. xiii., xvi., the _Analects_, i., 99,
100, vii., and in a few other passages of the canonical books.

[126-1] _An Inquiry into the Theory of Practice_, p. 330.

[127-1] _Symbolik und Mythologie der Alten Völker._ Bd. I., ss. 165,
sqq. One of the most favorable examples (not mentioned by Creuzer) is
the formula with which Apollonius of Tyana closed every prayer and gave
as the summary of all: “Give me, ye Gods, what I deserve”--Δοιητε μοι τα
οφειλομενα. The Christian’s comment on this would be in the words of
Hamlet’s reply to Polonius: “God’s bodkin, man! use every man after his
desert and who should ’scape whipping?”

[128-1] Aurelii Augustini, _De Dono Perseverantiæ_, cap. xx. Comte
remarks “Depuis St. Augustin toutes les âmes pures ont de plus en plus
senti, à travers l’égoisme Chrétien, que prier peut n’être pas
demander.” _Système de Politique Positive_, I., p. 260. Popular
Protestantism has retrograded in this respect.

[129-1] Plath, _Die Religion und Cultus der alten Chineser_, s. 836.
This author observes that the Chinese prayers are confined to temporal
benefits only, and are all either prayers of petition or gratitude.
Prayers of contrition are unknown.

[130-1] Numerous examples can be found in medical text books, for
instance in Dr. Tuke’s, _The Influence of the Mind on the Body_. London,
1873.

[131-1] The commission appointed by the Royal Academy of Medicine of
Belgium on Louise Lateau reported in March, 1875, and most of the
medical periodicals of that year contain abstracts of its paper.

[131-2] They may be found in the life of Pascal, written by his sister,
and in many other works of the time.

[131-3] It is worthy of note, as an exponent of the condition of
religious thought in 1875, that in May of that year the Governor of the
State of Missouri appointed by official proclamation a day of prayer to
check the advance of the grasshoppers. He should also have requested the
clergy to pronounce the ban of the Church against them, as the Bishop of
Rheims did in the ninth century.

[132-1] Tyndall, _On Prayer and Natural Law_, 1872.

[134-1] S. M. Hodgson, _An Inquiry into the Theory of Practice_, pp.
329, 330.

[135-1] The Rev. Dr. Thomas K. Conrad, _Thoughts on Prayer_, p. 54: New
York, 1875.

[135-2] I. John, v. 15. “There are millions of prayers,” says Richard
Baxter, “that will all be found answered at death and judgment, which we
know not to be answered any way but by believing it.” _A Christian
Directory_, Part II. chap. xxiii.

[137-1] “So wie das Gebet ein Hauptwurzel alter Lehre war, so war das
Deuten und Offenbaren ihre ursprüngliche Form.” Creuzer, _Symbolik und
Mythologie der alten Völker_, Bd. I., s. 10. It were more accurate to
say that divination is the answer to, rather than a form of prayer.

[138-1] Joseph John Gurney, _The Distinguishing Views and Practices of
the Society of Friends_, pp. 58, 59, 76, 78. An easy consequence of this
view was to place the decrees of the internal monitor above the written
word. This was advocated mainly by Elias Hicks, who expressed his
doctrine in the words: “As no spring can rise higher than its fountain,
so likewise the Scriptures can only direct to the fountain whence they
originated--the Spirit of Truth.” _Letters of Elias Hicks_, p. 228
(Phila., 1861).

[139-1] _Address to the Clergy_, p. 67.

[140-1] See an intelligent note on this subject in the Rev. Wm. Lee’s
work, entitled _The Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures_, pp. 44, 47
(London and New York, 1857).

[140-2] Rev. William Lee, _u. s._, p. 243.

[141-1] Blunt, _Dictionary of Doctrinal and Historical Theology_, s. v.

[141-2] There is a carefully written essay on the views of the Romish
Church on this subject, preceding _The Revelations of Saint Brigida_ (N.
Y. 1875).

[146-1] Chusco or Catherine Wabose, “the prophetess of Chegoimegon,” has
left a full and psychologically most valuable account of her
inspiration. It is published in Schoolcraft’s _History and Statistics of
the Indian Tribes_, Vol. I., p. 390, sqq.

[147-1] _The Koran_, Sura liii. This is in date one of the earliest
suras.

[147-2] _The Journal of George Fox_, pp. 59, 67, 69.

[149-1] Wilhelm von Humboldt, _Gesammelte Werke_, Bd. iv., s. 278.

[150-1] In his treatise _De Veritate_, itself the subject, as its author
thought, of a special revelation, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, gives as one
of the earmarks of a real revelation: “ut afflatum Divini numinis
sentias, ita enim internæ Facultatum circa veritatem operationes a
revelationibus externis distinguuntur.” p. 226.

[151-1] Spinoza, _Espistolæ et Responsionnes_, Ep. xxxiv.



THE MYTH AND THE MYTHICAL CYCLES.


SUMMARY.

     Myths are inspirations concerning the Unknown. Science treats them
     as apperceptions of the relations of man and nature. Moments of
     their growth, as treated by mythological science. Their similar
     forms, explained variously, the topic of the philosophy of
     mythology. The ante-mythical period. Myths have centred chiefly
     around three subjects, each giving rise to a Mythical Cycle.

     I. The Epochs of Nature.

     The idea of Time led to the myth of a creation. This starting the
     question, What was going on before creation? recourse was had to
     the myth of recurrent epochs. The last epoch gave origin to the
     Flood Myths; the coming one to that of the Day of Judgment.

     II. The Paradise lost and to be re-gained.

     To man, the past and the future are ever better than the present.
     He imagines a Golden Age in the past and believes it will return.
     The material Paradise he dreams of in his ruder conditions, becomes
     a spiritual one with intellectual advancement. The basis of this
     belief.

     III. The Hierarchy of the Gods.

     The earliest hierarchy is a dual classification of the gods into
     those who help and those who hinder the fruition of desire. Light
     and darkness typify the contrast. Divinity thus conceived under
     numerical separateness. Monotheisms do not escape this. The triune
     nature of single gods. The truly religious and only philosophic
     notion of divinity is under logical, not mathematical unity. This
     discards mythical conceptions.



CHAPTER V.

THE MYTH AND THE MYTHICAL CYCLES.


Returning again to the definition of the elemental religious
sentiment--“a Wish whose fruition depends upon unknown power”--it
enables us to class all those notions, opinions and narratives, which
constitute mythologies, creeds and dogmas, as theories respecting the
nature and action of the unknown power. Of course they are not
recognized as theories. They arise unconsciously or are received by
tradition, oral or written, and always come with the stamp of divinity
through inspiration and revelation. None but a god can tell the secrets
of the gods.

Therefore they are the most sacred of all things, and they partake of
the holiness and immutability which belong to the unknown power itself.
To misplace a vowel point in copying the sacred books was esteemed a sin
by the Rabbis, and a pious Mussulman will not employ the same pen to
copy a verse of the Koran and an ordinary letter. There are many
Christians who suppose the saying: “Heaven and earth shall pass away,
but My Words shall not pass away,” has reference to the words of the Old
and New Testament. “What shall remain to us,” asked Ananda, the disciple
of Buddha, “when thou shalt have gone hence into Nirvana?” “My Word
(_dharma_),” replied the Master. Names thus came to be as holy as the
objects to which they referred. So sacred was that of Jehovah to the
Israelites that its original sound was finally lost. Such views are
consistent enough to the Buddhist, who, assuming all existence to be but
imaginary, justly infers that the name is full as much as the object.

The science of mythology has made long strides in the last half century.
It has left far behind it the old euphemeristic view that the myth is a
distorted historical tradition, as well as the theories not long since
in vogue, that it was a system of natural philosophy, a device of shrewd
rulers, or as Bacon thought, a series of “instructive fables.” The
primitive form of the myth is now recognized to be made up from the
notions which man gains of the manifestations of force in external
nature, in their supposed relations to himself. In technical language it
may be defined as _the apperception of man and nature under synthetic
conceptions_.[156-1]

This primitive form undergoes numerous changes, to trace and illustrate
which, has been the special task assumed by the many recent writers on
mythology. In some instances these changes are owing to the blending of
the myth with traditions of facts, forming a quasi-historical narrative,
the _saga;_ in others, elaborated by a poetic fancy and enriched by the
imagination, it becomes a fairy tale, the _märchen_. Again, the myth
being a product of creative thought, existing in words only, as language
changes, it alters through forgetfulness of the earlier meanings of
words, through similarities in sounds deceiving the ear, or through a
confusion of the literal with the metaphorical signification of the same
word. The character of languages also favors or retards such changes,
pliable and easily modified ones, such as those of the American Indians,
and in a less degree those of the Aryan nations, favoring a developed
mythology, while rigid and monosyllabic ones, as the Chinese and Semitic
types, offer fewer facilities to such variations. Furthermore, tribal or
national history, the peculiar difficulties which retard the growth of
a community, and the geographical and climatic character of its
surroundings, give prominence to certain features in its mythology, and
to the absence of others. Myths originally diverse are blended, either
unconsciously, as that of the Roman Saturn with the Greek Cronus; or
consciously, as when the medieval missionaries transferred the deeds of
the German gods to Christian saints. Lastly, the prevailing temperament
of a nation, its psychology, gives a strong color to its mythical
conceptions, and imprints upon them the national peculiarities.

The judicious student of mythology must carefully weigh all these
formative agents, and assign each its value. They are all present in
every mythology, but in varying force. His object is accomplished when
he can point out the causal relation between the various features of a
myth and these governing agencies.

Such is the science of mythology. The philosophy of mythology undertakes
to set forth the unities of form which exist in various myths, and
putting aside whatever of this uniformity is explainable historically,
proposes to illustrate from what remains the intellectual need myths
were unconsciously framed to gratify, to measure their success in this
attempt, and if they have not been wholly successful, to point out why
and in what respect they have failed. In a study preliminary to the
present one, I have attempted to apply the rules of mythological science
to the limited area of the native American race; in the present chapter
I shall deal mainly with the philosophy of mythology.

The objection may be urged at starting that there is no such unity of
form in myths as the philosophy of mythology assumes; that if it
appears, it is always explainable historically.

A little investigation sets this objection aside. Certain features must
be common to all myths. A divinity must appear in them and his doings
with men must be recorded. A reasonable being can hardly think at all
without asking himself, “Whence come I, my fellows, and these things
which I see? And what will become of us all?” So some myth is sure to be
created at an early stage of thought which the parent can tell the
child, the wise man his disciple, containing responses to such
questions.

But this reasoning from probability is needless, for the similarity of
mythical tales in very distant nations, where no hypothesis of ancient
intercourse is justified, is one of the best ascertained and most
striking discoveries of modern mythological investigation.[159-1] The
general character of “solar myths” is familiar to most readers, and the
persistency with which they have been applied to the explanation of
generally received historical facts, as well as to the familiar fairy
tales of childhood, has been pushed so far as to become the subject of
satire and caricature. The myths of the Dawn have been so frequently
brought to public notice in the popular writings of Professor Max
Müller, that their general distribution may be taken as well known. The
same may be said of the storm myths. Wilhelm von Humboldt, who thought
deeply on the religious nature of man, said early in this century:
“Wholly similar myths can very readily arise in different localities,
each independent of the others.”[160-1]

This similarity is in a measure owing to the similar impressions which
the same phenomenon, the sunrise or the thunder-storm for instance,
makes on the mind--and to this extent the science of mythology is
adequate to its explanation. But that it falls short is so generally
acknowledged, that various other explanations have been offered.

These may be classed as the skeptical explanation, which claims that the
likeness of the myths is vastly exaggerated and much more the work of
the scholar at his desk than of the honest worshipper; the historical
explanation, which suggests unrecorded proselytisms, forgotten
communications and the possible original unity of widely separated
nations; the theological explanations, often discrepant, one suggesting
caricatures of the sacred narrative inspired by the Devil, another
reminiscences of a primeval inspiration, and a third the unconscious
testimony of heathendom to orthodoxy;[161-1] and lastly the metaphysical
explanation, which seems at present to be the fashionable one, expressed
nearly alike by Steinthal and Max Müller, which cuts the knot by
crediting man with “an innate consciousness of the Absolute,” or as
Renan puts it, “a profound instinct of deity.”

The philosophy of mythology, differing from all these, finding beyond
question similarities which history cannot unriddle, interprets them by
no incomprehensible assumption, but by the identity of the laws of
thought acting on similar impressions under the guidance of known
categories of thought. Nor does it stop here, but proceeds to appraise
these results by the general scheme of truth and error. It asks for
what psychological purpose man has so universally imagined for himself
gods--pure creations of his fancy;--whether that purpose can now or will
ultimately be better attained by an exercise of his intellect more in
accordance with the laws of right reasoning; and thus seeking to define
the genuine food of the religious desire, estimates the quality and
value of each mythological system by the nearness of its approach to
this standard.

The philosophy of mythology, starting with the wish or prayer as the
unit of religious thought, regards all myths as theories about the
unknown power which is supposed to grant or withhold the accomplishment
of the wish. These theories are all based upon the postulate of the
religious sentiment, that there is order in things; but they differ from
scientific theories in recognizing volition as an efficient cause of
order.

The very earliest efforts at religious thought do not rise to the
formation of myths, that is, connected narratives about supernatural
beings. All unknown power is embraced under a word which does not convey
the notion of personality; single exhibitions of power which threaten
man’s life are supposed to be the doings of an unseen person, often of a
deceased man, whose memory survives; but any general theory of a
hierarchy, or of the world or man, is not yet visible. Even such
immature notions are, however, so far as they go, framed within the
category of causality; only, the will of the god takes the place of all
other force. This stage of religious thought has been called Animism, a
name which does not express its peculiarity, which is, that all force is
not only supposed to proceed from mind, but through what metaphysicians
call “immanent volition,” that is, through will independent of relation.
Mind as “emanant volition,” in unison with matter and law, the “seat of
law,” to use an expression of Professor Boole’s, may prove the highest
conception of force.

As the slowly growing reason reached more general notions, the law which
prescribes unity as a condition of thought led man early in his history
to look upon nature as one, and to seek for some one law of its changes;
the experience of social order impressed him with the belief that the
unseen agencies around him also bore relations to each other, and
acknowledged subjection to a leader; and the pangs of sickness, hunger
and terror to which he was daily exposed, and more than all the “last
and greatest of all terribles, death,” which he so often witnessed,
turned his early meditations toward his own origin and destiny.

Around these three subjects of thought his fancy busied itself, striving
to fabricate some theory which would solve the enigmas which his reason
everywhere met, some belief which would relieve him from the haunting
horror of the unknown. Hence arose three great cycles of myths, which
recur with strangely similar physiognomies in all continents and among
all races. They are the myths of the Epochs of Nature, the Hierarchy of
the Gods, and of the Paradise lost but to be regained. Wherever we turn,
whether to the Assyrian tablets or to the verses of the Voluspa, to the
crude fancies of the red man of the new world or the black man of the
African plateau, to the sacred books of the modern Christian or of the
ancient Brahman, we find these same questions occupying his mind, and in
meaning and in form the same solutions proffered. Through what
intellectual operations he reached these solutions, and their validity,
as tested by the known criteria of truth, it is the province of the
philosophy of mythology to determine.

Let us study the psychological growth of the myth of the Epochs of
Nature. This tells of the World, its beginning, its convulsions and its
ending, and thus embraces the three minor cycles of the cosmogonical,
the cataclysmal and the eschatological myths.

Nature is known to man only as _force_, which manifests itself in
_change_. He is so constituted that “the idea of an event, a change,
without the idea of a cause, is impossible” to him. But in passing from
the occurrence to its cause the idea of Time is unavoidable; it presents
itself as the one inevitable condition of change; itself unwearing, it
wears out all else; it includes all existence, as the greater does the
less; and as “causation is necessarily within existence,”[165-1] time is
beyond existence and includes the nonexistent as well. Whatever it
creates, it also destroys; and as even the gods are but existences, it
will swallow them. It renders vain all pleasures, and carries the balm
of a certain oblivion for all woes.

This oppressive sense of time, regarded not in its real meaning as one
of the conditions of perception, but as an active force destroying
thought as well as motion, recurs continually in mythology. To the
Greek, indefinite time as Cronos, was the oldest of the gods, begetting
numberless children, but with unnatural act consuming them again; while
definite time, as the Horæ, were the blithe goddesses of the order in
nature and the recurrent seasons. Osiris, supreme god of the Egyptians,
was born of a yet older god, Sev, Time. Adonis and Aeon acknowledge the
same parentage.[165-2] The ancient Arab spoke of time (_dahr_, _zaman_)
as the final, defining principle; as uniting and separating all things;
and as swallowing one thing after another as the camel drains the water
from a trough.[166-1] In the Koran it is written: “Time alone destroys
us.” Here and there, through the sacred songs of the Parsees, composed
long before Aristotle wrote, beyond all the dust and noise of the
everlasting conflict of good and evil, of Ahura Mazda and Anya-Mainyus,
there are glimpses of a deeper power, Zeruana Akerana, Eternal Duration,
unmoved by act or thought, in the face of which these bitter opponents
are seen to be children, brethren, “twin sons of Time.”[166-2] The
Alexandrian Gnostics, in their explanations of Christian dogmas,
identify Aeon, infinite time, with God the Father, as the source and
fount of existence; not merely as a predicate of the highest, but the
Highest himself.

This heavy-weighing sense of the infinity of duration, and the urgency
of escaping from the weariness of thinking it, led to the construction
of the myth of the Creation. Man devised it so that he might be able to
say, “in the beginning.” But a new difficulty met him at the
threshold--as change must be in existence, “we cannot think of a change
from non-existence to existence.” His only refuge was to select some
apparently primordial, simple, homogeneous substance from which, by the
exertion of volition, things came into being. The one which most
naturally suggested itself was _water_.[167-1] This does in fact cover
and hide the land, and the act of creation was often described as the
emerging of the dry land from the water; it dissolves and wears away the
hard rock; and, diminishing all things, itself neither diminishes nor
increases. Therefore nearly all cosmogonical myths are but variations of
that one familiar to us all: “And God said, Let the waters under the
heaven be gathered together in one place, and let the dry land appear;
and it was so.” The manifestation of the primordial energy was supposed
to have been akin to that which is shown in organic reproduction. The
myths of the primeval egg from which life proceeded, of the mighty bird
typical of the Holy Spirit which “brooded” upon the waters, of Love
developing the Kosmos from the Chaos, of the bull bringing the world
from the waters, of Protogonus, the “egg-born,” the “multispermed,” and
countless others, point to the application of one or the other, or of
both these explanations.[167-2]

In them the early thinkers found some rest: but not for long. The
perplexity of the presence of this immediate order of things seemed
solved; but another kept obtruding itself: what was going on before that
“beginning?” Vain to stifle the inquiry by replying, “nothing.”[168-1]
For time, which knows no beginning, was there, still building, still
destroying; nothing can be put to it, nor anything taken from it. What
then is left but the conclusion of the Preacher: “That which hath been,
is now; and that which is to be, hath already been?” Regarding time as a
form of force, the only possible history of the material universe is
that it is a series of destructions and restorations, force latent
evolving into force active or energy, and this dissipated and absorbed
again into latency.

Expressed in myths, these destructions and restorations are the Epochs
of Nature. They are an essential part of the religious traditions of the
Brahmans, Persians, Parsees, Greeks, Egyptians, Jews, Mexicans, Mayas,
and of all nations who have reached a certain stage of culture. The
length of the intervening periods may widely differ. The kalpa or great
year of the Brahmans is so long that were a cube of granite a hundred
yards each way brushed once in a century by a soft cloth, it would be
quite worn to dust before the kalpa would close: or, as some Christians
believe, there may be but six thousand years, six days of God in whose
sight “a thousand years are as one day,” between the creation and the
cremation of the world, from when it rose from the waters until it shall
be consumed by the fire.

There were also various views about the agents and the completeness of
these periodical destructions. In the Norse mythology and in the
doctrine of Buddhism, not one of the gods can survive the fire of the
last day. Among the Greeks, great Jove alone will await the appearance
of the virgin world after the icy winter and the fiery summer of the
Great Year. The Brahmans hold that the higher classes of gods outlive
the wreck of things which, at the close of the day of Brahm, involves
all men and many divinities in elemental chaos; while elsewhere, in the
later Puranas and in the myths of Mexico, Peru, and Assyria, one or a
few of the race of man escape a deluge which is universal, and serve to
people the new-made earth. This latter supposition, in its application
to the last epoch of nature, is the origin of the myth of the Flood.

In its general features and even in many details, the story of a vast
overflow which drowned the world, and from which by the timely succor
of divinity some man was preserved, and after the waters had subsided
became the progenitor of the race, is exceedingly common among distant
tribes, where it is impossible to explain it as a reminiscence of a
historic occurrence, or by community of religious doctrine. In Judea
Noah, in India Manu, in Chaldea Xisuthrus, in Assyria Oannes, in Aztlan
Nata, in Algonkin tradition Messou, in Brazil Monan, etc., are all
heroes of similar alleged occurrences. In all of them the story is but a
modification of that of the creation in time from the primeval
waters.[170-1]

“As it was once, so it shall be again,” and as the present age of the
world wears out, the myth teaches that things will once more fall back
to universal chaos. “The expectation of the end of the world is a
natural complement to the belief in its periodical destructions.” It is
taught with distinctness by all religious systems, by the prophetess in
the Voluspa, by the Hebrew seers,[171-1] by the writer of the
Apocalypse, by the Eastern sages, Persian and Indian, by the Roman
Sibyl, and among the savage and semi-civilized races of the New World.

Often that looked for destruction was associated with the divine plans
for man. This was an addition to the simplicity of the original myth,
but an easy and a popular one. The Indian of our prairies still looks
forward to the time when the rivers shall rise, and submerging the land
sweep from its surface the pale-faced intruders, and restore it to its
original owners. Impatient under the ceaseless disappointments of life,
and worn out with the pains which seem inseparable from this condition
of things, the believer gives up his hopes for this world, and losing
his faith in the final conquest of the good, thinks it only attainable
by the total annihilation of the present conditions. He looks for it,
therefore, in the next great age, in the new heaven and the new earth,
when the spirit of evil shall be bound and shut up, and the chosen
people possess the land, “and grow up as calves of the stall.”[172-1]

This is to be inaugurated by the Day of Judgment, “the day of wrath, the
dreadful day,” in which God is to come in his power and pronounce his
final decrees on those who have neglected the observance due him. The
myth, originally one relating to the procession of natural forces, thus
assumed with the increasing depth of the religious sentiment more and
more a moral and subjective coloring, until finally its old and simple
form was altogether discarded, or treated as symbolic only.

The myth of the Epochs of Nature was at first a theory to account for
the existing order of nature. For a long time it satisfied the inquiring
mind, if not with a solution at least with an answer to its queries.
After geologic science had learned to decipher the facts of the world’s
growth as written on the stones which orb it, the religious mind fondly
identified the upheavals and cataclysms there recorded with those which
its own fancy had long since fabricated. The stars and suns, which the
old seer thought would fall from heaven in the day of wrath, were seen
to be involved in motions far beyond the pale of man’s welfare, and,
therefore, the millennial change was confined to the limits of our
planet. Losing more and more of its original form as an attempted
explanation of natural phenomena, the myth now exists in civilized
nations as an allegorical type of man’s own history and destiny, and
thus is slowly merging into an episode of the second great cycle of the
mythus, that of the Paradise lost and regained. It, too, finds its
interpretation in psychology.

Broadly surveying the life of man, philosophers have found in it much
matter fit either for mockery or tears. We are born with a thirst for
pleasure; we learn that pain alone is felt. We ask health; and having
it, never notice it till it is gone. In the ardent pursuit of enjoyment,
we waste our capacity of appreciation. Every sweet we gain is sauced
with a bitter. Our eyes forever bent on the future, which can never be
ours, we fritter away the present, which alone we possess. Ere we have
got ourselves ready to live, we must die. Fooling ourselves even here,
we represent death as the portal to joy unspeakable; and forthwith
discredit our words by avoiding it in every possible way.

Pitiable spectacle of weakness and folly, is it capable of any
explanation which can redeem man from the imputation of unreason? Is
Wisdom even here justified of her children by some deeper law of being?

The theologian explains it as the unrest of the soul penned in its house
of clay; the physiologist attributes it to the unceasing effort of
organic functions to adapt themselves to ever varying external
conditions. They are both right, for the theologian, were his words
translated into the language of science, refers to the _effort to adapt
condition to function_, which is the peculiar faculty of intelligence,
and which alone renders man unable to accept the comfort of merely
animal existence, an inability which he need never expect to outlive,
for it will increase in exact proportion to his mental development.
Action, not rest, as I have elsewhere said, must be his ideal of life.

In even his lowest levels man experiences this dissatisfaction. It may
there be confined to a pain he would be free from, or a pleasure he
dreams of. Always the future charms him, and as advancing years increase
the number of his disappointments and bring with them the pains of
decrepitude, he also recurs to the past, when youth was his, and the
world was bright and gay. Thus it comes that most nations speak of some
earlier period of their history as one characterized by purer public
virtues than the present, one when the fires of patriotism burned
brighter and social harmony was more conspicuous. In rude stages of
society this fancy receives real credit and ranks as a veritable record
of the past, forming a Golden Age or Saturnian Era. Turned in the
kaleidoscope of the mythus, it assumes yet more gorgeous hues, and
becomes a state of pure felicity, an Eden or a Paradise, wherein man
dwelt in joy, and from which he wandered or was driven in the old days.

It is almost needless to quote examples to show the wide distribution of
this myth. The first pages of the Vendidad describe the reign of Yima in
“the garden of delight,” where “there was no cold wind nor violent heat,
no disease and no death.” The northern Buddhist tells of “the land of
joy,” Sukhavati, in the far west, where ruled Amitabha, “infinite
Light.”[175-1] The Edda wistfully recalls the pleasant days of good King
Gudmund who once held sway in Odainsakr, where death came not.[175-2]
Persian story has glad reminiscences of the seven hundred years that
Jemschid sat on the throne of Iran, when peace and plenty were in the
land.

The garden “eastward in Eden” of the Pentateuch, the land of Tulan or
Tlapallan in Aztec myth, the islands of the Hesperides, the rose garden
of Feridun, and a score of other legends attest with what strong
yearning man seeks in the past the picture of that perfect felicity
which the present never yields.

Nor can he be persuaded that the golden age has gone, no more to return.
In all conditions of progress, and especially where the load of the
present was the most wearying, has he counted on a restoration to that
past felicity. The paradise lost is to be regained. How it is to be done
the sages are not agreed. But they of old were unanimous that some
divinity must lend his aid, that some god-sent guide is needed to rescue
man from the slough of wretchedness in which he hopelessly struggles.

Therefore in the new world the red men looked for the ruler who had
governed their happy forefathers in the golden age, and who had not died
but withdrawn mysteriously from view, to return to them, protect them,
and insure them long bliss and ease. The ancient Persians expected as
much from the coming of Craoshanç; the Thibetan Buddhists look to the
advent of a Buddha 5000 years after Sakyamuni, one whose fortunate names
are Maîtrêya, the Loving one, and Adjita, the Unconquerable;[176-1] and
even the practical Roman, as we learn from Virgil, was not a stranger to
this dream. Very many nations felt it quite as strongly as the
Israelites, who from early time awaited a mighty king, the Messiah, the
Anointed, of whom the Targums say: “In his days shall peace be
multiplied;” “He shall execute the judgment of truth and justice on the
earth;” “He shall rule over all kingdoms.”

The early forms of this conception, such as here referred to, looked
forward to an earthly kingdom, identified with that of the past when
this was vigorous in the national mythology. Material success and the
utmost physical comfort were to characterize it. It was usually to be a
national apotheosis, and was not generally supposed to include the human
race, though traces of this wider view might easily be quoted from
Avestan, Roman, and Israelitic sources. Those who were to enjoy it were
not the dead, but those who shall be living.

As the myth grew, it coalesced with that of the Epochs of Nature, and
assumed grander proportions. The deliverer was to come at the close of
this epoch, at the end of the world; he was to embrace the whole human
kind in his kingdom; even those who died before his coming, if they had
obeyed his mandates, should rise to join the happy throng; instead of a
mere earthly king, he should be a supernatural visitant, even God
himself; and instead of temporal pleasures only, others of a spiritual
character were to be conferred. There are reasons to believe that even
in this developed form the myth was familiar to the most enlightened
worshippers of ancient Egypt; but it was not till some time after the
doctrines of Christianity had been cast into mythical moulds by the
oriental fancy, that it was introduced in its completed form to modern
thought. Although expressly repudiated by Jesus of Nazareth himself, and
applied in maxim and parable as a universal symbol of intelligence to
the religious growth of the individual and race, his followers reverted
to the coarser and literal meaning, and ever since teach to a greater or
less extent the chiliastic or millennial dogma, often mathematically
computing, in direct defiance of his words, the exact date that event is
to be expected.

If we ask the psychological construction of this myth, and the ever
present conditions of man’s life which have rendered him always ready to
create it and loath to renounce it, we trace the former distinctly to
his sense of the purposive nature of the laws of thought, and the latter
to the wide difference between desire and fulfilment. His intellectual
nature is framed to accord with laws which are ever present but are not
authoritative; they admonish but they do not coerce; _that_ is done
surely though oft remotely by the consequences of their violation. At
first, unaware of the true character of these laws, he fancies that if
he were altogether comfortable physically, his every wish would be
gratified. Slowly it dawns upon him that no material gratification can
supply an intellectual craving; that this is the real want which haunts
him; and that its only satisfaction is _to think rightly_, to learn the
truth. Then he sees that the millennial kingdom is “not of this world;”
that heaven and earth may pass away, but that such truth as he seeks
cannot pass away; and that his first and only care should be as a
faithful and wise servant to learn and revere it.

The sentiments which created this mythical cycle, based as they are now
seen to be on ultimate psychological laws, are as active to-day as ever.
This century has witnessed the rise of a school of powerful thinkers and
true philanthropists who maintained that the noblest object is the
securing to our fellow-men the greatest material comfort possible; that
the religious aspirations will do well to content themselves with this
gospel of humanity; and that the approach of the material millennium,
the perfectibility of the human race, the complete adaptation of
function to condition, the “distant but not uncertain final victory of
Good,”[179-1] is susceptible of demonstration. At present, these views
are undergoing modification. It is perceived with more or less
distinctness that complete physical comfort is not enough to make a man
happy; that in proportion as this comfort is attained new wants develope
themselves, quite as importunate, which ask what material comfort
cannot give, and whose demand is neither for utility nor pleasurable
sensation. Such wants are created by the sense of duty and the love of
truth.

The main difference between the latest exponents of the utilitarian
doctrines and the heralds of distinctively religious thought, is that
the former consider that it is most important in the present condition
of man for him to look after his material welfare; while the latter
teach that if he first subject thought and life to truth and duty, “all
these things will be added unto him.” Wordsworth has cast this latter
opinion, and the myths which are its types, into eloquent verse:

                        “Paradise and groves
    Elysian, Fortunate Fields--like those of old
    Sought in the Atlantic main, why should they be
    A history only of departed things,
    Or a mere fiction of what never was?
    For the discerning intellect of man,
    When wedded to this goodly universe
    In love and holy passion, shall find these
    A simple produce of the common day.”

The incredulity and even derision with which the latter doctrine is
received by “practical men,” should not affright the collected thinker,
as it certainly is not so chimerical as they pretend. The writer De
Senancourt, not at all of a religious turn, in speculating on the
shortest possible road to general happiness, concluded that if we were
able to foretell the weather a reasonable time ahead, and if men would
make it a rule to speak the truth as near as they can, these two
conditions would remove nine-tenths of the misery in the world. The
more carefully I meditate on this speculation, the better grounded it
seems. The weather we are learning to know much more about than when the
solitary Obermann penned his despondent dreams; but who shall predict
the time when men will tell the truth?

I now pass to the third great mythical cyclus, which I have called that
of the Hierarchy of the Gods. This was created in order to define that
unknown power which was supposed to give to the wish frustration or
fruition. It includes every statement in reference to the number,
nature, history and character of supernatural beings.

The precise form under which the intellect, when the religious
conception of unknown power first dawns upon it, imagines this unknown,
is uncertain. Some have maintained that the earliest religions are
animal worships, others that the spirits of ancestors or chiefs are the
primitive gods. Local divinities and personal spirits are found in the
rudest culture, while simple fetichism, or the vague shapes presented by
dreams, play a large part in the most inchoate systems. The prominence
of one or the other of these elements depends upon local and national
momenta, which are a proper study for the science of mythology, but need
not detain us here. The underlying principle in all these conceptions of
divinity is that of the _res per accidens_, an accidental relation of
the thought to the symbol, not a general or necessary one. This is seen
in the nature of these primitive gods. They have no decided character as
propitious or the reverse other than the objects they typify, but are
supposed to send bad or good fortune as they happen to be pleased or
displeased with the votary. No classification as good and evil deities
is as yet perceptible.

This undeveloped stage of religious thought faded away, as general
conceptions of man and his surroundings arose. Starting always from his
wish dependent on unknown control, man found certain phenomena usually
soothed his fears and favored his wishes, while others interfered with
their attainment and excited his alarm. This distinction, directly
founded on his sensations of pleasure and pain, led to a general, more
or less rigid, classification of the unknown, into two opposing classes
of beings, the one kindly disposed, beneficent, good, the other
untoward, maleficent, evil.

At first this distinction had in it nothing of a _moral_ character. It
is in fact a long time before this is visible, and to-day but two or
three religions acknowledge it even theoretically. All, however, which
claim historical position set up a dual hierarchy in the divine realms.
Ahura-mazda and Anya-mainyus, God and Satan, Jove and Pluto, Pachacamac
and Supay, Enigorio and Enigohatgea are examples out of hundreds that
might be adduced.

The fundamental contrast of pleasure and pain might be considered enough
to explain this duality. But in fact it is even farther reaching. The
emotions are dual as well as the sensations, as we have seen in the
first chapter. All the operations of the intellect are dichotomic, and
in mathematical logic must be expressed by an equation of the second
degree. Subject and object must be understood as polar pairs, and in
physical science polarization, contrast of properties corresponding to
contrast of position, is a universal phenomenon. Analogy, therefore,
vindicates the assumption that the unknown, like the known, is the field
of the operation of contradictory powers.

A variety of expression is given this philosophic notion in myths. In
Egypt, Syria, Greece and India the contrast was that of the sexes, the
male and female principles as displayed in the operations of nature. The
type of all is that very ancient Phrygian cult in which by the side of
Ma, mother of mountains and mistress of herds, stood Papas, father of
the race of shepherds and inventor of the rustic pipe.[183-1] Quite
characteristic was the classification of the gods worshipped by the
miners and metal workers of Phrygian Ida. This was into right and left,
and the general name of Dactyli, Fingers, was given them. The right gods
broke the spells which the left wove, the right pointed out the ore
which the left had buried, the right disclosed the remedies for the
sickness which the left had sent. This venerable division is still
retained when we speak of a _sinister_ portent, or a _right_ judgment.
It is of physiological interest as showing that “dextral pre-eminence”
or right-handedness was prevalent in earliest historic times, though it
is unknown in any lower animal.

The thoughtful dwellers in Farsistan also developed a religion close to
man’s wants by dividing the gods into those who aid and those who harm
him, subject the one class to Ahura-Mazda, the other to Anya-Mainyus.
Early in their history this assumed almost a moral aspect, and there is
little to be added to one of the most ancient precepts of their
law--“Happiness be to the man who conduces to the happiness of
all.”[184-1]

When this dual classification sought expression through natural
contrasts, there was one which nigh everywhere offered itself as the
most appropriate. The savage, the nomad, limited to the utmost in
artificial contrivances, met nothing which more signally aided the
accomplishment of his wishes than _light_; nothing which more certainly
frustrated them than _darkness_. From these two sources flow numerous
myths, symbols, and rites, as narratives or acts which convey religious
thought to the eye or the ear of sense.

As the bringers of light, man adored the sun, the dawn, and fire;
associated with warmth and spring, his further meditations saw in it the
source of his own and of all life, and led him to connect with its
worship that of the reproductive principle. As it comes from above, and
seems to dwell in the far-off sky, he located there his good gods, and
lifted his hands or his eyes when he prayed. As light is necessary to
sight, and as to see is to know, the faculty of knowing was typified as
enlightenment, an inward god-given light. The great and beneficent
deities are always the gods of light. Their names often show this. Deva,
Deus, means the shining one; Michabo, the great white one; the Mongols
call Tien, the chief Turanian god, the bright one, the luminous one; the
northern Buddhist prays to Amitabha, Infinite Light; and the Christian
to the Light of the World.

On the other hand, darkness was connected with feelings of helplessness
and terror. It exposed him to attacks of wild beasts and all accidents.
It was the precursor of the storm. It was like to death and the grave.
The realm of the departed was supposed to be a land of shadows, an
underground region, an unseeing Hades or hell.

The task would be easy to show many strange corroborations of these
early chosen symbols by the exacter studies of later ages. Light, as the
indispensable condition of life, is no dream, but a fact; sight is the
highest sentient faculty; and the luminous rays are real intellectual
stimulants.[186-1] But such reflections will not escape the
contemplative reader.

I hasten to an important consequence of this dual classification of
divinities. It led to what I may call the _quantification of the gods_,
that is, to conceiving divinity under notions of number or quantity, a
step which has led to profound deterioration of the religious sentiment.
I do not mean by this the distinction between polytheism and monotheism.
The latter is as untrue and as injurious as the former, nor does it
contain a whit the more the real elements of religious progress.

It is indeed singular that this subject has been so misunderstood. Much
has been written by Christian theologians to show the superiority of
monotheisms; and by their opponents much has been made of Comte’s _loi
des trois états_, which defines religious progress to be first
fetichism, secondly polytheism, finally monotheism. Of this Mr. Lewes
says: “The theological system arrived at the highest perfection of which
it is capable when it substituted the providential action of a single
being, for the varied operations of the numerous divinities which had
before been imagined.”[187-1] Nothing could be more erroneous than the
spirit of this statement; nothing is more correct, if the ordinary talk
of the superiority of monotheism in religion be admitted.

History and long experience show that monotheistic religions have no
special good effect either on the morals or the religious sensibility of
races.[187-2] Buddhism,[187-3] Mohammedanism and Judaism are, at least
in theory, uncompromising monotheisms; modern Christianity is less so,
as many Catholics pray to the Virgin and Saints, and many Protestants to
Christ. So long as _the mathematical conception of number_, whether one
or many, is applied to deity by a theological system, it has not yet
“arrived at the highest perfection of which it is capable.”

For let us inquire what a monotheism is? It is a belief in one god as
distinct from the belief in several gods. In other words, it applies to
God the mathematical concept of unity, a concept which can only come
into cognition by virtue of contrasts and determinations, and which
forces therefore the believer either to Pantheism or anthropomorphism to
reconcile his belief with his reason. No other resource is left him.
With monotheism there must always be the idea of numerical separateness,
which is incompatible with universal conceptions.

Let him, however, clear his mind of the current admiration for
monotheisms, and impress upon himself that he who would form a
conception of supreme intelligence must do so under the rules of pure
thought, not numerical relation. The logical, not the mathematical,
unity of the divine is the perfection of theological reasoning. Logical
unity does not demand a determination by contrasts; it conveys only the
idea of identity with self. As the logical attainment of truth is the
recognition of identities in apparent diversity, thus leading from the
logically many to the logically one, the assumption of the latter is
eminently justified. Every act of reasoning is an additional proof of
it.[188-1]

Nor does the duality of nature and thought, to which I have alluded, in
any wise contradict this. In pure thought we must understand the
dichotomic process to be the distinction of a positive by a privative,
both logical elements of the same thought, as I have elsewhere shown.
The opposites or contraries referred to as giving rise to the dualistic
conceptions of divinity are thus readily harmonized with the conception
of logical unity. This was recognized by the Hindoo sage who composed
the Bhagavad Gità, early in our era. Krishna, the Holy One, addressing
the King Ardjuna says: “All beings fall into error as to the nature of
creation, O Bharata, by reason of that delusion of natural opposites
which springs from liking and disliking, oh thou tormentor of thy
foes!”[189-1]

The substitution of the conception of mathematical for logical unity in
this connection has left curious traces in both philosophy and religion.
It has led to a belief in the triplicate nature of the supreme Being,
and to those philosophical triads which have often attracted thinkers,
from Pythagoras and Heraclitus down to Hegel and Ghiberti.

Pythagoras, who had thought profoundly on numbers and their relations,
is credited with the obscure maxim that every thought is made up of a
definite one and an indefinite two (a μονας and an αοριστος δυας). Some
of his commentators have added to rather than lessened the darkness of
this saying. But applied to concrete number, it seems clear enough. Take
any number, ten, for example, and it is ten by virtue of being a _one_,
one ten, and because on either side counting upward or downward, a
different number appears, which two are its logical determinants, but,
as not expressed, make up an _indefinite two_.

So the number one, thought as concrete unity, is really a trinity, made
up of its definite self and its indefinite next greater and lesser
determinants. The obscure consciousness of this has made itself felt in
many religions when they have progressed to a certain plane of thought.
The ancient Egyptian gods were nearly all triune; Phanes, in the Orphic
hymns the first principle of things, was tripartite; the Indian
trinities are well known; the Celtic triads applied to divine as well as
human existence; the Jews distinguished between Jehovah, his Wisdom and
his Word; and in Christian religion and philosophy the doctrine of the
trinity, though nowhere taught by Christ, has found a lasting foothold,
and often presents itself as an actual tritheism.[190-1]

The triplicate nature of number, thus alluded to by Pythagoras, springs
from the third law of thought, and holds true of all concrete notions.
Every such notion stands in necessary relation to its privative, and to
the logical concept of next greater extension, _i. e._, that which
includes the notion and its privative, as I explained in the first
chapter. This was noted by the early Platonists, who describe a certain
concrete expression of it as “the intelligential triad;” and it has been
repeatedly commented upon by later philosophers, some of whom avowedly
derive from it the proof of the trinitarian dogma as formulated by
Athanasius. Even modern mathematical investigations have been supposed
to point to a _Deus triformis_, though of course quite another one from
that which ancient Rome honored. A late work of much ability makes the
statement: “The doctrine of the Trinity, or something analogous to it,
forms, as it were, the avenue through which the universe itself leads us
up to the conception of the Infinite and Eternal One.”[191-1] The
explanation of this notion is the same as that of the “Trinity of the
Gentiles,” always hitherto a puzzling mythological concept.

For reasons previously given, an analysis of the formal law itself does
not yield these elements. They belong to a certain class of values
assigned it, not to the law itself; hence it is only when deity is
conceived under the conditions of numerical oneness that the tripartite
constitution of a whole number makes itself felt, and is applied to the
divine nature.

The essence of a logical unit is identity, of a mathematical,
difference. The qualities of the latter are limitations--_so much of a
thing_; those of the former are coincidences--_that kind of a thing_.

To be sure it is no easy matter to free ourselves from the habit of
confounding identity and individuality. We must cultivate a much greater
familiarity with the forms of thought, and the character of universals,
than every-day life requires of us, before the distinction grows facile.
The individual, not the species, exists; our own personality, our
thinking faculty is what we are most certain of. On it rests the reality
of everything, the Unknown as well. But the rejection of a mathematical
unity does not at all depreciate the force of such an argument.
Individuality regarded as mathematical unity rests on the deeper law of
logical identity from which the validity of numbers rises; it is not
the least diminished, but intensified, in the conception of a Supreme
Intelligence, as the font of truth, though the confinements and
limitations of the mathematical unit fall away, and all contrasts
disappear.

The reverse conception, however, has prevailed in religious systems,
polytheistic or monotheistic. Man has projected on the cloudy unknown
the magnified picture of his own individuality and shuddered with terror
at the self-created plantasm,[TN-9] like the peasant frightened by the
spectre of the Brocken, formed by the distorted image of himself. In his
happier moments, with his hopes gratified, the same vice of thought,
still active, prevented him from conceiving any higher ideal than his
better self. “Everywhere the same tendency was observed; the gods,
always exaggerations of human power and passions, became more and more
personifications of what was most admirable and lovable in human nature,
till in Christianity there emerged the avowed ideal man.” What could it
end in but anthropomorphism, or pantheism, or, rejecting both, a
Religion of Humanity, with a background of an imbecile Unknowable?

Is it necessary to point out how none of these conclusions can satisfy
the enlightened religious sentiment? How anthropomorphism,which[TN-10]
makes God in the image of man, instead of acknowledging that man is
made in the image of God, belittles divinity to a creature of passions
and caprices? How pantheism, increasing God at the expense of man, wipes
out the fundamental difference of true and false, calls bad “good in the
making,” and virtually extinguishes the sense of duty and the permanence
of personality? And how the denial of all possible knowledge of the
absolute digs away the only foundation on which sanity can establish a
religion, and then palms off material comfort as the proper food for
religious longing?

The long story of religious effort is not from fetichism to monotheism,
as Comte read it; nor is its only possible goal inside the limits of the
ego, as Feuerbach and the other Neo-Hegelians assert; but it is on its
theoretical side to develope with greater and greater distinctness the
immeasurable reality of pure thought, to dispense more and more with the
quantification of the absolute, and to avoid in the representation of
that Being the use of the technic of concrete existence.

Little by little we learn that the really true is never true in fact,
that the really good is never good in act.[194-1] Carefully cherishing
this distinction taught by mathematics and ethics, the religious mind
learns to recognize in that only reality darkly seen through the glass
of material things, that which should fix and fill its meditations.
Passing beyond the domain of physical law, it occupies itself with that
which defines the conditions of law. It contemplates an eternal
activity, before which its own self-consciousness seems a flickering
shadow, yet in that contemplation is not lost but gains an evergrowing
personality.

This is the goal of religious striving, the hidden aim of the wars and
persecutions, the polemics and martyrdoms, which have so busied and
bloodied the world. This satisfies the rational postulates of religion.
Does some one say that it does not stimulate its emotional elements,
that it does not supply the impulses of action which must ever be the
criteria of the true faith? Is it not a religion at all, but a
philosophy, a search, or if you prefer, a love for the truth?

Let such doubter ponder well the signification of truth, its relation to
life, its identity with the good, and the paramount might of wisdom and
a clear understanding, and he will be ready to exclaim with the
passionate piety of St. Augustine: “_Ubi inveni veritatem, ibi inveni
Deum meum, ipsam veritatem, quam, ex quo didici, non sum oblitus._”

From this brief review of its character, the Myth will be seen to be one
of the transitory expressions of the religious sentiment, which in
enlightened lands it has already outgrown and should lay aside. So far
as it relates to events, real or alleged, historic or geologic, it deals
with that which is indifferent to pure religion; and so far as it
assumes to reveal the character, plans and temper of divinity, it is too
evidently a reflex of man’s personality to be worthy of serious
refutation where it conflicts with the better guide he has within him.


FOOTNOTES:

[156-1] In this definition the word _apperception_ is used in the sense
assigned it by Professor Lazarus--the perception modified by imagination
and memory. “Mythologie ist eine Apperceptionsform der Natur und des
Menschen.” (_Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie_, Bd. i., s. 44). Most
recent mythologists omit the latter branch of the definition; for
instance, “A myth is in its origin an explanation by the uncivilized
mind of some natural phenomenon.” (John Fiske, _Myths and Myth Makers_,
p. 21). This is to omit that which gives the myth its only claim to be a
product of the religious sentiment. Schopenhauer, in calling dogmas and
myths “the metaphysics of the people,” fell into the same error.
Religion, as such, is always concrete.

[159-1] Half a century ago the learned Mr. Faber, in his _Origin of
Pagan Idolatry_, expressed his astonishment at “the singular, minute and
regular accordance” between the classical myths. That accordance has now
been discovered to be world-wide.

[160-1] “Ganz gleiche Mythen können sehr füglich, jede selbstständig, an
verschiedenen Oerter emporkommen.” _Briefe an Woelcker._

[161-1] The last two are the modern orthodox theories, supported by
Bryant, Faber, Trench, De Maistre and Sepp. Medieval Christianity
preferred the direct agency of the Devil. Primitive Christianity leaned
to the opinion that the Grecian and Roman myth makers had stolen from
the sacred writings of the Jews.

[165-1] Sir Wm. Hamilton, _Lectures on Metaphysics_. Appendix, p. 691.

[165-2] Creuzer, _Symbolik und Mythologie_, Bd. ii., s. 107.

[166-1] Th. Nöldeke, _Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie_, Bd. iii., s.
131.

[166-2] See a note of Prof. Spiegel to Yaçna, 29, of the _Khordah-Avesta_.

[167-1] Ἡ υγρα φυσις αρχη και γενεσις παντων.

  Plutarch, _De Iside_.

According to the Koran and the Jewish Rabbis, the throne of God rested
on the primeval waters from which the earth was produced. See a note in
Rodwell’s translation of the Koran, _Sura_. xi.

[167-2] I have discussed some of these myths in the seventh chapter of
the _Myths of the New World_.

[168-1] How it troubled the early Christians who dared not adopt the
refuge of the Epochs of Nature, may be seen in the _Confessions_ of St.
Augustine, Lib. XI, cap. 10, et seq. He quotes the reply of one pushed
by the inquiry, what God was doing before creation: “He was making a
hell for inquisitive busy-bodies.” _Alta spectantibus gehennas parabat._

[170-1] Many interesting references to the Oriental flood-myth may be
found in Cory’s _Ancient Fragments_. See also, Dr. Fr. Windischmann,
_Die Ursagen der Arischen Völker_, pp. 4-10. It is probable that in very
ancient Semitic tradition Adam was represented as the survivor of a
flood anterior to that of Noah. Maimonides relates that the Sabians
believed the world to be eternal, and called Adam “the Prophet of the
Moon,” which symbolized, as we know from other sources, the deity of
water. Rabbi Moses Ben Maimon, _More Nevochim_, cap. iv. In early
Christian symbolism Christ was called “the true Noah”; the dove
accompanied him also, and as through Noah came “salvation by wood and
water,” so through Christ came “salvation by spirit and water.” (See St.
Cyril of Jerusalem’s _Catechetical Lectures_, Lect. xvii., cap. 10). The
fish (ιχθυς) was the symbol of Christ as well as of Oannes. As the
second coming of Christ was to be the destruction of the world, how
plainly appear the germs of the myth of the Epochs of Nature in the
Judæo-Christian mind!

[171-1] Besides the expressions in the Book of Ecclesiastes and the
later prophets, the doctrine is distinctly announced in one of the most
sublime of the Psalms (xc), one attributed to “Moses the Man of God.”

[172-1] Malachi, ch. iv., v. 2.

[175-1] C. F. Koppen, _Die Lamaische Hierarchie_, s. 28.

[175-2] Odainsakr, ô privative, _dain_ death, _akr_ land, “the land of
immortal life.” Saxo Grammaticus speaks of it also. Another such land
faintly referred to in the Edda is Breidablick, governed by Baldur, the
Light-god.

[176-1] C. F. Koppen, _Die Lamaische Hierarchie und Kirche_, p. 17.

[179-1] John Stuart Mill, _Theism_, p. 256.

[183-1] Creuzer, _Symbolik und Mythologie_, Bd. II., s. 47

[184-1] This is the first line of Yaçna, 42, of the _Khordah-Avesta_.
The Parsees believe that it is the salutation which meets the soul of
the good on entering the next world.

[186-1] “Sight is the light sense. Through it we become acquainted with
universal relations, this being _reason_. Without the eye there would be
no reason.” Lorenz Oken, _Elements of Physio-Philosophy_, p. 475.

[187-1] _History of Philosophy_, Vol. II. p. 638 (4th ed.)

[187-2] “The intolerance of almost all religions which have maintained
the unity of God, is as remarkable as the contrary principle in
polytheism.” Hume, _Nat. Hist. of Religion_, Sec. ix.

[187-3] “The Lamas emphatically maintain monotheism to be the real
character of Buddhism.” Emil Schlagintweit, _Buddhism in Tibet_, p. 108.

[188-1] No one has seen the error here pointed out, and its injurious
results on thought, more clearly than Comte himself. He is emphatic in
condemning “le tendance involontaire à constituer l’unité spéculative
par l’ascendant universel des plus grossières contemplations numérique,
geométrique ou mécaniques.” _Systême de Politique Positive_; Tome I., p.
51. But he was too biassed to apply this warning to Christian thought.
The conception of the Universe in the logic of Professor De Morgan and
Boole is an example of speculative unity.

[189-1] _Bhagavad Gità_, ch. iv.

[190-1] See the introduction by Mr. J. W. Etheridge to _The Targums of
Onkelos and Jonathan Ben Uzziel_ (London, 1862). St. Augustine believed
the trinity is referred to in the opening verses of Genesis.
_Confessiones_, Lib. xiii. cap. 5. The early Christian writer,
Theophilus of Antioch (circa 225), in his _Apologia_, recognizes the
Jewish trinity only. It was a century later that the dogma was defined
in its Athanasian form. See further, Isaac Preston Cory, _Ancient
Fragments, with an Inquiry into the Trinity of the Gentiles_ (London,
1832).

[191-1] _The Unseen Universe_, p. 194.

[194-1] “A good will is the only altogether good thing in the
world.”--_Kant._ “What man conceives in himself is always superior to
that reality which it precedes and prepares.”--_Comte._



THE CULT, ITS SYMBOLS AND RITES.


SUMMARY.

     The Symbol represents the unknown; the Rite is the ceremony of
     worship.

     A symbol stands for the supernatural, an emblem for something
     known. The elucidation of symbolism is in the laws of the
     association of ideas. Associations of similarity give related
     symbols, of contiguity coincident symbols. Symbols tend either
     toward personification (iconolatry), or toward secularization. The
     symbol has no fixed interpretation. Its indefiniteness shown by the
     serpent symbol, and the cross. The physiological relations of
     certain symbols. Their classification. The Lotus. The Pillar.
     Symbols discarded by the higher religious thought. Esthetic and
     scientific symbolism (the “Doctrine of Correspondences”).

     Rites are either propitiatory or memorial. The former spring either
     from the idea of sacrifice or of specific performance. A sacrifice
     is a gift, but its measure is what it costs the giver. Specific
     performance means that a religious act should have no ulterior aim.
     Vicarious sacrifice and the idea of sin.

     Memorial rites are intended to recall the myth, or else to keep up
     the organization. The former are dramatic or imitative, the latter
     institutionary. Tendency of memorial rites to become propitiatory.
     Examples.



CHAPTER VI.

THE CULT, ITS SYMBOLS AND RITES.


As the side which a religious system presents to the intellect is shown
in the Myth, so the side that it presents to sense is exhibited in the
Cult. This includes the representation and forms of worship of the
unknown power which presides over the fruition of the Prayer or
religious wish. The representation is effected by the Symbol, the
worship by the Rite. The development of these two, and their relation to
religious thought, will be the subject of the present chapter.

The word Symbolism has a technical sense in theological writings, to
wit, the discussion of creeds, quite different from that in which it is
used in mythological science. Here it means the discussion of the
natural objects which have been used to represent to sense supposed
supernatural beings. As some conception of such beings must first be
formed, the symbol is necessarily founded upon the myth, and must be
explained by it.

A symbol is closely allied to an emblem, the distinction being that the
latter is intended to represent some abstract conception or concrete
fact, not supposed to be supernatural. Thus the serpent is the emblem of
Esculapius, or, abstractly, of the art of healing; but in its use as a
symbol in Christian art it stands for the Evil One, a supernatural
being. The heraldric insignia of the Middle Ages were emblematic
devices; but the architecture of the cathedrals was largely symbolic.
Both agree in aiming to aid the imagination and the memory, and both may
appeal to any special sense, although the majority are addressed to
sight alone.

Symbolism has not received the scientific treatment which has been so
liberally bestowed on mythology. The first writer who approached it in
the proper spirit was Professor Creuzer.[200-1] Previous to his labors
the distinction between pictographic and symbolic art was not well
defined. He drew the line sharply, and illustrated it abundantly; but he
did not preserve so clearly the relations of the symbol and the myth.
Indeed, he regarded the latter as a symbol, a “phonetic” one, to be
treated by the same processes of analysis. Herein later students have
not consented to follow him. The contrast between these two expressions
of the religious sentiment becomes apparent when we examine their
psychological origin. This Professor Creuzer did not include in his
researches, nor is it dwelt upon at any length in the more recent works
on the subject.[201-1] The neglect to do this has given rise to an
arbitrariness in the interpretation of many symbols, which has often
obscured their position in religious history.

What these principles are I shall endeavor to indicate; and first of the
laws of the origin of symbols, the rules which guided the early
intellect in choosing from the vast number of objects appealing to sense
those fit to shadow forth the supernatural.

It may safely be assumed that this was not done capriciously, as the
modern parvenue makes for himself a heraldric device. The simple and
devout intellect of the primitive man imagined a real connection between
the god and the symbol. Were this questioned, yet the wonderful
unanimity with which the same natural objects, the serpent, the bird,
the tree, for example, were everywhere chosen, proves that their
selection was not the work of chance. The constant preference of these
objects points conclusively to some strong and frequent connection of
their images with mythical concepts.

The question of the origin of symbols therefore resolves itself into one
of the association of ideas, and we start from sure ground in applying
to their interpretation the established canons of association. These, as
I have elsewhere said, are those of contiguity and similarity, the
former producing association by the closeness of succession of
impressions or thoughts, the latter through impressions or thoughts
recalling like ones in previous experience. When the same occurrence
affects different senses simultaneously, or nearly so, the association
is one of _contiguity_, as thunder and lightning, for a sound cannot be
_like_ a sight; when the same sense is affected in such a manner as to
recall a previous impression, the association is one of _similarity_, as
when the red autumn leaves recall the hue of sunset. Nearness in time or
nearness in kind is the condition of association.

The intensity or permanence of the association depends somewhat on
temperament, but chiefly on repetition or continuance. Not having an ear
for music, I may find it difficult to recall a song from hearing its
tune; but by dint of frequent repetition I learn to associate them.
Light and heat, smoke and fire, poverty and hunger so frequently occur
together, that the one is apt to recall the other. So do a large number
of antithetical associations, as light and darkness, heat and cold, by
_inverse similarity_, opposite impressions reviving each other, in
accordance with the positive and privative elements of a notion.

This brief reference to the laws of applied thought,--too brief, did I
not take for granted that they are generally familiar--furnishes the
clue to guide us through the labyrinth of symbolism, to wit, the
repeated association of the event or power recorded in the myth with
some sensuous image. Where there is a connection in kind between the
symbol and that for which it stands, there is _related_ symbolism; where
the connection is one of juxtaposition in time, there is _coincident_
symbolism. Mother Earth, fertile and fecund, was a popular deity in many
nations, and especially among the Egyptians, who worshipped her under
the symbol of a cow; this is related symbolism; the historical event of
the execution of Christ occurred by crucifixion, one of several methods
common in that age, and since then the cross has been the symbol of
Christianity; this is coincident symbolism. It is easy for the two to
merge, as when the cross was identified with a somewhat similar and much
older symbol, one of the class I have called “related,” signifying the
reproductive principle, and became the “tree of life.” As a coincident
symbol is to a certain extent accidental in origin, related symbols
have always been most agreeable to the religious sentiment.

This remark embodies the explanation of the growth of religious
symbolism, and also its gradual decay into decorative art and mnemonic
design. The tendency of related symbolism is toward the identification
of the symbol with that for which it stands, toward personification or
prosopopeia; while what I may call the _secularization_ of symbols is
brought about by regarding them more and more as accidental connections,
by giving them conventional forms, and treating them as elements of
architectural or pictorial design, or as aids to memory.

This tendency of related symbolism depends on a law of applied thought
which has lately been formulated by a distinguished logician in the
following words: “What is true of a thing, is true of its like.”[204-1]
The similarity of the symbol to its prototype assumed, the qualities of
the symbol, even those which had no share in deciding its selection, no
likeness to the original, were lumped, and transferred to the divinity.
As those like by similarity, so those unlike, were identified by
contiguity, as traits of the unknown power. This is the active element
in the degeneracy of religious idealism. The cow or the bull, chosen
first as a symbol of creation or fecundity, led to a worship of the
animal itself, and a transfer of its traits, even to its horns, to the
god. In a less repulsive form, the same tendency shows itself in the
pietistic ingenuity of such poets as Adam de Sancto Victore and George
Herbert, who delight in taking some biblical symbol, and developing from
it a score of applications which the original user never dreamt of. In
such hands a chance simile grows to an elaborate myth.

Correct thought would prevent the extension of the value of the symbol
beyond the original element of similarity. More than this, it would
recognize the fact that similarity does not suppose identity, but the
reverse, to wit, defect of likeness; and this dissimilitude must be the
greater, as the original and symbol are naturally discrepant. The
supernatual,[TN-11] however, whether by this term we mean the unknown or
the universal--still more if we mean the incomprehensible--is utterly
discrepant with the known, except by an indefinitely faint analogy. In
the higher thought, therefore, the symbol loses all trace of identity
and becomes merely emblematic.

The ancients defended symbolic teaching on this very ground, that the
symbol left so much unexplained, that it stimulated the intellect and
trained it to profounder thinking;[205-1] practically it had the
reverse effect, the symbol being accepted as the thing itself.

Passing from these general rules of the selection of symbols, to the
history of the symbol when chosen, this presents itself to us in a
reciprocal form, first as the myth led to the adoption and changes in
the symbol, and as the latter in turn altered and reformed the myth.

The tropes and figures of rhetoric by which the conceptions of the
supernatural were first expressed, give the clue to primitive symbolism.
A very few examples will be sufficient. No one can doubt that the figure
of the serpent was sometimes used in pictorial art to represent the
lightning, when he reads that the Algonkins _straightly_ called the
latter a snake; when he sees the same adjective, spiral or winding,
(ἑλικοιεδης) applied by the Greeks to the lightning and a snake; when
the Quiché call the electric flash a strong serpent; and many other such
examples. The Pueblo Indians represent lightning in their pictographs by
a zigzag line. A zigzag fence is called in the Middle States a worm or
“snake” fence. Besides this, adjectives which describe the line traced
by the serpent in motion are applied to many twisting or winding
objects, as a river, a curl or lock of hair, the tendrils of a vine, the
intestines, a trailing plant, the mazes of a dance, a bracelet, a broken
ray of light, a sickle, a crooked limb, an anfractuous path, the
phallus, etc. Hence the figure of a serpent may, and in fact has been,
used with direct reference to every one of these, as could easily be
shown. How short-sighted then the expounder of symbolism who would
explain the frequent recurrence of the symbol or the myth of the serpent
wherever he finds it by any one of these!

This narrowness of exposition becomes doubly evident when we give
consideration to two other elements in primitive symbolism--the
multivocal nature of early designs, and the misapprehensions due to
contiguous association.

To illustrate the first, let us suppose, with Schwarz[207-1] and others,
that the serpent was at first the symbol of the lightning. Its most
natural representation would be in motion; it might then stand for the
other serpentine objects I have mentioned; but once accepted as an
acknowledged symbol, the other qualities and properties of the serpent
would present themselves to the mind, and the effort would be made to
discover or to imagine likenesses to these in the electric flash. The
serpent is venomous; it casts its skin and thus seems to renew its life;
it is said to fascinate its prey; it lives in the ground; it hisses or
rattles when disturbed: none of these properties is present to the mind
of the savage who scratches on the rock a zigzag line to represent the
lightning god. But after-thought brings them up, and the association of
contiguity can apply them all to the lightning, and actually has done so
over and over again; and not only to it, but also to other objects
originally represented by a broken line, for example, the river gods and
the rays of light.

This complexity is increased by the ambiguous representation of symbolic
designs. The serpent, no longer chosen for its motion alone, will be
expressed in art in that form best suited to the meaning of the symbol
present in the mind of the artist. Realism is never the aim of religious
art. The zigzag line, the coil, the spiral, the circle and the straight
line, are all geometrical radicals of various serpentine forms. Any one
of these may be displayed with fanciful embellishments and artistic
aids. Or the artist, proceeding by synecdoche, takes a part for the
whole, and instead of portraying the entire animal, contents himself
with one prominent feature or one aspect of it. A striking instance of
this has been developed by Dr. Harrison Allen, in the prevalence of what
he calls the “crotalean curve,” in aboriginal American art, a line which
is the radical of the profile view of the head of the rattlesnake
(_crotalus_).[208-1] This he has detected in the architectural monuments
of Mexico and Yucatan, in the Maya phonetic scrip, and even in the rude
efforts of the savage tribes. Each of these elective methods of
representing the serpent, would itself, by independent association,
call up ideas out of all connection whatever with that which the figure
first symbolized. These, in the mind entertaining them, will supersede
and efface the primitive meaning. Thus the circle is used in
conventional symbolic art to designate the serpent; but also the eye,
the ear, the open mouth, the mamma, the sun, the moon, a wheel, the
womb, the vagina, the return of the seasons, time, continued life, hence
health, and many other things. Whichever of these ideas is easiest
recalled will first appear on looking at a circle. The error of those
who have discussed mythological symbolism has been to trace a connection
of such adventitious ideas beyond the symbol to its original meaning;
whereas the symbol itself is the starting-point. To one living in a
region where venomous serpents abound, the figure of one will recall the
sense of danger, the dread of the bite, and the natural hostility we
feel to those who hurt us; whereas no such ideas would occur to the
native of a country where there are no snakes, or where they are
harmless, unless taught this association.

Few symbols have received more extended study than that of the cross,
owing to its prominence in Christian art. This, as I have said, was
coincident or incidental only. It corresponded, however, to a current
“phonetic symbol,” in the expression common to the Greeks and Romans of
that day, “to take up one’s cross,” meaning to prepare for the worst, a
metaphor used by Christ himself.

Now there is no agreement as to what was the precise form of the cross
on which he suffered. Three materially unlike crosses are each equally
probable. In symbolic art these have been so multiplied that now _two
hundred and twenty-two_ variants of the figure are described![210-1] Of
course there is nothing easier than to find among these similarities,
with many other conventional symbols, the Egyptian Tau, the Hammer of
Thor, the “Tree of Fertility,” on which the Aztecs nailed their victims,
the crossed lines which are described on Etruscan tombs, or the logs
crossed at rectangles, on which the Muskogee Indians built the sacred
fire. The four cardinal points are so generally objects of worship, that
more than any other mythical conception they have been represented by
cruciform figures. But to connect these in any way with the symbol as it
appears in Christian art, is to violate every scientific principle.

Each variant of a symbol may give rise to myths quite independent of its
original meaning. A symbol once adopted is preserved by its sacred
character, exists long as a symbol, but with ever fluctuating
significations. It always takes that which is uppermost in the mind of
the votary and the congregation. Hence, psychology, and especially the
psychology of races, is the only true guide in symbolic exegesis.

Nor is the wide adoption and preservation of symbols alone due to an
easily noticed similarity between certain objects and the earliest
conceptions of the supernatural, or to the preservative power of
religious veneration.

I have previously referred to the associations of ideas arising from
ancestral reversions of memory, and from the principles of minimum
muscular action and harmonic excitation. Such laws make themselves felt
unconsciously from the commencement of life, with greater or less power,
dependent on the susceptibility of the nervous system. They go far
toward explaining the recurrence and permanence of symbols, whether of
sight or sound. Thus I attribute the prevalence of the serpentine curve
in early religious art largely to its approach to the “line of beauty,”
which is none other than that line which the eye, owing to the
arrangement of its muscles, can follow with the minimum expenditure of
nervous energy. The satisfaction of the mind in viewing symmetrical
figures or harmonious coloring, as also that of the ear, in hearing
accordant sounds, is, as I have remarked, based on the principle of
maximum action with minimum waste. The mind gets the most at the least
cost.

The equilateral triangle, which is the simplest geometrical figure which
can enclose a space, thus satisfying the mind the easiest of any, is
nigh universal in symbolism. It is seen in the Egyptian pyramids, whose
sides are equilateral triangles with a common apex, in the mediæval
cathedrals, whose designs are combinations of such triangles, in the
sign for the trinity, the pentalpha, etc.

The classification of some symbols of less extensive prevalence must be
made from their phonetic values. One class was formed as were the
“canting arms” in heraldry, that is, by a rebus. This is in its simpler
form, direct, as when Quetzalcoatl, the mystical hero-god of Atzlan, is
represented by a bird on a serpent, _quetzal_ signifying a bird, _coatl_
a serpent; or composite, two or more of such rebus symbols being blended
by synecdoche, like the “marshalling” of arms in heraldry, as when the
same god is portrayed by a feathered serpent; or the rebus may occur
with paronymy, especially when the literal meaning of a name of the god
is lost, as when the Algonkins forgot the sense of the word _wabish_,
white or bright, as applied to their chief divinity, and confounding it
with _wabos_, a rabbit, wove various myths about their ancestor, the
Great Hare, and chose the hare or rabbit as a totemic badge.[212-1]

It is almost needless to add further that the ideas most frequently
associated with the unknown object of religion are those, which,
struggling after material expression, were most fecund in symbols. We
have but to turn to the Orphic hymns, or those of the Vedas or the
Hebrew Psalms, to see how inexhaustible was the poetic fancy, stirred by
religious awe, in the discovery of similitudes, any of which, under
favoring circumstances, might become a symbol.

Before leaving this branch of my subject, I may illustrate some of the
preceding comments by applying them to one or two well known subjects of
religious art.

A pleasing symbol, which has played a conspicuous part in many
religions, is the Egyptian lotus, or “lily of the Nile.” It is an
aquatic plant, with white, roseate or blue flowers, which float upon the
water, and send up from their centre long stamens. In Egypt it grows
with the rising of the Nile, and as its appearance was coincident with
that important event, it came to take prominence in the worship of Isis
and Osiris as the symbol of fertility. Their mystical marriage took
place in its blossom. In the technical language of the priests, however,
it bore a profounder meaning, that of the supremacy of reason above
matter, the contrast being between the beautiful flower and the muddy
water which bears it.[214-1] In India the lotus bears other and
manifold meanings. It is a symbol of the sacred river Ganges, and of the
morally pure. No prayer in the world has ever been more frequently
repeated than this: “Om! the jewel in the lotus. Amen” (_om mani padme
hum_). Many millions of times, every hour, for centuries, has this been
iterated by the Buddhists of Thibet and the countries north of it. What
it means, they can only explain by fantastic and mystical guesses.
Probably it refers to the legendary birth of their chief saint,
Avalokitesvara, who is said to have been born of a lotus flower. But
some say it is a piece of symbolism not strange to its meaning in
Egypt,[214-2] and borrowed by Buddhism from the Siva worship. In the
symbolic language of this sect the lotus is the symbol of the vagina,
while the phallus is called “the jewel.” With this interpretation the
Buddhist prayer would refer to the reproductive act; but it is
illustrative of the necessity of attributing wholly diverse meanings to
the same symbol, that the Buddhists neither now nor at any past time
attached any such signification to the expression, and it would be most
discrepant with their doctrines to do so.[214-3]

Another symbol has frequently been open to this duplicate
interpretation, that is, the upright pillar. The Egyptian obelisk, the
pillars of “Irmin” or of “Roland,” set up now of wood, now of stone by
the ancient Germans, the “red-painted great warpole” of the American
Indians, the May-pole of Old England, the spire of sacred edifices, the
staff planted on the grave, the terminus of the Roman landholders, all
these objects have been interpreted to be symbols of life, or the
life-force. As they were often of wood, the trunk of a tree for
instance, they have often been called by titles equivalent to the “tree
of life,” and are thus connected with the nigh innumerable myths which
relate to some mystic tree as the source of life. The ash Ygdrasyl of
the Edda, the oak of Dordona and of the Druid, the modern Christmas
tree, the sacred banyan, the holy groves, illustrate but faintly the
prevalence of tree worship. Even so late as the time of Canute, it had
to be forbidden in England by royal edict.

Now, the general meaning of this symbol I take to be the same as that
which led to the choice of hills and “high places,” as sites for altars
and temples, and to the assigning of mountain tops as the abodes of the
chief gods. It is seen in adjectives applied, I believe, in all
languages, certainly all developed ones, to such deities themselves.
These adjectives are related to adverbs of place, signifying _above_,
_up_ or _over_. We speak of the supernatural, or supernal powers, the
Supreme Being, the Most High, He in Heaven, and such like. So do all
Aryan and Semitic tongues. Beyond them, the Chinese name for the Supreme
Deity, Tien, means _up_. I have elsewhere illustrated the same fact in
native American tongues. The association of light and the sky above, the
sun and the heaven, is why we raise our hands and eyes in confident
prayer to divinity. That at times, however, a religion of sex-love did
identify these erect symbols with the phallus as the life-giver, is very
true, but this was a temporary and adventitious meaning assigned a
symbol far more ancient than this form of religion.

In this review of the principles of religious symbolism, I have
attempted mainly to exhibit the part it has sustained in the development
of the religious sentiment. It has been generally unfavorable to the
growth of higher thought. The symbol, in what it is above the emblem,
assumes more than a similarity, a closer relation than analogy; to some
degree it pretends to a hypostatic union or identity of the material
with the divine, the known to sense with the unknown. Fully seen, this
becomes object worship; partially so, personification.

There is no exception to this. The refined symbolisms which pass current
to day as religious philosophies exemplify it. The one, esthetic
symbolism, has its field in musical and architectural art, in the study
and portraiture of the beautiful; the other, scientific symbolism,
claims to discover in the morphology of organisms, in the harmonic laws
of physics, and in the processes of the dialectic, the proof that
symbolism, if not a revelation, is at least an unconscious inspiration
of universal truth. This is the “Doctrine of Correspondences,” much in
favor with Swedenborgians, but by no means introduced by the founder of
that sect. The recognition of the identity in form of the fundamental
laws of motion and thought, and the clearer understanding of the
character of harmony which the experiments of Helmholtz and others give
us, disperse most of the mystery about these similarities. The religion
of art, as such, will come up for consideration in the next chapter.

The second form of the Cult is the Rite. This includes the acts or
ceremonies of worship. Considered in the gross, they can be classed as
of two kinds, the first and earliest propitiatory, the second and later
memorial or institutionary.

We have but to bear in mind the one aspiration of commencing religious
thought, to wit, the attainment of a wish, to see that whatever action
arose therefrom must be directed to that purpose. Hence, when we analyze
the rude ceremonies of savage cults, the motive is extremely apparent.
They, like their prayers, all point to the securing of some material
advantage. They are designed

                                    “to cozen
    The gods that constrain us and curse.”

The motives which underlie these simplest as well as the most elaborate
rituals, and impress upon them their distinctively religious character
can be reduced to two, the idea of _sacrifice_ and the idea of _specific
performance_.

The simplest notion involved in a sacrifice is that of _giving_. The
value of the gift is not, however, the intrinsic worth of the thing
given, nor even the pleasure or advantage the recipient derives
therefrom, but, singularly enough, the amount of pain the giver
experiences in depriving himself of it! This is also often seen in
ordinary transactions. A rich man who subscribes a hundred dollars to a
charity, is thought to merit less commendation than the widow who gives
her mite. Measured by motive, this reasoning is correct. There is a
justice which can be vindicated in holding self-denial to be a standard
of motive. All developed religions have demanded the renunciation of
what is dearest. The Ynglyngasaga tells us that in a time of famine, the
first sacrifice offered to the gods was of beasts only; if this failed,
men were slain to appease them; and if this did not mitigate their
anger, the king himself was obliged to die that they might send plenty.
The Latin writers have handed it down that among the Germans and Gauls a
human sacrifice was deemed the more efficacious the more distinguished
the victim, and the nearer his relationship to him who offered the
rite.[219-1] The slaughter of children and wives to please the gods was
common in many religions, and the self-emasculation of the priests of
Cybele, with other such painful rites, indicates that the measure of the
sacrifice was very usually not what the god needed, but the willingness
of the worshipper to give.

The second idea, that of _specific performance_, has been well expressed
and humorously commented upon by Hume in his _Natural History of
Religions_. He says: “Here I cannot forbear observing a fact which may
be worth the attention of those who make human nature the object of
their inquiry. It is certain that in every religion, many of the
votaries, perhaps the greatest number, will seek the divine favor, not
by virtue and good morals, but either by frivolous observances, by
intemperate zeal, by rapturous ecstasies, or by the belief of mysterious
and absurd opinions.

* * * In all this [_i. e._, in virtue and good morals], a superstitious
man finds nothing, which he has properly performed for the sake of his
deity, or which can peculiarly recommend him to divine favor and
protection. * * * * But if he fast or give himself a sound whipping,
this has a direct reference, in his opinion, to the service of God. No
other motive could engage him to such austerities.”

The philosopher here sets forth in his inimitable style a marked
characteristic of religious acts. But he touches upon it with his usual
superficiality. It is true that no religion has ever been content with
promoting the happiness of man, and that the vast majority of votaries
are always seeking to do something specifically religious, and are not
satisfied with the moral only. The simple explanation of it is that the
religious sentiment has a purpose entirely distinct from ethics, a
purpose constantly felt as something peculiar to itself, though
obscurely seen and often wholly misconceived. It is only when an action
is utterly dissevered from other ends, and is purely and solely
religious, that it can satisfy this sentiment. “_La religion_,” most
truly observes Madame Necker de Saussure, “_ne doit point avoir d’autre
bût qu’elle même_.”

The uniform prevalence of these ideas in rites may be illustrated from
the simplest or the most elaborate. Father Brebeuf, missionary to the
Hurons in 1636, has a chapter on their superstitions. He there tells us
that this nation had two sorts of ceremonies, the one to induce the
gods to grant good fortune, the other to appease them when some ill-luck
had occurred. Before running a dangerous rapid in their frail canoes
they would lay tobacco on a certain rock where the deity of the rapid
was supposed to reside, and ask for safety in their voyage. They took
tobacco and cast it in the fire, saying: “O Heaven (_Aronhiaté_), see, I
give you something; aid me; cure this sickness of mine.” When one was
drowned or died of cold, a feast was called, and the soft parts of the
corpse were cut from the bones and burned to conciliate the personal
god, while the women danced and chanted a melancholy strain. Here one
sacrifice was to curry favor with the gods, another to soothe their
anger, and the third was a rite, not a sacrifice, but done for a
religious end, whose merit was specific performance.

As the gift was valued at what it cost the giver, and was supposed to be
efficacious in this same ratio, self-denial soon passed into
self-torture, prolonged fasts, scourging and lacerations, thus becoming
legitimate exhibitions of religious fervor. As mental pain is as keen as
bodily pain, the suffering of Jephthah was quite as severe as that of
the Flagellants, and was expected to find favor in the eyes of the gods.

A significant corrollary[TN-12] from such a theory follows: that which is
the efficacious part of the sacrifice is the suffering; given a certain
degree of this, the desired effect will follow. As to what or who
suffers, or in what manner he or it suffers, these are secondary
considerations, even unimportant ones, so far as the end to be obtained
is concerned. This is the germ of _vicarious_ sacrifice, a plan
frequently observed in even immature religions. What seems the
diabolical cruelty of some superstitious rites, those of the
Carthaginians and Celts, for example, is thoroughly consistent with the
abstract theory of sacrifice, and did not spring from capricious malice.
The Death of Christ, regarded as a general vicarious atonement, has had
its efficiency explained directly by the theory that the pain he
suffered partook of the infinity of his divine nature; as thus it was
excruciating beyond measure, so it was infinitely effectual toward
appeasing divinity.

It is well known that this doctrine was no innovation on the religious
sentiment of the age when it was preached by the Greek fathers. For
centuries the Egyptian priests had taught the incarnation and sufferings
of Osiris, and his death for the salvation of his people. Similar myths
were common throughout the Orient, all drawn from the reasoning I have
mentioned.[222-1]

They have been variously criticized. Apart from the equivocal traits
this theory of atonement attributes to the supernatural powers--a
feature counterbalanced, in modern religion, by subduing its harshest
features--it is rooted essentially in the material view of religion. The
religious value of an act is to be appraised by the extent to which it
follows recognition of duty. To acknowledge an error is unpleasant; to
renounce it still more so, for it breaks a habit; to see our own errors
in their magnitude, sullying our whole nature and reaching far ahead to
generations yet unborn, is consummately bitter, and in proportion as it
is bitter, will keep us from erring.[223-1] This is the “sacrifice of a
contrite heart,” which alone is not despicable; and this no one can do
for us. We may be sure that neither the physical pain of victims burning
in a slow fire, nor the mental pain of yielding up whatever we hold
dearest upon earth, will make our views of duty a particle clearer or
our notion of divinity a jot nobler; and whatever does neither of these
is not of true religion.

The theory of sacrifice is intimately related with the idea of sin. In
the quotation I have made from Father Brebeuf we see that the Hurons
recognized a distinct form of rite as appropriate to appease a god when
angered. It is a matter of national temperament which of these forms
takes the lead. Joutel tells of a tribe in Texas who paid attention only
to the gods who worked them harm, saying that the good gods were good
anyhow. By parity of reasoning, one sect of Mohammedans worship the
devil only. It is well to make friends with your enemy, and then he will
not hurt you; and if a man is shielded from his enemies, he is safe
enough.

But where, as in most Semitic, Celtic and various other religions, the
chief gods frowned or smiled as they were propitiated or neglected, and
when a certain amount of pain was the propitiation they demanded, the
necessity of rendering this threw a dark shadow on life. What is the
condition of man, that only through sorrow he can reach joy? He must be
under a curse.

Physical and mental processes aided by analogy this gloomy deduction. It
is only through pain that we are stimulated to the pursuit of pleasure,
and the latter is a phantom we never catch. The laws of correct
reasoning are those which alone should guide us; but the natural laws of
the association of ideas do not at all correspond with the one
association which reason accepts. Truth is what we are born for, error
is what is given us.

Instead of viewing this state of things as one inseparable to the
relative as another than the universal, and, instead of seeing the means
of correcting it in the mental element of attention, continuance or
volition, guided by experience and the growing clearness of the purposes
of the laws of thought, the problem was given up as hopeless, and man
was placed under a ban from which a god alone could set him free; he was
sunk in original sin, chained to death.

To reach this result it is evident that a considerable effort at
reasoning, a peculiar view of the nature of the gods, and a temperament
not the most common, must be combined. Hence it was adopted as a
religious dogma by but a few nations. The Chinese know nothing of the
“sense of sin,” nor did the Greeks and Romans. The Parsees do not
acknowledge it, nor do the American tribes. “To sin,” in their
languages, does not mean to offend the deity, but to make a mistake, to
miss the mark, to loose one’s way as in a wood, and the missionaries
have exceeding difficulty in making them understand the theological
signification of the word.

The second class of rites are memorial in character. As the former were
addressed to the gods, so these are chiefly for the benefit of the
people. They are didactic, to preserve the myth, or institutionary, to
keep alive the discipline and forms of the church.

Of this class of rites it may broadly be said they are the myth
dramatized. Indeed, the drama owes its origin to the mimicry by
worshippers of the supposed doings of the gods. The most ancient
festivals have reference to the recurrence of the seasons, and the
ceremonies which mark them represent the mythical transactions which are
supposed to govern the yearly changes. The god himself was often
represented by the

high priest, and masked figures took the parts of attendant deities.

Institutionary rites are those avowedly designed to commemorate a myth
or event, and to strengthen thereby the religious organization.
Christian baptism is by some denominations looked upon as a
commemorative or institutionary rite only; and the same is the case with
the Lord’s Supper. These seem to have been the only rites recommended,
though the former was not practiced by Christ. In any ordinary meaning
of his words, he regarded them both as institutionary.

The tendency of memorial to become propitiatory rites is visible in all
materialistic religions. The procedure, from a simple commemorative act,
acquires a mystic efficacy, a supernatural or spiritual power, often
supposed to extend to the deity as well as the votary. Thus the Indian
“rain-maker” will rattle his gourd, beat his drum, and blow through his
pipe, to represent the thunder, lightning, and wind of the storm; and
he believes that by this mimicry of the rain-god’s proceedings he can
force him to send the wished-for showers. The charms, spells and
incantations of sorcery have the same foundation. Equally visible is it
in the reception of the Christian rites above mentioned, baptism and the
Eucharist, as “sacraments,” as observances of divine efficacy in
themselves. All such views arise from the material character of the
religious wants.

The conclusion is that, while emblems and memorial rites have nothing in
them which can mar, they also have nothing which can aid the growth and
purity of the religious sentiment, beyond advancing its social
relations; while symbols, in the proper sense of the term, and
propitiatory rites, as necessarily false and without foundation, always
degrade and obscure religious thought. Their prominence in a cult
declines, as it rises in quality; and in a perfected scheme of worship
they would have no place whatever.


FOOTNOTES:

[200-1] In his chapter _Ideen zu einer Physik des Symbols und des
Mythus_, of his _Symbolik und Mythologie_.

[201-1] Dr. H. C. Barlow’s _Essays on Symbolism_ (London, 1866),
deserves mention as one of the best of these.

[204-1] W. S. Jevons, _The Substitution of Similars_, p. 15 (London,
1869.)

[205-1] Creuzer, _Symbolik_, Bd. I, s. 59.

[207-1] _Ursprung der Mythologie_ (Berlin, 1862).

[208-1] Harrison Allen, M. D., _The Life Form in Art_, Phila. 1874.

[210-1] Cussans, _Grammar of Heraldry_, p. 16.

[212-1] Numerous examples from classical antiquity are given by Creuzer,
_Symbolik_, Bd. i. s. 114. sqq.

[214-1] W. von Humboldt, _Gesammelte Werke_, Bd. iv., s. 332.

[214-2] Creuzer, _Symbolik und Mythologie_, Bd. i., s. 282.

[214-3] Carl Frederick Koppen, _Die Lamaische Hierarchie and[TN-13]
Kirche_, ss. 59, 60, 61.

[219-1] Adolph Holtzmann, _Deutsche Mythologie_, p. 232 (Leipzig, 1874).

[222-1] “Es ist so gewissermassen in allen ernsten orientalischen Lehren
das Christenthum in seinem Keime vorgebildet.” Creuzer, _Symbolik und
Mythologie der Alten Völker_, Bd. i., s. 297.

[223-1] In a conversation reported by Mr. John Morley, John Stuart Mill
expressed his belief that “the coming modification of religion” will be
controlled largely through men becoming “more and more impressed with
the awful fact that a piece of conduct to-day may prove a curse to men
and women scores and even hundreds of years after the author of it is
dead.”



THE MOMENTA OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT.


SUMMARY.

     National impulses and aims as historic ideas. Their recurrence and
     its explanation. Their permanence in relation to their truth and
     consciousness. The historic ideas in religious progress are chiefly
     three.

     I. The Idea of the Perfected Individual.

     First placed in physical strength. This gave way in Southern Europe
     to the idea of physical symmetry, a religion of beauty and art.
     Later days have produced the idea of mental symmetry, the religion
     of culture. All have failed, and why? The momenta of true religion
     in each.

     II. The Idea of the Perfected Commonwealth.

     Certain national temperaments predispose to individualism, others
     to communism. The social relations governed at first by divine law.
     Later, morality represents this law. The religion of conduct. The
     religion of sentiment and of humanity. Advantages and disadvantages
     in this idea.

     Comparisons of these two ideas as completed respectively by Wilhelm
     von Humboldt and Auguste Comte.

     III. The Idea of Personal Survival.

     The doctrine of immortality the main moment in Christianity, Islam
     and Buddhism. Unfamiliar to old and simple faiths. Its energy and
     speculative relations. It is decreasing as a religious moment owing
     to, (1) a better understanding of ethics, (2) more accurate
     cosmical conceptions, (3) the clearer defining of life, (4) the
     increasing immateriality of religions.

     The future and final moments of religious thought.



CHAPTER VII.

THE MOMENTA OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT.


The records of the past can be studied variously. Events can be arranged
in the order of their occurrence: this is chronology or annals; in
addition to this, their connections and mutual relations as cause and
effect may be shown: this is historical science; or, thirdly, from a
general view of trains of related events some abstract aim as their
final cause may be theoretically deduced and confirmed by experience:
this is the philosophy of history. The doctrine of final causes, in its
old form as the _argumentum de appetitu_, has been superseded. Function
is not purpose; desire comes from the experience of pleasure, and
realizes its dreams, if at all, by the slow development of capacity. The
wish carries no warrant of gratification with it. No “argument from
design” can be adduced from the region where the laws of physical
necessity prevail. Those laws are not designed for an end.

When, however, in the unfolding of mind we reach the stage of notions,
we observe a growing power to accomplish desire, not only by altering
the individual or race organism, but also by bringing external objects
into unison with the desire, reversing the process common in the life of
sensation. This spectacle, however, is confined to man alone, and man as
guided by prospective volition, that is, by an object ahead.

When some such object is common to a nation or race, it exercises a wide
influence on its destiny, and is the key to much that otherwise would be
inexplicable in its actions. What we call national hopes, ambitions and
ideals are such objects. Sometimes they are distinctly recognized by the
nation, sometimes they are pursued almost unconsciously. They do not
correspond to things as they are, but as they are wished to be. Hence
there is nothing in them to insure their realization. They are like an
appetite, which may and may not develope the function which can gratify
it. They have been called “historic ideas,” and their consideration is a
leading topic in modern historical science.

Reason claims the power of criticizing such ideas, and of distinguishing
in them between what is true and therefore obtainable, and what is false
and therefore chimerical or even destructive. This is the province of
the philosophy of history. It guides itself by those general principles
for the pursuit of truth which have been noticed in brief in the earlier
pages of this book. Looking before as well as after, it aspires in the
united light of experience and the laws of mind, to construct for the
race an ideal within the reach of its capacities, yet which will
develope them to the fullest extent, a pole-star to which it can trust
in this night teeming with will-o’-the wisps.

The opinion that the history of mind is a progress whose end will be
worth more than was its beginning, may not prove true in fact--the
concrete expression never wholly covers the abstract requirements--but
it is undoubtedly true in theory. The progress, so far, has been by no
means a lineal one--each son a better man than his father--nor even, as
some would have it, a spiral one--periodical recurrences to the same
historical ideas, but each recurrence a nearer approach to the
philosophical idea--but it has been far more complex and irregular than
any geometrical figure will illustrate. These facile generalizations do
not express it.

Following the natural laws of thought man has erred infinitely, and his
errors have worked their sure result--they have destroyed him. There is
no “relish of salvation” in an error; otherwise than that it is sure to
kill him who obstructs the light by harboring it. There is no sort of
convertability of the false into the true, as shallow thinkers of the
day teach.

Man has only escaped death when at first by a lucky chance, and then by
personal and inherited experience, his thoughts drifted or were forced
into conformity with the logical laws of thought.

A historic idea is a complex product formed of numerous conceptions,
some true and others false. Its permanency and efficacy are in direct
proportion to the number and clearness of the former it embraces. When
it is purging itself of the latter, the nation is progressive; when the
false are retained, their poison spreads and the nation decays.

The _periodical recurrence_ of historic ideas is one of their most
striking features. The explanations offered for it have been various.
The ancient doctrines of an exact repetition of events in the cycles of
nature, and of the transmigration of souls, drew much support from it;
and the modern modification of the latter theory as set forth by
Wordsworth and Lessing, are distinctly derived from the same source.
Rightly elucidated, the philosophical historian will find in it an
invaluable clue to the unravelment of the tangled skein of human
endeavor.

Historic periodicity is on the one side an organic law of memory,
dependent upon the revival of transmitted ancestral impressions. A
prevailing idea though over-cultivation exhausts its organic correlate,
and leads to defective nutrition of that part in the offspring. Hence
they do not pursue the same idea as their fathers, but revert to a
remoter ancestral historic idea, the organic correlate of which has
lain fallow, thus gained strength. It is brought forth as new, receives
additions by contiguity and similarity, is ardently pursued,
over-cultivated, and in time supplanted by another revival.

But this material side corresponds to an all-important mental one. As an
organic process only, the history of periodic ideas is thus
satisfactorily explained, but he who holds this explanation to be
exhaustive sees but half the problem.

The permanence of a historic idea, I have stated, is in direct
proportion to the number of true ideas in its composition; the
impression it makes on the organic substrata of memory is in turn in
proportion to its permanence. The element of decay is the destructive
effects of natural trains of thought out of accord with the logically
true trains. These cause defective cerebral nutrition, which is thus
seen to arise, so far as influenced by the operations of the memory,
from relations of truth and error. There is a physiological tendency in
the former to preserve and maintain in activity; in the latter to
disappear. The percentage of true concepts which makes up the complexity
of a historic idea gives the principal factor towards calculating its
probable recurrence. Of course, a second factor is the physiological one
of nutrition itself.

The next important distinction in discussing historic ideas is between
those which are held consciously, and those which operate
unconsciously. The former are always found to be more active, and more
amenable to correction. An unconscious idea is a product of the natural,
not the logical laws of mind, and is therefore very apt to be largely
false. It is always displaced with advantage by a conscious aim.

One of the superficial fallacies of the day, which pass under the name
of philosophy, is to maintain that any such historic idea is the best
possible one for the time and place in which it is found. I am led to
refer to this by the false light it has thrown on religious history.
Herbert Spencer remarks in one of his essays:[236-1] “All religious
creeds, during the eras in which they are severally held, are the best
that could be held.” “All are good for their times and places.” So far
from this being the case, there never has been a religion but that an
improvement in it would have straightway exerted a beneficent effect.
Man, no matter what his condition, can always derive immediate good
from higher conceptions of Deity than he himself has elaborated. Nor is
the highest conception possible an idealization of self, as I have
sufficiently shown in a previous chapter, but is one drawn wholly from
the realm of the abstract. Moreover, as a matter of history, we know
that in abundant instances, the decay of nations can be traced largely
to the base teachings of their religious instructors. To maintain that
such religions were “the best possible ones” for the time and place is
the absurdest optimism. In what a religion shares of the abstractly true
it is beneficent; in what it partakes of the untrue it is deleterious.
This, and no other canon, must be our guide.

The ideas of religious history obey the same laws as other historic
ideas. They grow, decay, are supplanted and revive again in varying
guises, in accordance with the processes of organic nutrition as
influenced by the truth or falsity of their component ideas. Their
tendency to personification is stronger, because of the much greater
nearness they have to the individual desire. The one aspiration of a
high-spirited people when subjugated will be freedom; and in the lower
stages of culture they will be very certain to fabricate a myth of a
deliverer to come.

In like manner, every member of a community shares with his fellow
members some wish, hope or ambition dependent on unknown control and
therefore religious in character, which will become the “formative idea”
of the national religious development.

Of the various ideas in religious history there are three which, through
their permanence and frequent revival, we may justly suppose in
accordance with the above-mentioned canons to contain a large measure of
truth, and yet to be far from wholly true. They may be considered as
leading moments in religious growth, yet withal lacking something or
other essential to the satisfaction of the religious sentiment. The
first of these is the idea of the _perfected individual_; the second the
idea of the _perfected commonwealth_; the third, that of _personal
survival_. These have been the formative ideas (_Ideen der Gestaltung_)
in the prayers, myths, rites and religious institutions of many nations
at widely separated times.

Of the two first mentioned it may be said that every extended faith has
accepted them to some degree. They are the secret of the alliances of
religion with art, with government, with ethics, with science, education
and sentiment.

These alliances have often been taken by historians to contain the vital
elements of religion itself, and many explanations based on one or
another assumption of the kind have been proffered. Religion, while it
may embrace any of them, is independent of them all. Its relations to
them have been transitory, and the more so as their aims have been
local and material. The brief duration of the subjection of religion to
such incongenial ties was well compared by Lord Herbert of Cherbury to
the early maturity of brutes, who attain their full growth in a year or
two, while man needs a quarter of a century.[239-1] The inferior aims of
the religious sentiment were discarded one after another to make way for
higher ones, which were slowly dawning upon it. In this progress it was
guided largely by the three ideas I have mentioned, which have been in
many forms leading stimuli of the religious thought of the race.

First, of the _idea of the perfected individual_.

Many writers have supposed that the contemplation of Power in nature
first stirred religious thought in man. Though this is not the view
taken in this book, no one will question that the leading trait in the
gods of barbarism is physical strength. The naive anthropomorphism of
the savage makes his a god of a mighty arm, a giant in stature, puissant
and terrible. He hurls the thunderbolt, and piles up the mountains in
sport. His name is often The Strong One, as in the Allah, Eloah of the
Semitic tongues. Hercules, Chon, Melkarth, Dorsanes, Thor and others
were of the most ancient divinities in Greece, Egypt, Phœnicia, India,
and Scandinavia, and were all embodiments of physical force. Such, too,
was largely the character of the Algonkin Messou, who scooped out the
great lakes with his hands and tore up the largest trees by the roots.
The huge boulders from the glacial epoch which are scattered over their
country are the pebbles he tossed in play or in anger. The cleft in the
Andes, through which flows the river Funha, was opened by a single blow
of Nemqueteba, chief god of the Muyscas. In all such and a hundred
similar legends, easy to quote, we see the notion of strength, brute
force, muscular power, was that deemed most appropriate to divinity, and
that which he who would be godlike must most sedulously seek. When
filled with the god, the votary felt a surpassing vigor. The Berserker
fury was found in the wilds of America and Africa, as well as among the
Fiords. Sickness and weakness, on the contrary, were signs that the gods
were against him. Therefore, in all early stages of culture, the office
of priest and physician was one. Conciliation of the gods was the
catholicon.

Such deities were fearful to behold. They are represented as mighty of
stature and terrible of mien, calculated to appal, not attract, to
inspire fear, not to kindle love. In tropical America, in Egypt, in
Thibet, almost where you will, there is little to please the eye in the
pictures and statues of deities.

In Greece alone, a national temperament, marvellously sensitive to
symmetry, developed the combination of maximum strength with perfect
form in the sun-god, Apollo, and of grace with beauty in Aphrodite. The
Greeks were the apostles of the religion of beauty. Their philosophic
thought saw the permanent in the Form, which outlives strength, and is
that alone in which the race has being. In its transmission love is the
agent, and Aphrodite, unmatched in beauty and mother of love, was a
creation worthy of their devotion. Thus with them the religious
sentiment still sought its satisfaction in the individual, not indeed in
the muscle, but in the feature and expression.

When the old gods fell, the Christian fathers taught their flocks to
abhor the beautiful as one with the sensual. St. Clement of Alexandria
and Tertullian describe Christ as ugly of visage and undersized, a sort
of Socrates in appearance.[241-1] Christian art was long in getting
recognition. The heathens were the first to represent in picture and
statues Christ and the apostles, and for long the fathers of the church
opposed the multiplication of such images, saying that the inward beauty
was alone desirable. Christian art reached its highest inspiration under
the influence of Greek culture after the fall of Constantinople. In the
very year, however, that Rafaello Sanzio met his premature death, Luther
burned the decretals of the pope in the market-place of Wittenberg, and
preached a doctrine as hostile to art as was that of Eusebius and
Chrysostom. There was no longer any hope for the religion of beauty.

Nevertheless, under the influence of the revival of ancient art which
arose with Winckelmann towards the close of the last century, a gospel
of esthetics was preached. Its apostles were chiefly Germans, and among
them Schiller and Goethe are not inconspicuous names. The latter, before
his long life was closed, began to see the emptiness of such teachings,
and the violence perpetrated on the mind by forcing on the religious
sentiment the food fit only for the esthetic emotions.

The highest conception of individual perfection is reached in a
character whose physical and mental powers are symmetrically trained,
and always directed by conscious reason to their appropriate ends.
Self-government, founded on self-knowledge, wards off the pangs of
disappointment by limiting ambition to the attainable. The affections
and emotions, and the pleasures of sensation as well, are indulged in or
abstained from, but never to the darkening of the intellect. All the
talents are placed at usury; every power exercised systematically and
fruitfully with a consecration to a noble purpose.

This is the religion of culture. None other ranks among its adherents so
many great minds; men, as Carlyle expresses it, of much religiosity, if
of little religion. The ideal is a taking one. Such utter self-reliance,
not from ignorance, but from the perfection of knowledge, was that which
Buddha held up to his followers: “Self is the God of self; who else
should be the God?” In this century Goethe, Wordsworth, beyond all
others Wilhelm von Humboldt, have set forth this ideal. Less strongly
intellectual natures, as Maine de Biran, De Senancourt, and Matthew
Arnold, listen with admiration, but feel how unknown to the mass of
human kind must remain the tongue these masters speak.

Thus did the religious sentiment seek its satisfaction in the
idealization, first of physical force, then of form, and last of mental
force, but in each case turned away unsatisfied. Wherein did these
ideals fail? The first mentioned in exalting power over principle, might
over right. As was well said by the philosophical Novalis: “The ideal of
morality has no more dangerous rival than the ideal of physical
strength, of the most vigorous life. Through it man is transformed into
a reasoning beast, whose brutal cleverness has a fascination for weak
minds.”[243-1] The religion of beauty failed in that it addressed the
esthetic emotions, not the reasoning power. Art does not promote the
good; it owes no fealty to either utility or ethics: in itself, it must
be, in the negative sense of the words, at once useless and immoral.
“Nature is not its standard, nor is truth its chief end.”[244-1] Its
spirit is repose, “the perfect form in perfect rest;” whereas the spirit
of religion is action because of imperfection. Even the gods must know
of suffering, and partake, in incarnations, of the miseries of men.

In the religion of culture what can we blame? That it is lacking in the
impulses of action through the isolation it fosters; that it is and must
be limited to a few, for it provides no defense for the weaknesses the
many inherit; that its tendency is antagonistic to religion, as it cuts
away the feeling of dependence, and the trust in the unknown; that it
allows too little to enthusiasm ever to become a power.

On the other hand, what momenta of true religious thought have these
ideals embraced? Each presents some. Physical vigor, regarded as a sign
of complete nutrition, is an indispensable preliminary to the highest
religion. Correct thought cannot be, without sufficient and appropriate
food. If the nourishment is inadequate, defective energy of the brain
will be transmitted, and the offspring will revert ancestrally to a
lower plane of thought. “It thus happens that the minds of persons of
high religious culture by ancestral descent, and the intermarriage of
religious families, so strangely end in the production of children
totally devoid of moral sense and religious sentiment--moral imbeciles
in short.”[245-1] From such considerations of the necessity of physical
vigor to elevated thought, Descartes predicted that if the human race
ever attain perfection it will be chiefly through the art of medicine.
Not alone from emotions of sympathy did the eminent religious teachers
of past ages maintain that the alleviation and prevention of suffering
is the first practical duty of man; but it was from a perhaps
unconscious perception of the antagonism of bodily degeneration to
mental progress.

So, too, the religion of beauty and art contains an indefeasible germ of
true religious thought. Art sees the universal in the isolated fact; it
redeemed the coarse symbol of earlier days by associating it with the
emotions of joy, instead of fear; commencing with an exaltation of the
love to sex, it etherealized and ennobled passion; it taught man to look
elsewhere than to material things for his highest pleasure, for the work
of art always has its fortune in the imagination and not in the senses
of the observer; conceptions of order and harmony are familiar to it;
its best efforts seek to bring all the affairs of life under unity and
system;[246-1] and thus it strengthens the sentiment of moral
government, which is the first postulate of religion.

The symmetry of the individual, as understood in the religion of
culture, is likewise a cherished article of true religion. Thus only can
it protect personality against the pitfalls of self-negation and
absorption, which communism and pantheism dig for it. The integrity and
permanence of the person is the keystone to religion, as it is to
philosophy and ethics. None but a false teacher would measure our duty
to our neighbor by a higher standard than our love to ourselves. The
love of God alone is worthy to obscure it.

Professor Steinthal has said: “Every people has its own religion. The
national temperament hears the tidings and interprets them as it
can.”[246-2] On the other hand, Humboldt--perhaps the profoundest
thinker on these subjects of his generation--doubted whether religions
can be measured in reference to nations and sects, because “religion is
altogether subjective, and rests solely on the conceptive powers of the
individual.”[247-1] Whatever the creed, a pure mind will attach itself
to its better elements, a base one to its brutal and narrow doctrines. A
national religion can only be regarded as an average, applicable to the
majority, not entirely correct of the belief of any one individual,
wholly incorrect as to a few. Yet it is indubitable that the national
temperament creates the ideal which gives the essence of religion. Races
like the Tartar Mongols, who, as we are informed by the Abbé Huc, not
unfrequently move their tents several times a day, out of simple
restlessness, cannot desire the same stability that is sought by other
races, who have the beaver’s instinct for building and colonizing, such
as the Romans. Buddhism, which sets up the ideal of the individual, is
an acceptable theory to the former, while the latter, from earliest
ages, fostered religious views which taught the subordination of the
individual to the community, in other words, the _idea of the perfected
commonwealth_.

This is the conception at the base of all theocracies, forms of
government whose statutes are identified with the precepts of religion.
Instead of a constitution there is the Law, given and sanctioned by God
as a rule of action.

The Law is at first the Myth applied. Its object is as much to
propitiate the gods as to preserve social order. It is absolute because
it is inspired. Many of its ordinances as drawn from the myth are
inapplicable to man, and are unjust or frivolous. Yet such as it is, it
rules the conduct of the commonwealth and expresses the ideal of its
perfected condition.

All the oldest codes of laws are religious, and are alleged revelations.
The Pentateuch, the Avesta, the Laws of Manu, the Twelve Tables, the
Laws of Seleucus, all carry the endorsement, “And God said.” Their real
intention is to teach the relation of man to God, rather than the
relations of man to man. On practical points--on the rights of property,
on succession and wills, on contracts, on the adoption of neighbors, and
on the treatment of enemies--they often violate the plainest dictates of
natural justice, of common humanity, even of family affection. Their
precepts are frequently frivolous, sometimes grossly immoral. But if
these laws are compared with the earliest myths and cults, and the
opinions then entertained of the gods, and how to propitiate them, it
becomes easy to see how the precepts of the law flowed from these
inchoate imaginings of the religious sentiment.[249-1]

The improvement of civil statutes did not come through religion.
Experience, observation and free thought taught man justice, and his
kindlier emotions were educated by the desire to cherish and preserve
which arose from family and social ties. As these came to be recognized
as necessary relations of society, religion appropriated them,
incorporated them into her ideal, and even claimed them as her
revelations. History largely invalidates this claim. The moral progress
of mankind has been mainly apart from dogmatic teachings, often in
conflict with them. An established rule of faith may enforce obedience
to its statutes, but can never develop morals. “True virtue is
independent of every religion, and incompatible with any which is
accepted on authority.”[249-2]

Yet thinkers, even the best of them, appear to have had difficulty in
discerning any nobler arena for the religious sentiment than the social
one. “Religion,” says Matthew Arnold, “is conduct.” It is the power
“which makes for righteousness.” “As civil law,” said Voltaire,
“enforces morality in public, so the use of religion is to compel it in
private life.” “A complete morality,” observes a contemporary Christian
writer, “meets all the practical ends of religion.”[250-1] In such
expressions man’s social relations, his duty to his neighbor, are taken
to exhaust religion. It is still the idea of the commonwealth, the
religion of morality, the submission to a law recognized as divine.
Whether the law is a code of ethics, the decision of a general council,
or the ten commandments, it is alike held to be written by the finger of
God, and imperative. Good works are the demands of such religion.

Catholicism, which is altogether theocratic and authoritative, which
pictures the church as an ideal commonwealth, has always most flourished
in those countries where the Roman colonies left their more important
traces. The reformation of Protestantism was a reversion to the ideal of
the individual, which was that of ancient Teutonic faith. In more recent
times Catholicism itself has modified the rigidity of its teachings in
favor of the religion of sentiment, as it has been called, inaugurated
by Chateaubriand, and which is that attractive form seen in the writings
of Madame Swetchine and the La Ferronnais. These elevated souls throw a
charm around the immolation of self, which the egotism of the Protestant
rarely matches.

Thus the ideal of the commonwealth is found in those creeds which give
prominence to law, to ethics, and to sentiment, the altruistic elements
of mind. It fails, because its authority is antagonistic to morality in
that it impedes the search for the true. Neither is morality religion,
for it deals with the relative, while religion should guide itself by
the absolute. Every great religious teacher has violated the morality of
his day. Even sentiment, attractive as it is, is no ground on which to
build a church. It is, at best, one of the lower emotional planes of
action. Love itself, which must be the kernel of every true religion, is
not in earthly relations an altruistic sentiment. The measure and the
source of all such love, is self-love. The creed which rejects this as
its corner stone will build in vain.

While, therefore, the advantages of organization and action are on the
side of the faiths which see in religion a form of government, they
present fewer momenta of religious thought than those which encourage
the greater individuality. All forms and reforms, remarks Machiavelli,
in one of his notes to Livy, have been brought about by the exertions of
one man.[251-1] Religious reforms, especially, never have originated in
majorities. The reformatory decrees of the Council of Trent are due to
Martin Luther.

Either ideal, raised to its maximum, not only fails to satisfy the
religious sentiment, but puts upon it a forced meaning, and is therefore
not what this sentiment asks. This may be illustrated by comparing two
remarkable works, which, by a singular coincidence, were published in
the same year, and which better than any others present these ideals
pushed to their extreme. It is characteristic of them that neither
professes to treat of religion, but of politics. The one is entitled,
“_An Attempt to define the limits of Government_,” and is by Wilhelm von
Humboldt; the other is the better known work of Auguste Comte, his
“_System of Positive Polity_.”[252-1]

The first lays down the principle that the highest end of man is the
utmost symmetrical education of his own powers in their individual
peculiarities. To accomplish this, he must enjoy the largest freedom of
thought and action consistent with the recognition of the same right in
others. In regard to religion, the state should have nothing to do with
aiding it, but should protect the individual in his opposition to any
authoritative form of it. As a wholly personal and subjective matter,
social relations do not concern it. In fine, the aim of both government
and education should be the development of an individualism in which an
enlightened intellect controls and directs all the powers toward an
exalted self-cultivation.

Comte reverses this picture. His fundamental principle is to subordinate
the sum total of our existence to our social relations; real life is to
live in others; not the individual but humanity is the only worthy
object of effort. Social polity therefore includes the whole of
development; the intellect should have no other end but to subserve the
needs of the race, and always be second to the altruistic sentiments.
Love toward others should absorb self-love. “_Il est encore meilleur
d’aimer que d’être aimé._”

Such is the contrast between the ideal of the individual as exhibited by
the Religion of Culture, and the ideal of the commonwealth as portrayed
in the Religion of Humanity.

The whole duty of man, says the one school, is to live for others; nay,
says the other, it is to live intelligently for himself; the intellect,
says the former, should always be subordinated to society, and be led by
the emotions; intellect, says the latter, should ever be in the
ascendant, and absolutely control and direct the emotions; the
theoretical object of government, says the former, is to enable the
affections and thoughts to pass into action; not so, says the latter,
its only use is to give the individual secure leisure to develope his
own affections and thoughts. Mutual relation is the key note of the
former, independence of the latter; the former is the apotheosis of
love, the latter of reason.

Strictly and literally the apotheosis. For, differing as they do on such
vital points, they both agree in dispensing with the ideas of God and
immortality as conceptions superfluous in the realization of the
theoretical perfection they contemplate. Not that either scheme omits
the religious sentiment. On the contrary, it is especially prominent in
one, and very well marked in the other. Both assume its growing
prominence, never its extinction. Both speak of it as an integral part
of man’s highest nature.

Comte and Humboldt were thinkers too profound to be caught by the facile
fallacy that the rapid changes in religious thought betoken the early
abrogation of all creeds. Lessing, the philosophers of the French
revolution, James Mill, Schopenhauer and others fell into this error.
They were not wiser than the clown of Horace, who seated himself by the
rushing stream, thinking it must soon run itself out--

    Expectat rusticus dum defluat amnis; at ille
    Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis ævum.

Vain is the dream that man will ever reach the point when he will think
no more of the gods. Dogmas may disappear, but religion will flourish;
destroy the temple and sow it with salt, in a few days it rises again
built for aye on the solid ground of man’s nature.

So long as the race is upon earth, just so long will the religious
sentiment continue to crave its appropriate food, and this at last is
recognized even by those who estimate it at the lowest. “To yield this
sentiment reasonable satisfaction,” observes Professor Tyndall in one of
his best known addresses, “is the problem of problems at the present
hour. It is vain to oppose it with a view to its extirpation.” The
“general thaw of theological creeds,” which Spencer remarks upon, is no
sign of the loss of interest in religious subjects, but the reverse.
Coldness and languor are the premonitions of death, not strife and
defence.

But as the two moments of religious thought which I have now discussed
have both reached their culmination in a substantial repudiation of
religion, that which stimulates the religious sentiment to-day must be
something different from either. This I take to be the _idea of personal
survival_ after physical death, or, as it is generally called, the
doctrine of the immortality of the soul.

This is the main dogma in the leading religions of the world to-day. “A
God,” remarks Sir William Hamilton, speaking for the enlightened
Christians of his generation, “is to us of practical interest, only
inasmuch as he is the condition of our immortality.”[256-1] In his
attractive work, _La Vie Eternelle_, whose large popularity shows it to
express the prevailing views of modern Protestant thought, Ernest
Naville takes pains to distinguish that Christianity is not a means of
living a holy life so much as one of gaining a blessed hereafter. The
promises of a life after death are numerous and distinct in the New
Testament. Most of the recommendations of action and suffering in this
world are based on the doctrine of compensation in the world to come.

Mohammed taught the same tenet with equal or even greater emphasis. In
one sura he says: “To whatever is evil may they be likened who believe
not in a future life;” and elsewhere: “As for the blessed ones--their
place is Paradise. There shall they dwell so long as the heavens and the
earth endure, enjoying the imperishable bounties of God. But as for
those who shall be consigned to misery, their place is the Fire. There
shall they abide so long as the heavens and the earth shall last, unless
God wills it otherwise.”[256-2]

In Buddhism, as generally understood, the doctrine of a future life is
just as clear. Not only does the soul wander from one to another animal
body, but when it has completed its peregrinations and reaches its final
abode, it revels in all sorts of bliss. For the condition of Nirvana,
understood by philosophical Buddhists as that of the extinction of
desires even to the desire of life, and of the complete enlightenment of
the mind even to the recognition that existence itself is an illusion,
has no such meaning to the millions who profess themselves the followers
of the sage of Kapilavastu. They take it to be a material Paradise with
pleasures as real as those painted by Mohammed, wherein they will dwell
beyond all time, a reward for their devotions and faith in this life.

These three religions embrace three-fourths of the human race and all
its civilized nations, with trifling exceptions. They displaced and
extinguished the older creeds and in a few centuries controlled the
earth; but as against each other their strife has been of little avail.
The reason is, they share the same momentum of religious thought,
differing in its interpretation not more among themselves than do
orthodox members of either faith in their own fold. Many enlightened
Muslims and Christians, for example, consider the descriptions of
Paradise given in the Koran and the Apocalypse to convey wholly
spiritual meanings.

There has been so much to surprise in the rapid extension of these
faiths that the votaries of each claim manifest miraculous
interposition. The religious idea of an after life is a sufficient
moment to account for the phenomenon. I say the _religious_ idea, for,
with one or two exceptions, however distinct had been the belief in a
hereafter, that belief had not a religious coloring until they gave it
such. This distinction is an important one.

Students of religions have hitherto attributed too much weight to the
primitive notion of an existence after death. It is common enough, but
it rarely has anything at all to do with the simpler manifestations of
the religious sentiment. These are directed to the immediate desires of
the individual or the community, and do not look beyond the present
life. The doctrine of compensation hereafter is foreign to them. I have
shown this at length so far as the religions of America were concerned.
“Neither the delights of a heaven on the one hand, nor the terrors of a
hell on the other were ever held out by priests or sages as an incentive
to well doing, or a warning to the evil disposed.”[258-1] The same is
true of the classical religions of Greece and Rome, of Carthage and
Assyria. Even in Egypt the manner of death and the rites of interment
had much more to do with the fate of the soul, than had its thoughts
and deeds in the flesh. The opinions of Socrates and Plato on the soul
as something which always existed and whose after life is affected by
its experiences here, struck the Athenians as novel and innovating.

On the other hand, the ancient Germans had a most lively faith in the
life hereafter. Money was loaned in this world to be repaid in the next.
But with them also, as with the Aztecs, the future was dependent on the
character or mode of death rather than the conduct of life. He who died
the “straw-death” on the couch of sickness looked for little joy in the
hereafter; but he who met the “spear-death” on the field of battle went
at once to Odin, to the hall of Valhalla, where the heroes of all time
assembled to fight, eat boar’s fat and drink beer. Even this rude belief
gave them such an ascendancy over the materialistic Romans, that these
distinctly felt that in the long run they must succumb to a bravery
which rested on such a mighty moment as this.[259-1]

The Israelites do not seem to have entertained any general opinion on an
existence after death. No promise in the Old Testament refers to a
future life. The religion there taught nowhere looks beyond the grave.
It is materialistic to the fullest extent. Hence, a large body of
orthodox Jewish philosophers, the Sadducees, denied the existence of the
soul apart from the body.

The central doctrine of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, the leading
impulse which he gave to the religious thought of his age, was that the
thinking part of man survives his physical death, and that its condition
does not depend on the rites of interment, as other religions then
taught,[260-1] but on the character of its thoughts during life here.
Filled with this new and sublime idea, he developed it in its numerous
applications, and drew from it those startling inferences, which, to
this day, stagger his followers, and have been in turn, the terror and
derision of his foes. This he saw, that against a mind inwardly
penetrated with the full conviction of a life hereafter, obtainable
under known conditions, the powers of this world are utterly futile, and
its pleasures hollow phantoms.

The practical energy of this doctrine was immensely strengthened by
another, which is found very obscurely, if at all, stated in his own
words, but which was made the central point of their teaching by his
immediate followers. The Christianity they preached was not a
philosophical scheme for improving the race, but rested on the
historical fact of a transaction between God and man, and while they
conceded everlasting existence to all men, all would pass it in the
utmost conceivable misery, except those who had learned of these
historical events, and understood them as the church prescribed.

As the ancient world placed truth in ideas and not in facts, no teaching
could well have been more radically contrary to its modes of thought;
and the doctrine once accepted, the spirit of proselytizing came with
it.

I have called this idea a new one to the first century of our era, and
so it was in Europe and Syria. But in India, Sakyamuni, probably five
hundred years before, had laid down in sententious maxims the
philosophical principle which underlies the higher religious doctrine of
a future life. These are his words, and if through the efforts of
reasoning we ever reach a demonstration of the immortality of the soul,
we shall do it by pursuing the argument here indicated: “Right thought
is the path to life everlasting. Those who think do not die.”[262-1]

Truth alone contains the elements of indefinite continuity; and truth is
found only in the idea, in correct thought.

Error in the intellectual processes corresponds to pain in sensation; it
is the premonition of waning life, of threatened annihilation; it
contains the seed of cessation of action or death. False reasoning is
self-destructive. The man who believes himself invulnerable will
scarcely survive his first combat. A man’s true ideas are the most he
can hope, and all that he should wish, to carry with him to a life
hereafter. Falsehood, sin, is the efficient agent of death. As Bishop
Hall says: “There is a kind of not-being in sin; for sin is not an
existence of somewhat that is, but a deficiency of that rectitude which
should be; it is a privation, as blindness is a privation of sight.”

While the religious doctrine of personal survival has thus a position
defensible on grounds of reason as being that of the inherent permanence
of self-conscious truth, it also calls to its aid and indefinitely
elevates the most powerful of all the emotions, _love_. This, as I have
shown in the second chapter, is the sentiment which is characteristic
of _preservative_ acts. Self-love, which is prominent in the idea of the
perfected individual, sex-love, which is the spirit of the multiform
religious symbolism of the reproductive act, and the love of race, which
is the chief motor in the religion of humanity, are purified of their
grosser demands and assigned each its meet post in the labor of uniting
the conceptions of the true under the relation of personality.

The highest development of which such love is capable arises through the
contemplation of those verities which are abstract and eternal, and
which thus set forth, to the extent the individual mind is capable of
receiving it, the completed notion of diuturnity. This highest love is
the “love of God.” A Supreme Intelligence, one to which all truth is
perfect, must forever dwell in such contemplation. Therefore the deeper
minds of Christianity define man’s love of God, as God’s love to
himself. “Eternal life,” says Ernest Naville, “is in its principle the
union with God and the joy that results from that union.”[263-1] The
pious William Law wrote: “No man can reach God with his love, or have
union with Him by it, but he who is inspired with that one same spirit
of love, with which God loved himself from all eternity, before there
was any creation.”[264-1]

Attractive as the idea of personal survival is in itself, and potent as
it has been as a moment of religious thought, it must be ranked among
those that are past. While the immortality of the soul retains its
interest as a speculative inquiry, I venture to believe that as an idea
in religious history, it is nigh inoperative; that as an element in
devotional life it is of not much weight; and that it will gradually
become less so, as the real meaning of religion reaches clearer
interpretations.

Its decay has been progressive, and common to all the creeds which
taught it as a cardinal doctrine, though most marked in Christianity. A
century ago Gibbon wrote: “The ancient Christians were animated by a
contempt for their present existence, and by a just confidence of
immortality, of which the doubtful but imperfect faith of modern ages
cannot give us any adequate notion.”[264-2] How true this is can be
appreciated only by those who study this doctrine in the lives and
writings of the martyrs and fathers of the primitive church.

The breach which Gibbon remarked has been indefinitely widened since his
time. What has brought this about, and what new moment in religious
thought seems about to supply its place, will form an appropriate close
to the present series of studies. In its examination, I shall speak only
of Christian thought, since it leads the way which other systems will
ultimately follow.

In depicting the influences which have led and are daily leading with
augmented force to the devitalizing of the doctrine of immortality, I
may with propriety confine myself to those which are themselves strictly
religious. For the change I refer to is not one brought about by the
opponents of religion, by materialistic doctrines, but is owing to the
development of the religious sentiment itself. Instead of tending to an
abrogation of that sentiment, it may be expected to ennoble its
emotional manifestations and elevate its intellectual conceptions.

Some of these influences are historical, as the repeated disappointments
in the second coming of Christ, and the interest of proselytizing
churches to interpret this event allegorically. Those which I deem of
more importance, however, are such as are efficient to-day, and probably
will continue to be the main agents in the immediate future of religious
development. They are:

(1.) The recognition of the grounds of ethics.

(2.) The recognition of the cosmical relations.

(3.) The clearer defining of life.

(4.) The growing immateriality of religious thought.

(1.) The authority of the Law was assumed in the course of time by most
Christian churches, and the interests of morality and religion were
claimed to be identical. The Roman church with its developed casuistry
is ready to prescribe the proper course of conduct in every emergency;
and if we turn to many theological writers of other churches, Dick’s
_Philosophy of Religion_ for instance, we find moral conduct regarded as
the important aim of the Christian life. Morality without religion,
works without faith, are pronounced to be of no avail in a religious,
and of very questionable value in a social sense. Some go so far as to
deny that a person indifferent to the prevailing tenets of religion can
lead a pure and moral life. Do away with the belief in a hereafter of
rewards and punishments, say these, and there is nothing left to
restrain men from the worst excesses, or at least from private sin.

Now, however, the world is growing to perceive that morality is
separable from religion; that it arose independently, from a gradual
study of the relations of man to man, from principles of equity inherent
in the laws of thought, and from considerations of expediency which
deprive its precepts of the character of universality. Religion is
subjective, and that in which it exerts an influence on morality is not
its contents, but the reception of them peculiar to the individual.
Experience alone has taught man morals; pain and pleasure are the forms
of its admonitions; and each generation sees more clearly that the
principles of ethics are based on immutable physical laws. Moreover, it
has been shown to be dangerous to rest morality on the doctrine of a
future life; for apart from the small effect the terrors of a hereafter
have on many sinners, as that doctrine is frequently rejected, social
interests suffer. And, finally, it is debasing and hurtful to religion
to make it a substitute for police magistracy.[267-1]

The highest religion would certainly enforce the purest morality; but it
is equally true that such a religion would enjoin much not approved by
the current opinions of the day. The spirit of the reform inaugurated by
Luther was a protest against the subjection of the religious sentiment
to a moral code. With the independence thus achieved, it came to be
recognized that to the full extent that morality is essential to
religion, it can be reached as well or better without a system of
rewards and punishments after death, than with one. Both religion and
morality stand higher, when a conception of an after life for this
purpose is dropped.

(2.) The recognition of the cosmical relations has also modified the
views of personal survival. The expansion of the notions of space and
time by the sciences of geology and astronomy has, as I before remarked,
done away with the ancient belief that the culminating catastrophe of
the universe will be the destruction of this world. An insignificant
satellite of a third rate sun, which, with the far grander suns whose
light we dimly discern at night, may all be swept away in some flurry of
“cosmical weather,” that the formation or the dissolution of such a body
would be an event of any beyond the most insignificant importance, is
now known to be almost ridiculous. To assert that at the end of a few or
a few thousand years, on account of events transpiring on the surface of
this planet, the whole relationship of the universe will be altered, a
new heaven and a new earth be formed, and all therein be made
subservient to the joys of man, becomes an indication of an arrogance
which deserves to be called a symptom of insanity. Thus, much of the
teleology both of the individual and the race taught by the primitive
and medieval church undergoes serious alterations. The literal meaning
of the millennium, the New Jerusalem, and the reign of God on earth has
been practically discarded.

With the disappearance of the ancient opinion that the universe was
created for man, the sun to light him by day and the stars by night,
disappeared also the later thesis that the happiness or the education of
man was the aim of the Order in Things. The extent and duration of
matter, if they indicate any purpose at all, suggest one incomparably
vaster than this; while the laws of mind, which alone distinctly point
to purpose, reveal one in which pain and pleasure have no part or lot,
and one in which man has so small a share that it seems as if it must be
indifferent what his fate may be. The slightest change in the atmosphere
of the globe will sweep away his species forever.

Schopenhauer classified all religions as optimisms or pessimisms. The
faith of the future will be neither. What is agreeable or disagreeable
to man will not be its standard of the excellence of the universe.
However unwillingly, he is at last brought to confess that his comfort
is not the chief nor even any visible aim of the order in things. In the
course of that order it may be, nay, it is nigh certain, that the human
species will pass through decadence to extinction along with so many
other organisms. Neither as individuals nor as a race, neither in regard
to this life nor to the next, does the idea of God, when ennobled by a
contemplation of the cosmical relations, permit to man the effrontery
of claiming that this universe and all that therein is was made with an
eye to his wants and wishes, whether to gratify or to defeat them.

(3.) The closer defining of life as a result of physical force, and the
recognition of mind as a connotation of organism, promise to be active
in elevating religious conceptions, but at the expense of the current
notions of personality. Sensation and voluntary motion are common to the
fetus, the brute and the plant, as well as to man. They are not part of
his “soul.” Intellect and consciousness, as I have shown, exclude
sensation, and in these, if anywhere, he must look for his immortal
part. Even here, error works destruction, and ignorance plants no seed
of life. We are driven back to the teaching of Buddha, that true thought
alone is that which does not die.

Why should we ask more? What else is worth saving? Our present
personality is a train of ideas base and noble, true and false, coherent
through the contiguity of organs nourished from a common center. Another
personality is possible, one of true ideas coherent through conscious
similarity, independent of sensation, as dealing with topics not
commensurate with it. Yet were this refuge gained, it leaves not much of
the dogma that every man has an indestructible conscious soul, which
will endure always, no matter what his conduct or thoughts have been.
Rather does it favor the opinion expressed so well by Matthew Arnold in
one of his sonnets:

    “He who flagged not in the earthly strife
    From strength to strength advancing--only he,
    His soul well knit and all his battles won,
    Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life.”

Not only has the received doctrine of a “soul,” as an undying something
different from mind and peculiar to man, received no support from a
closer study of nature,--rather objections amounting to refutation,--but
it has reacted injuriously on morals, and through them on religion
itself. Buddha taught that the same spark of immortality exists in man
and brute, and actuated by this belief laid down the merciful rule to
his disciples: “Do harm to no breathing thing.” The apostle Paul on the
other hand, recognizing in the lower animals no such claim on our
sympathy, asks with scorn: “Doth God care for oxen?” and actually strips
from a humane provision of the old Mosaic code its spirit of charity, in
order to make it subserve a point in his polemic.

(4.) As the arrogance of the race has thus met a rebuke, so has the
egotism of the individual. His religion at first was a means of securing
material benefits; then a way to a joyous existence beyond the tomb: the
love of self all the time in the ascendant.

This egoism in the doctrine of personal survival has been repeatedly
flung at it by satirists, and commented on by philosophers. The
Christian who “hopes to be saved by grossly believing” has been felt on
all hands to be as mean in his hope, as he is contemptible in his way of
attaining it. To center all our religious efforts to the one end of
getting joy--however we may define it--for our individual selves, has
something repulsive in it to a deeply religious mind. Yet that such in
the real significance of the doctrine of personal survival is granted by
its ablest defenders. “The general expectation of future happiness can
afford satisfaction only as it is a present object to the principle of
self-love,” says Dr. Butler, the eminent Lord Bishop of Durham, than
whom no acuter analyst has written on the religious nature of man.

Yet nothing is more certain than that the spirit of true religion wages
constant war with the predominance or even presence of selfish aims.
Self-love is the first and rudest form of the instinct of preservation.
It is sublimed and sacrificed on the altar of holy passion. “Self,”
exclaims the fervid William Law, “is both atheist and idolater; atheist,
because it rejects God; idolater, because it is its own idol.” Even when
this lowest expression of the preservative instinct rises but to the
height of sex-love, it renounces self, and rejoices in martyrdom. “All
for love, or the world well lost,” has been the motto of too many
tragedies to be doubted now. By the side of the ancient Roman or the
soldier of the French revolution, who through mere love of country
marched joyously to certain death from which he expected no waking, does
not the martyr compare unfavorably, who meets the same death, but does
so because he believes that thereby he secures endless and joyous life?
Is his love as real, as noble, as unselfish?

Even the resistless physical energy which the clear faith in the life
hereafter has so often imparted, becomes something uncongenial to the
ripened religious meditation. Such faith brings about mighty effects in
the arena of man’s struggles, but it does so through a sort of
mechanical action. An ulterior purpose is ahead, to wit, the salvation
of the soul, and it may be regarded as one of the best established
principles of human effort that every business is better done, when it
is done for its own sake, out of liking for it, than for results
expected from it.

Of nothing is this more just than religion. Those blossoms of spiritual
perfection, the purified reason, the submissive will, the sanctifying
grace of abstract ideas, find no propitious airs amid the violent toil
for personal survival, whether that is to be among the mead jugs of
Valhalla, the dark-eyed houris of Paradise, or the “solemn troops and
sweet society” of Christian dreams. Unmindful of these, the saintly
psyche looks to nothing beyond truth; it asks no definite, still less
personal, end to which this truth is to be applied; to find it is to
love it, and to love it is enough.

The doctrine I here broach, is no strange one to Christian thought. To
be sure the exhortation, “Save your soul from Hell,” was almost the sole
incentive to religion in the middle ages, and is still the burden of
most sermons. But St. Paul was quickened with a holier fire, that
consumed and swept away such a personal motive, when he wrote: “Yea, I
could wish that I myself were cast out from Christ as accursed, for the
sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh.”[274-1] St.
Augustine reveals the touch of the same inspiration in his passionate
exclamation: “Far, O Lord, far from the heart of thy servant be it that
I should rejoice in any joy whatever. The blessed life is the joy in
truth alone.”[274-2] And amid the pæans to everlasting life which fill
the pages of the _De Imitatione Christi_, the medieval monk saw
something yet greater, when he puts in the mouth of God the Father, the
warning: “The wise lover thinks not of the gift, but of the love of the
giver. He rests not in the reward, but in Me, beyond all
rewards.”[275-1] The mystery of great godliness is, that he who has it
is as one who seeking nothing yet finds all things, who asking naught
for his own sake, neither in the life here nor yet hereafter, gains that
alone which is of worth in either.

Pressed by such considerations, the pious Schleiermacher threw down the
glaive on the side of religion half a century ago when he wrote: “Life
to come, as popularly conceived, is the last enemy which speculative
criticism has to encounter, and, if possible, to overcome.” The course
he marked out, however, was not that which promises success. Recurring
to the austere theses of Spinoza, he sought to bring them into accord
with a religion of emotion. The result was a refined Pantheism with its
usual deceptive solutions.

What recourse is left? Where are we to look for the intellectual moment
of religion in the future? Let us review the situation.

The religious sentiment has been shown to be the expression of
unfulfilled desire, but this desire peculiar as dependent on unknown
power. Material advantages do not gratify it, nor even spiritual joy
when regarded as a personal sentiment. Preservation by and through
relation with absolute intelligence has appeared to be the meaning of
that “love of God” which alone yields it satisfaction. Even this is
severed from its received doctrinal sense by the recognition of the
speculative as above the numerical unity of that intelligence, and the
limitation of personality which spiritual thought demands. The eternal
laws of mind guarantee perpetuity to the extent they are obeyed--and no
farther. They differ from the laws of force in that they convey a
message which cannot be doubted concerning the purport of the order in
nature, which is itself “the will of God.” That message in its
application is the same which with more or less articulate utterance
every religion speaks--Seek truth: do good. Faith in that message,
confidence in and willing submission to that order, this is all the
religious sentiment needs to bring forth its sweetest flowers, its
richest fruits.

Such is the ample and satisfying ground which remains for the religion
of the future to build upon. It is a result long foreseen by the clearer
minds of Christendom. One who more than any other deserves to be classed
among these writes: “Resignation to the will of God is the whole of
piety. * * * Our resignation may be said to be perfect when we rest in
his will as our end, as being itself most just and right and good.
Neither is this at bottom anything more than faith, and honesty and
fairness of mind; in a more enlarged sense, indeed, than these words are
commonly used.”[277-1]

Goethe, who studied and reflected on religious questions more than is
generally supposed, saw that in such a disposition of mind lie the
native and strongest elements of religion. In one of his conversations
with Chancellor Müller, he observed: “Confidence and resignation, the
sense of subjection to a higher will which rules the course of events
but which we do not fully comprehend, are the fundamental principles of
every better religion.”[277-2]

By the side of two such remarkable men, I might place the opinion of a
third not less eminent than they--Blaise Pascal. In one part of his
writings he sets forth the “marks of a true religion.” Sifted from its
physical ingredients, the faith he defines is one which rests on love
and submission to God, and a clear recognition of the nature of man.

Here I close these studies on the Religious Sentiment. They show it to
be a late and probably a final development of mind. The intellect first
reaches entire self-consciousness, the emotions first attain perfection
of purpose, when guided by its highest manifestation. Man’s history
seems largely to have been a series of efforts to give it satisfaction.
This will be possible only when he rises to a practical appreciation of
the identity of truth, love and life.


FOOTNOTES:

[236-1] _Essay on the use of Anthropomorphism._ Mr. Spencer’s argument,
in his own words, is this:--“From the inability under which we labor to
conceive of a Deity save as some idealization of ourselves, it
inevitably results that in each age, among each people, and to a great
extent in each individual, there must arise just that conception of
Deity best adapted to the needs of the case.” “All are good for their
times and places.” “All were beneficent in their effects on those who
held them.” It would be hard to quote from the records of theory-making
an example of more complete indifference to acknowledged facts than
these quotations set forth.

[239-1] _De Veritate_, p. 216.

[241-1] August Neander, _Geschichte der Christlichen Religion und
Kirche_, Bd. i., ss. 160, 346. (Gotha, 1856.) St. Clement’s description
of Christ is Τον οψιν αισχρον. Tertullian says: “Nec humanæ honestatis
corpus fuit, nedum celestis claritatis.”

[243-1] Novalis, _Schriften_, B. i., s. 244.

[244-1] A. Bain, _The Senses and the Intellect_, p. 607.

[245-1] Dr. T. Laycock, _On some Organic Laws of Memory_, in the
_Journal of Mental Science_, July, 1875, p. 178.

[246-1] Speaking of the mission of the artist, Wilhelm von Humboldt
says: “Die ganze Natur, treu und vollständig beobachtet, mit sich
hinüber zu tragen, d. h. den Stoff seiner Erfahrungen dem Umfange der
Welt gleich zu machen, diese ungeheure Masse einzelner und abgerissener
Erscheinungen in eine l’ungetrennte Einheit und ein organisirtes Ganzes
zu verwandeln; und dies durch alle die Organe zu thun, die ihm hierzu
verliehen sind,--ist das letzte Ziel seines intellectuellen Bemühen.”
_Ueber Goethe’s Hermann und Dorothea_, Ab. IV.

[246-2] _Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie_, B. I. s. 48.

[247-1] _Gesammelte Werke_. Bd. VII., s. 63.

[249-1] See this forcibly brought out and abundantly illustrated in the
work of M. Coulange, _La Cité Antique_.

[249-2] W. von Humboldt, _Gesammelte Werke_. Bd. VII., p. 72.

[250-1] H. L. Liddon, Canon of St. Paul’s. _Some Elements of Religion_,
p. 84.

[251-1] The Chevalier Bunsen completed the moral estimate of the
one-man-power, thus acknowledged by Machiavelli, in these words: “Alles
Grosse geht aus vom Einzelnen, _aber nur in dem Masse, als dieser das
Ich dem Ganzen opfert_.” _Gott in der Geschichte_, Bd. I., s. 38.

[252-1] W. von Humboldt, _Ideen zu einem Vorsuch, die Gränzen der
Wirksamkeit des Staats zu bestimmen_, Breslau, 1851. Auguste Comte,
_Système de Politique Positive_, Paris, 1851-4. The former was written
many years before its publication.

[256-1] _Lectures on Metaphysics_, Vol. I., p. 23.

[256-2] _The Koran_, Suras xi., xvi.

[258-1] _The Myths of the New World_, Chap. IX.

[259-1] Jacob Grimm quite overlooked this important element in the
religion of the ancient Germans. It is ably set forth by Adolf
Holtzmann, _Deutsche Mythologie_, s. 196 sqq. (Leipzig, 1874).

[260-1] The seemingly heartless reply he made to one of his disciples,
who asked permission to perform the funeral rites at his father’s grave:
“Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead,” is an obvious
condemnation of one of the most widespread superstitions of the ancient
world. So, according to an ingenious suggestion of Lord Herbert of
Cherbury, was the fifth commandment of Moses: “Ne parentum seriem
tanquam primam aliquam causam suspicerent homines, et proinde cultum
aliquem Divinum illis deferrent, qualem ex honore parentum sperare
liceat benedictionem, docuit.” _De Veritate_, p. 231.

Herbert Spencer in his _Essay on the Origin of Animal Worship_, calls
ancestral worship “the universal first form of religious belief.” This
is very far from correct, but it is easy to see how a hasty thinker
would be led into the error by the prominence of the ancient funereal
ceremonies.

[262-1] Dhammapada, 21.

[263-1] _La Vie Eternelle_, p. 339.

[264-1] _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, Vol. I., ch. XV.

[264-2] _Address to the Clergy_, p. 16.

[267-1] “Toute religion, qu’on se permet de défendre comme une croyance
qu’il est utile de laisser au peuple, ne peut plus espérer qu’une agonie
plus ou moins prolongée.” Condorcet, _De l’Esprit Humain_, Ep. V.

[274-1] _Romans_, ch. ix., v. 3.

[274-2] “Beata quippe vita est gaudium de veritate.” Augustini
_Confessionum_, Lib. x., caps. xxii., xxiii.

[275-1] “Prudens amator non tam donum amantis considerat, quam dantis
amorem. Nobilis amator non quiescit in dono, sed in me super omne
donum.” _De Imitatione Christi_, Lib. iii., cap. vi.

[277-1] _Fifteen Sermons_ by Joseph Butler, Lord Bishop of Durham.
Sermon “On the love of God.”

[277-2] _Unterhaltungen_, p. 131.



INDICES.


I. AUTHORS QUOTED.

  Allen, H., 208.

  Anaxagoras, 106.

  Arnold, M., 249, 271.

  Aristotle, 105.

  Augustine, St., 20, 57, 93, 128, 191, 194, 274.


  Bain, A., 9, 25, 52, 59, 87, 91, 244.

  Barlow, H. C., 201.

  Baxter, Richard, 60.

  Boehmer, H., 7.

  Boole, Geo., 24, 44, 104, 105, 108, 111.

  Bunsen, 109, 251.

  Butler, Bishop, 60, 119, 276.


  Carlyle, 243.

  Catlow, J. P., 14, 64.

  Chateaubriand, 250.

  Comte, A., 11, 39, 128, 187, 194, 252.

  Condorcet, 267.

  Cory, J. P., 191.

  Coulange, 245.

  Creuzer, 90, 106, 119, 127, 200, 212, 222.

  Cussans, 210.


  Dante, 93.

  Darwin, C., 71, 88.

  Dick, 266.

  Dickson, J. T., 73.


  Etheridge, J. W., 190.


  Ferguson, 66.

  Ferrier, J. F., 20, 28, 43, 97.

  Feuchtersleben, 8, 54, 73.

  Feuerbach, 194.

  Fothergill, J. M., 61.


  Gibbon, 264.

  Goethe, 277.

  Gurney, J. J., 119.


  Hall, Bishop, 50, 77.

  Hamilton, Sir W., 24, 29, 91, 95, 99, 256.

  Helmholtz, 11, 14, 18, 22.

  Hegel, 29, 88.

  Herbert of Cherbury, 149, 260.

  Hobbes, 81.

  Hodgson, S. N., 104, 126, 128, 134.

  Holtzmann, A., 259.

  Humboldt, A. von, 92.

  Humboldt, W. von, 6, 53, 67, 93, 112, 113, 214, 246, 252.

  Hume, David, 81, 187, 219.

  Hunter, John, 9.


  Jacobi, 88.

  Jevons, W. S., 25, 204.

  Kant, I., 25, 29, 32, 40, 91, 105, 194.


  Kolk, Schroeder van der, 72.

  Kitto, 74.

  Koppen, 37, 214.


  Law, Wm., 49, 87, 263, 272.

  Laycock, 75, 245.

  Lessing, 56, 254.

  Lewes, 187.

  Liddon, H. L., 129, 250.


  Mansel, 87, 88.

  Maudsley, H., 9, 150.

  Mill, J. S., 18, 87, 91, 97, 223.

  Mohammed, 71, 75, 114, 256.

  Morell, J. D., 88.

  Morley, J., 223.

  Müller, 130.

  Müller, Max, _preface_.


  Naville, E., 256, 263.

  Neander, A., 241.

  Novalis, 41, 49, 107, 124, 243.


  Oersted, 103.

  Oken, L., 7, 186.


  Paget, J., 63.

  Parker, Theo., 88.

  Pascal, 56.

  Plath, 129.

  Rousseau, J. J., 118.

  Saussure, Necker de, 220.

  Schlagintweit, E., 187.

  Schleiermacher, 88, 275.

  Schoolcraft, 63, 146.

  Schopenhauer, A., 11, 13, 51, 82, 91, 269.

  Schwarz, 207.

  Senancourt de, 53, 180.

  Spinoza, 9, 14, 17, 41, 42, 51, 98, 104.

  Spencer, Herbert, 29, 39, 98, 104, 236, 260.

  Swedenborg, 75.

  Steinthal, 101, 246.

  Tertullian, 241.

  Theophilus, 191.

  Thompson, 31.

  Todhunter, 25.

  Tyndall, 87, 132, 255.

  Voltaire, 249.

  Westropp, 62.

  Wigan, A. L., 76.

  Williams, J., 76.

  Wordsworth, 41, 42, 180.

  Windelband, Dr., 101, 102, 108.


  II. SUBJECTS.

  Absolute, the, 102, 106.
    consciousness of, 161.

  Adam, as prophet of the moon, 170.

  Adjita, 178.

  Adonis, 165.

  Aeon, 163, 166.

  Agdistis, an epicene deity, 65.

  Ahura-Mazda, 113, 166, 184.

  Allah, 239.

  Amitabha, 175, 185.

  Analytic propositions, 32.

  Androgynous deities, 66.

  Animism, 163.

  Anointed, the, 176.

  Anya-Mainyus, 166, 184.

  Anthropomorphism, 193.

  Antinomies, of Kant, 29.

  Aphrodite, 65, 241.

  Apocalypse, the, 171.

  Apollo, 67, 241.

  Apperception, 156.

  Apprehension, 142.

  Arab idea of time, 165.

  Argumentum de appetitu, 231.

  Aronhiate, a Huron deity, 221.

  Arrenothele deities, 66.

  Art, religious, in Orient, 15;
    in Greece, 16;
    Christian, 209, 241;
    useless and immoral, 244.

  Assyria, flood myth of, 169.

  Athanasius, his doctrine of the Trinity, 191.

  Atonement, doctrine of, 222.

  Avalokitesvara, 214.

  Aztecs, 80.


  Baghavad Gita, the, 189.

  Babylon, rites of, 74.

  Baldur, 176.

  Baptism, 138, 226.

  Beauty, the line of, 15, 211.
    the religion of, 241, 244, 245.

  Belief, its kinds, 141.

  Brahma, 65, 169.

  Brahmans, highest bliss of, 57;
    doctrines, 168, 169.

  Breidablick, 176.

  Brutes, religious feeling in, 88.

  Buddha, 37, 57, 80, 120, 146, 156, 261, 271.

  Buddhism, four truths of, 13;
    theories of prayer, 121, 150, 214;
    last day, 169;
    myths, 175, 176;
    monotheism of, 187, 247, 256.

  Bull, as a symbol, 204.


  Cabala, Jehova in, 65.

  Canting arms, 212.

  Cause, not a reason, 38;
    in physical science, 91.

  Celibacy, Romish, 61.

  Cerebration, unconscious, 149.

  Chance, the idea of, 93.

  Chinese character for prayer, 129.

  Christ, _see_ Jesus.

  Christianity, doctrines of, 190, 257, 264, 274;
    symbol of, 203.

  Christmas tree, the, 215.

  Cockatrice, the, 77.

  Commonwealth, ideal of, 247.

  Consciousness, forms of, 17, 20.

  Confucius, doctrine, 122, sq.

  Continuity, law of, 11, 16;
    principle of, 95.

  Contradiction, law of, 27, 102.

  Correspondences, doctrine of, 217.

  Cosmical relations of man, 112, 268.

  Cotytto, 65.

  Cow, as a symbol, 204.

  Craoshanç, 176.

  Creation, myth of, 166.

  Crescent, a phallic symbol, 62.

  Cross, a phallic symbol, 62;
    as phonetic symbol, 210;
    variants of, 210.

  Cult, the, 199 sq.

  Culture, religion of, 243, 244, 253.

  Cybele, 65; priests of, 66, 219.


  Dactyli, the, 184.

  Darkness, terror of, 185.

  Day of Judgment, the, 172.

  Deity, _see_ God.

  Design, argument from, 110.

  Desire, meaning of, 53.

  Deus, 185; triformis, 191.

  Deva, 185.

  Didactic rites, 225.

  Divination and prayer, 137.

  Dramatic rites, 226.

  Dual law of thought, 27, 102;
    division of the gods, 182, 183.


  Edda, mythology of, 175, 215.

  Eden, garden of, 175.

  Ego, the, 19.

  Egoism of religion, 272.

  Egyptians, doctrines of, 80, 222;
    prayers, 115;
    pyramids, 212;
    lotus of, 214.

  Emotions, origin of, 10;
    exclude thought, 19;
    in religion, 49;
    of fear and hope, 50, 51;
    esthetic, 14.

  Entheasm, 148.

  Epochs of nature, 164 sq.

  Epicene deities, 66.

  Epilepsy and religious delusions, 75.

  Eros, 72.

  Esculapius, emblem of, 200.

  Esthetic emotions, 14, 244.

  Ethics, grounds of, 266.

  Excluded middle, law of, 27, sqq.

  Expectant attention, 74, 129.

  Explanation, limits of, 38.


  Faith in religion, 107.

  Fascination, 74.

  Fear, in religion, 50, sqq.

  Female principle in religion, 62, 183.

  Feridun, garden of, 175.

  Flood, myth of, 169, sq.

  Fingers, as gods, 184.

  Force, orders of, 133.

  Freedom, 105.

  Friends, sect of, _see_ Quakers.

  Future life, doctrine of, 256, sq.


  Gallican confession, the, 138.

  Generative function in religion, 62, 72, 73.

  Genius as inspiration, 149.

  Gnosis, the genuine, 74.

  Gnostic doctrines, 166.

  God, as father, 70;
    spouses of, 69, 71;
    mother of, 68;
    sexless, 71;
    earliest notions of, 78;
    incomprehensible, 98;
    throne of, 167;
    love of, 73, 263, 276.

  Gods,
    hierarchy of, 181;
    quantification of the, 186;
    of lightning, 207.

  Good, final victory of, 179.

  Grasshoppers, prayers against, 131.

  Greeks, art of, 16;
    doctrines of, 80;
    sophists, 96.

  Gudmund, King, 175.


  Hades, 186.

  Hare, the Great, 212.

  Hell, 186, 258, 274.

  Hercules, 72.

  Hermaphrodite deities, 66.

  Hesperides, the, 175.

  Hierarchy of the gods, 181.

  High places, worship of, 215, 216.

  Historic ideas, 232.

  Holy spirit, as inspiring, 138;
    brooding, 167.

  Hope, in religion, 51 sqq.

  Horæ, the, 165.

  Humanity, the religion of, 194, 253.


  Ignorance, in relation to religion, 82.

  Illumination, 140.

  Immortality, doctrine of, 255.

  Indians, American, 125, 157.

  Insanity, religious, 76.

  Inspiration, 137.

  Intelligence, one in kind, 96;
    as the first cause, 106, 111.

  Irmin, pillars of, 215.

  Ischomachus, prayer of, 126.

  Israelites, the Messiah of, 176.


  Janus, an epicene deity, 65.

  Jehovah, 65, 156.

  Jemschid, king, 175.

  Jesus, face of, 67, 241;
    conception of, 71;
    wounds of, 130;
    wisdom of, 144;
    as second Noah, 170;
    teachings, 178, 260;
    prayer to, 187;
    execution of, 203;
    death of, 222.

  Judaism, 187.

  Judgment, day of, 172.


  Kalpa, of Brahmans, 168.

  Knowledge, forms of, 21.

  Kosmos, the, 72, 144, 167.


  Lateau, Louise, 130.

  Law, defined, 40;
    of excluded middle, 27;
    oldest, 248.

  Laws, the, of thought, 26, sq.; 101, sq.;
    not restrictive, 105;
    as purposive, 108.

  Light, as object of worship, 185.

  Lightning, the, in symbolic art, 207.

  Life, the perfect, 57.

  Lingam, the, 66.

  Lingayets, sect of, 66.

  Logic, applied, 23;
    abstract or formal, 24;
    mathematical, 24;
    laws of, 101, sq.

  Logos, the, 42, 106.

  Lotus, as symbol, 213, sq.

  Love, as religious emotion, defined, 58, 60, 262;
    of sex, 61, 63;
    law of, 73;
    of God, 73, 263, 276.


  Ma, a goddess, 183.

  Maitreya, 176.

  Mamona, a Haitian deity, 68.

  Märchen, the, defined, 157.

  Marriage condemned, 69.

  Maypole, as a symbol, 215.

  Melitta, 65.

  Memory, physical basis of, 10;
    ancestral, 75.

  Memorial, rites, 225.

  Messiah, the, 176.

  Millennium, the, 173, 268.

  Michabo, an Algonkin deity, 185.

  Mind,
    growth of, 7;
    extent of, 8, 271;
    as seat of law, 163.

  Miracles, 110, 130.

  Mithras, 65.

  Mohammed,
    notion of god, 71;
    inspired, 146.

  Mohammedanism, 187, 224.

  Monotheism, origin of, 80, 81; 186, sq.

  Moral government of the world, 112.

  Morality, independent of religion, dualism of deities, 182, 249, 266, 267.

  Mormonism, 61.

  Motion, first law of, 11;
    relation to time and space, 35;
    manifestations of, 77.

  Myth, the, defined, 156.


  Names, sacred, 156.

  Natural selection, in sensation, 10;
    in logic, 101.

  Nature,
    meaning of, 4, 39, 105;
    epochs of, 164.

  Nemqueteba, 240.

  Neo-Hegelian doctrine, 194.

  Nirvana, the, 13, 57, 257.

  Noah, 170.

  Nous, the, 106.


  Oannes, 170.

  Obelisk as symbol, 215.

  Odainsakr, 175.

  Odin, 53, 259.

  Optimism, 112, 269.

  Order, in things, 90, sq.

  Osiris, 165.


  Pain, defined, 17.

  Parsees, doctrine of, 80, 166, 184.

  Pantheism, 188, 194, 247.

  Papas, a Phrygian god, 183.

  Paradise, lost and regained, myths of, 173, sq;
    future, 257.

  Pentalpha, the, 212.

  Perfected commonwealth, idea of, 247.

  Perfected individual, idea of, 239.

  Personal survival, idea of, 255.

  Pessimism, 11, 112, 269.

  Persians, ancient, 176.

  Personality, the, 19, 270.

  Phallus, worship of, 62, 66, 214, 216.

  Phanes, the orphic principle, 190.

  Philosophy of religion, defined, 3;
    of mythology, 159;
    of history, 232.

  Phrygian divinities, 183.

  Pillar worship, 215.

  Pleasure, defined, 14.

  Polarization, as a principle of thought, 183.

  Porte Royale, miracles of, 131.

  Postulates of religion, 89.

  Prayer, 117, sq.

  Progression of development, 109.

  Protestantism, 128, 139, 250.

  Protogonus, 167.

  Psyche, and love, 72.

  Pythagoras, his thoughts on number, 189.


  Quakers, sect of, 76, 115, 138, 147.

  Quantification of the predicate, 22;
    of the gods, 186.

  Quetzalcoatl, 212.


  Reason in religion, 106, 107;
    drawn from sight, 186.

  Rebus in symbolism, 212.

  Regin, as name of gods, 90.

  Relative, the, 106.

  Religion, science of, 3;
    philosophy of, 3;
    personal factor of, 81;
    not concerned with phenomena, 110.

  Reproductive function in religion, 62.

  Res per accidens, 182.

  Resignation, doctrine of, 128, 135.

  Revelation, marks of, 149.

  Rig Veda, the, 125.

  Rite, the, 217, seq.

  Roland, pillars of, 215.

  Roman Catholics, 76, 138, 141, 187, 250.


  Sabians, myths of, 170.

  Sacraments, 227.

  Sacrifice, idea in, 218;
    vicarious, 222.

  Saga, the, defined, 157.

  Saint Brigida, 146.

  Saint Gertrude of Nivelles, 146.

  Sakyamuni, _see_ Buddha.

  Saturnian Era, the, 175.

  Science of Religion, 3;
    as knowledge of system, 92;
    of mythology, 158.

  Secularization of symbols, 204.

  Sensation, defined, 9;
    excludes thought, 19;
    of pain and pleasure, 10.

  Sentiment, the religious, 3;
    emotional elements of, 79;
    rational postulates of, 87;
    religion of, 250.

  Serpent, as emblem and symbol, 200, 206, 207.

  Sev, an Egyptian deity, 165.

  Sex, love of, 61, 63;
    in nature, 71, 72, 216.

  Shekinah, the, 66.

  Siddartha, a name of Buddha, 121.

  Similars, law of, 204.

  Sin, sense of, 225.

  Sight, as the light-sense, 186.

  Siva, worship of, 66, 214.

  Soul, the, 19, 271.

  Specific performance in rites, 218, sq.

  Stigmata, the, 130.

  Sufficient reason, principle of, 91.

  Sukhavati, 175.

  Supernatural, defined, 4;
    its relation to symbols, 205.

  Swedenborg, 75, 217.

  Symbol, the phonetic, 200;
    origin of, 202;
    related and coincident, 203.

  Symbolism, defined, 200.

  Synthesis of contraries, 37.

  Synthetic propositions, 32.


  Tathagata, a name of Buddha, 121.

  Tau, the Egyptian, 210.

  Theology, 4.

  Thor, hammer of, 210, 239.

  Thought, as a function, 17;
    laws of, 26, 101, sq.;
    as purposive, 108.

  Tien, Mongolian deity, 185, 216.

  Time, not a force, 11;
    but believed to be one, 165.

  Tlapallan, 175.

  Tree worship, 215.

  Triads, the Celtic, 190;
    Platonic, 191.

  Triangle, the equilateral, 212.

  Trinity, the doctrine of, 191;
    symbol of, 212.

  Triplicate relation of numbers, 190.

  Tritheism, of Christianity, 190.

  Truth, what is, 21;
    eternal, 41;
    as answer to prayer, 137.

  Tulan, 175.


  Unconditioned, the, 29, 34, 37, 98, 100.

  Uniformity of sequence, as cause, 91, 92.

  Unknowable, the, 29, 34, 99, 100.


  Valkyria, the, 53.

  Valhalla, 259.

  Varuna, an Aryan god, 125.

  Vendidad, the, 175.

  Venereal sense, the, 64.

  Vicarious sacrifice, theory of, 222.

  Virginity, sacredness of, 69.

  Virgin Mother, the, 68.

  Volition, _see_ Will.

  Voluspa, the, 171.


  Wabose, Catherine, 146.

  Water, as the primitive substance, 167.

  Will, the, 16;
    of God, 38, 42;
    as a cause, 90.

  Wish, the religious, 52;
    definition of, 79.

  World, moral government of, 112;
    creation and changes, 164;
    light of the, 185.


  Xisuthrus, 170.


  Year, the Great, 169.

  Yima, reign of, 175.

  Ynglyngasaga, the, 218.

  Yocauna, a Haitian deity, 68.


  Zarathustra, 80, 114.

  Zeruana akerana, 166.

  Zweckgesetze, 108.



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Transcriber’s Note


The following misspellings and typographical errors were maintained.

       Page       Error
TN-1     2   expres ion should read expression
TN-2    15   mind,whose should read mind, whose
TN-3    34   positive,and should read positive, and
TN-4   fn. 39-1   Systèmede should read Système de
TN-5   fn. 71-1   Suras, should read Suras
TN-6    91   reason’ should read reason”
TN-7   108   [108-1] should read [108-2]
TN-8   146   devil,before should read devil, before
TN-9   193   plantasm should read phantasm
TN-10  193   anthropomorphism,which should read anthropomorphism, which
TN-11  205   supernatual should read supernatural
TN-12  221   corrollary should read corollary
TN-13  fn. 214-3   and should read und
TN-14  Ads. p. 1   clergy. should read clergy.”
TN-15  Ads. p. 2   (His should read His

Accents in foreign words are inconsistent and have been left as
originally printed.

The following words were inconsistenly spelled or hyphenated:

  develop / develope
  key-stone / keystone
  May-pole / Maypole
  re-gained / regained
  thunder-storm / thunderstorm
  _u. s._ / u. s.
  Voelker / Vœlker





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