K Sir JOSIAH ROYCE A re-evaluation of Royce’s place in the history of American thought is now in progress. The present publication should help to recall a fact which is in danger of being forgotten by fellow philosophers who are currently concentrating on his previously-neglected logical essays: Royce’s entire life (1855-1916) was an unremitting pursuit of “an ultimate reality of infinite worth.” The following pages are a record of his first steps in this pilgrimage.
Later years were to see Royce venture in new directions. Books which succeeded the present volume — The World and the Individual, The Sources of Religious Insight, The Problem of Christianity — developed his “philoso¬ phy of loyalty” and his “hope for the great community.” But there is nothing which flowered in these writings that did not have its germination in the present essay. The seminal nature of The Religious Aspect of Philosophy has recently been attested by several noted thinkers. William Ernest Hocking reports that William James acclaimed it for providing a proof of the existence of God that could not be found in the previous his¬ tory of philosophy.
Continental scholars have long recognized the fact that Royce belongs in the company of those for whom philosophy was a journey through the abyss of meaninglessness. To the contemporary reader, one of the most extraordinary features of this book is that in it Royce writes and thinks like a twentieth-century existentialist. Perplexity and doubt had driven him into philosophy. His entire undertaking was to discover a new ground of assurance on which men could eternally count. Whatever edifying moral philosophers and religious apologists might say, reason and nature were not in harmony. Is and ought were separated by a vast chasm, not capable of being bridged by appeals to man’s conscience and his reputed capacity for altruism, to the alleged course of history, or to the imagined purposes or outcomes of nature.
Royce could find no ease in the cherished attempts of 19th century philosophy and science to buttress the Faith. To equate God with an his¬ torical conception of the world as a whole or to identify “Being” with a rational process in time, to make evolution and progress synonymous — these were simply to perpetuate theodicies no stronger than those dis¬ credited by Kant. Panlogism and alogism were equally unsatisfactory. Nor could he feel that dualistic theisms and empirical theologies had been made one whit more probable by the progress of natural science.
The doubt and error which had plunged Royce into the labyrinth fur¬ nished the threads by which the minotaur of despair was outwitted. Not nature but reason provides the ground of an assurance in the existence of an eternal reality. He seems to say: “I err, therefore truth (or God) is.” The inevitability of error when plumbed to its depths yields the ultimate conviction that there is a necessary and eternal truth — infinite knowledge within which error is corrected. The steps by which Royce passes from the reality of infinite knowledge to the existence of infinite being would have astonished Kant but delighted Augustine and Anselm.
Royce would have agreed with modern existentialists that the investiga¬ tion of existence provides no proof of an eternal essence. He would, how¬ ever, have made this answer to Sartre and Heidegger: anatomize doubt and you will find yourself encompassed by Being. t The RELIGIOUS ASPECT of PHILOSOPHY A CRITIQUE OF THE BASES OF CONDUCT AND OF FAITH Josiah Royce GLOUCESTER, MASS. PETER SMITH First Published in 1885 Reprinted, 1965 by Permission of Harper & Row, Publishers To ^Rp |)onoreli jFrienfc GEORGE BUCHANAN COALE OF BALTIMORE, I DEDICATE THIS BOOK, HI EARNEST AND GRATEFUL RECOGNITION OF HIS KINDNESS, OF HIS COUNSEL, AND OF HIS WISDOM.
\ PREFACE This book sketches the basis of a system of phi¬ losophy, while applying the principles of this system to religious problems. The form and order of the treatment depend on the nature of these latter prob¬ lems themselves, and are not such as a system of philosophy, expounded solely for its own sake, would be free to take. The religious problems have been chosen for the present study because they first drove the author to philosophy, and because they, of all human interests, deserve our best efforts and our utmost loyalty.
A large portion of this discussion seeks to appeal both to the special student of philosophy and to the general reader. A considerable part, again, can with the very best of fortune hope to interest the special student of philosophy, but cannot hope for more. The Preface must therefore tell what sort of appeal is made to each of the two classes of readers.
To begin with the general reader, who may have the curiosity to glance at this philosophic essay, the ix X PREFACE author must forthwith confess that while on the one hand he desires to trouble nobody with fruitless and blank negations, and while his aim is therefore on the whole a positive aim, yet on the other hand, as he has no present connection with any visible relig¬ ious body, and no sort of desire for any such connec¬ tion, he cannot be expected to write an apology for a popular creed. This confession is made frankly, but not for the sake of provoking a quarrel, and with all due reverence for the faith of other men. If the fox who had lost his tail was foolish to be proud of his loss, he would have been yet more fool¬ ish to hide it by wearing a false tail, stolen mayhap from a dead fox. The full application of the moral of the fable to the present case is moreover willingly accepted. Not as the fox invited his friends to imitate his loss, would the present writer aim to make other men lose their faiths. Rather is it his aim not to arouse fruitless quarrels, but to come to some peaceful understanding with his fellows touch¬ ing the ultimate meaning and value and foundation of this noteworthy custom, so widely prevalent among us, the custom of having a religion. If the author ends by stating for his own part a religious doctrine, it will yet be seen upon reading the same that a man could hold that and much more too; so * that what is here said is rather proposed as a basis PREFACE xi for a conceivable if very far off reconciliation, than as an argument to dissuade those who may think that they can go further than the author, from proving in a philosophical fashion whatever they can prove. Such people may manage to interpret many of the negations that occur in these pages as directed against an inadequate form, or imperfect understanding, of their more elaborate creed. If they can do so, no one will be more heartily de¬ lighted than the author, although he may not agree with them.
As to the relation of this book to what is called modern doubt, it is a relation neither of blind obe¬ dience nor of unsympathetic rejection. The doc¬ trine of philosophic idealism here propounded is not what in these days is popularly called Agnosticism. Yet doubting everything is once for all a necessary element in the organism of philosophic reflection. What is here dwelt upon over and Over again is, however, the consideration that the doubts of our time are not to be apologetically “refuted,’ in the old fashioned sense, but that taken just as they are, fully and cordially received, they are upon analysis found to contain and imply a positive and important religious creed, bearing both upon conduct and upon reality. Not to have once thoroughly accepted as necessary the great philosophic doubts and problems XU PREFACE XU PREFACE of our day, is simply not to have philosophized as a man of this age. But to have accepted these doubts without in time coming to find the positive truth that is concealed in them, is to treat them as the in¬ nocent favorite of fortune in a fairy tale always at first treats his magic gift. It is something common and dingy, and he lays it carelessly away in his empty house, feeling poorer than ever. But see: handle it rightly, and the fairy gift fills your trans¬ figured home with a wealth of gems and gold, and spreads for you a wondrous banquet. To the author has come the fancy that modern doubt may be some such fairy gift as this. And he would like to sug¬ gest to some reader what may possibly prove the right fashion of using the talisman.
The general reader, if very “ benevolent,” may be able to endure the “ First Book ” of the present volume in its entirety; but in the “ Second Book ” he will find much that is meant only for the student whose interests are decidedly technical. Some warn¬ ings are given in the text, to help the general reader in skipping. But perhaps it may be well for his purpose to confine himself at once in this Book II., at least upon the first reading, to the following pas¬ sages, namely: in Chapter VIII., to the introductory remarks and the first and the last sections of the chapter; in Chapter IX., to the introductory * re- PREFACE xiu marks, and Sections I., II., III., and V.; in Chapter X., to the introductory remarks, and Sections I., II., and IV.; in Chapter XI., to the introductory re¬ marks, and the concluding section only; and then he may try the whole of Chapter XII. Thus he will not be troubled by the technical statement of the proof of our doctrine, and he will see the trend of our thought, which may at least amuse him. If he is then still curious, he may take his own risks and look farther.
The student of philosophy will find in this volume a doctrine that undertakes to be in certain signif¬ icant respects independent and original, but that, without ceasing to be the author’s own system, frankly belongs to the wide realm of Post-Kantian Idealism. Of course no true lover of philosophy ventures, when he calls a doctrine his own, to pre¬ tend to more than the very moderate degree of rel¬ ative originality that the subject in our day permits; and of course the author for his own part feels very deeply how much what he has to offer is the prod¬ uct of what he has happened to read and remember about philosophy and its history. Most of all he feels his debt to Kant; then he knows how much he has gained from Fichte, from the modern Neo-Kan- tians in Germany, and from the revivers of idealism in recent years in England and America. To Hegel XIV PREFACE also he has of course a decided debt to acknowl¬ edge.
There are in recent philosophical history two Hegels: one the uncompromising idealist, with his general and fruitful insistence upon the great fun¬ damental truths of idealism; the other the technical Hegel of the “ Logik,” whose dialectic method seems destined to remain, not a philosophy, but the idea of a philosophy. With this latter Hegel the author feels a great deal of discontent; to the other Hegel, whose insight, as we know, was by no means inde¬ pendent of that of Fichte and other contemporaries, but who was certainly the most many-sided and crit¬ ical of the leaders of the one great common idealistic movement of the early part of the century, — to him we all owe a great debt indeed. It is, however, a mistake to neglect the other idealists just for the sake of glorifying him. And it is an intolerable blunder to go on repeating what we may have learned from him in the awkward and whimsical speech of the wondrous and crabbed master. If Hegel taught anything, then what he taught can be conveyed in an utterly non-Hegelian vocabulary, or else Hegel is but a king of the rags and tatters of a flimsy terminology, and no king of thought at all. It is therefore absolutely the duty -of a man who nowadays supposes that he has any truth from He- PREFACE XV PREFACE XV gel to propound, to state it in an entirely fresh and individual form. Of Hegelian language repeated to us in place of Hegelian thought, we have had by this time a sickening surfeit. Let us therefore thank men who, like the late lamented Professor Green, have at last been free to speak their own thoughts very much in their own way; and let us be glad too that the number of so-called Hegelians of similar independence is daily growing greater. The author, however, cannot call himself an Hegelian, much as he owes to Hegel.
Further especial acknowledgments the author wants to make to Professor William James, to Mr. Shadworth Hodgson, to Professor Otto Pfleiderer, to Professor Hans Vaihinger, to Professor Otto Liebmann, to Professor Julius Bergmann, to Pro¬ fessor Christoph Sigwart, and to Mr. Arthur Bal¬ four, for the valuable helps in thought that, un¬ known to them, he, as a reader of their works, has felt, and that he now recognizes as distinctly affect¬ ing this book. To Professor William James once more in particular, and also to Professor George Palmer, the author owes numerous oral suggestions that have influenced him more than he now can ex¬ actly estimate or fully confess. And then there remain two thinkers to name, men very different from each other, but both for the author very valu XVI PREFACE able. Of these one was among the first of the Ger¬ man thinkers in the chance order of the author’s early reading, the other was deeply influential both by his spoken words and by his writings; the former is that brilliant and stimulating master of contra¬ dictions, Schopenhauer, the other is the nowr de¬ parted Lotze, whose lectures the author will never forget nor disregard, although what is here taught is remote enough from most of Lotze’s system.
In outer form this work may be considered by the philosophic student as a sort of roughly sketched and very incomplete Phenomenology of the relig¬ ious consciousness, first on its moral, and then on its theoretical, side. The parts of the argument that the author supposes to contain most relative origi¬ nality will be found in Book I., Chapters VI. and VII., and in Book II., Chapter XI. On these chap¬ ters all else hinges.
The discussion of the Problem of Evil, as it ap¬ pears in Chapter XII., is, as the author has seen only since that chapter was in type, very closely parallel to part of the discussion of the same question in the new second edition of Pfleiderer’s “ Religionsphilos- ophie.” Yet, as the thoughts of this new edition of Pfleiderer’s argument were indicated in his first edi¬ tion, although not so clearly expressed, the author claims little originality here, save in the form of PREFACE xvn presentation, in the illustrations used, and in the reference of the whole to the arguments of Chapter XI. This last matter seems to him, of itself indeed, quite important.
The work as it here appears is an outgrowth of several separate lines of study. The questions of the present Chapter XI. were first attempted by the author in a thesis for the Doctor’s degree of the Johns Hopkins University in 1878. The argument has since been essentially altered. Several frag¬ ments that are here used as organic parts of the whole book have appeared separately, in various de¬ grees of incompleteness, in the “Journal of Specu¬ lative Philosophy,” in “Mind,” and elsewhere. The present form of the book has grown out of lectures on religious questions to the students of Harvard College; but only a small portion of the manuscript of these lectures has entered into the structure of the book, which, for its own part, tries to be no patchwork, but a single united, if incomplete, study of its chosen problem.
Cambridge, Mass., January 11, 1885.
.
' TABLE OP CONTENTS CHAPTER I.
PAGE Introduction; Religion as a Moral Code and as a Theory. 1 I. The Three Elements of Religion. 2 II. Relation of Religion and Philosophy. 4 III. The Essentials of Religious Doctrine. 6 IY. The Place of Skepticism in Religious Philosophy.. 9 BOOK I.
THE SEARCH FOR A MORAL IDEAL.
CHAPTER II.
The General Ethical Problem. 17 I. The Priority of Ideals in Religious Philosophy...18 II. The Fundamental Difficulty about all Ideals. 19 CHAPTER III.
The Warfare of the Moral Ideals. 32 I. The Difficulty about the Ideal as it appears in Greek Thought.. ^ II. The same Difficulty in Christian Morals. 39 III. Summary of the Difficulty thus far. 47 IY. The Difficulty as illustrated by the Doctrine of Conscience...V. General Summary and Skeptical Result. 38 xix XX TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER IV.
PAGB Altruism and Egoism in Certain Recent Discus¬ sions. 61 I. Illustration of Certain Doctrines about tbe Nature of Altruism...63 II. Is Altruism Disguised Selfishness?. 65 III. Inquiry as to the real Difference between Altru¬ ism and Selfishness. 66 IV. If Genuine Altruism cannot now be Disguised Self¬ ishness, can Evolution explain the Relations of Y. Schopenhauer’s Effort to define Altruism in Terms of the Emotion of Pity. 85 VI. Further Explanation of Schopenhauer’s View...89 VII. The Selfishness and Cruelty that often are the Re¬ sult of Pity. 94 VIII. The Cruelty of the Happy, and the Selfishness as¬ sociated with active Sympathy. 100 IX. Rejection of Pity as the Basis for a Distinction of Altruism and Egoism. Negative Result of the Chapter. 104 CHAPTER V.
Ethical Skepticism and Ethical Pessimism. 107 I. The Skeptical Motive in Pessimism. 108 II- The Skeptical Motive in the Romantic Pessimism of Modern Poetry. HO III. Ethical Skepticism in Mr. Balfour’s Statement of its Positions. 107 CHAPTER VI.
The Moral Insight.
I. The Meaning of Ethical Skepticism, and the Ideal consequently involved in it..
II. Answers to Objections.
Application to the Problem of Altruism..
TABLE OF CONTENTS xxi PAGE IV. Selfishness as Illusion...149 V. Altruism as Insight. 166 VI. The Real Conflict of the Separate Ideals, and the Nature of the Moral Insight. 162 CHAPTER VII.
The Organization of Life. 171 I. The Duties of the First Class. 173 II. The Duties of the Second Class, in relation to He¬ donism. 183 III. The Worth of the Individual. 195 IV. The Phases of Individualism. 201 V. The Universal Will as aiming at Organization.
Definition of the Ideal. 211 VI. Passage to the Study of Reality. 218 BOOK II.
THE SEARCH FOR A RELIGIOUS TRUTH.
CHAPTER VIII.
The World of Doubt. 227 I. The Fundamental Difficulty concerning the Exter¬ nal World. Temporary Postponement of the Discussion of this Difficulty. The World of the Powers. 228 II. The Popular Scientific Concept of the World and the Religious Insignificance of the Law of Evo¬ lution. 238 HI. The Monistic Theories of the External World of the Powers. Metaphysical and Religious Diffi¬ culties of these Theories. 252 IV. Monism and the Problem of Evil. 264 V. Dualistic Theism in the World of the Powers, its Metaphysical and Religious Difficulties. 271 VI. Empirical Theism and the Design- Argument - 279 xxu TABLE CF CONTENTS PAQK VII. Religious Insiguificance of the Design- Argument in the World of the Powers. 283 VIII. The World of the Powers as in itself Necessarily a World of Doubt. 286 CHAPTER IX.
The World of the Postulates. 291 I. Postulates in Science and Religion. 292 II. The General Nature and Use of Postulates. 297 III. Postulates in the Notion of the External World.. 299 IV. Psychological Analysis of the Postulates of Com¬ mon Life. Beliefs in Relation to the Will...305 V. The Postulates of Science Defined. The Religious Use of the Postulates. Transition to a Higher Point of View. 324 CHAPTER X.
Idealism. 333 I. The General Nature and Religious Uses of Philosophical Idealism. 333 II. Idealism as an Hypothesis founded on Postulates.
A Modification of the Berkeleyau Hypothesis stated. 337 III. Explanation and Justification of this Hypothesis, as Simple and Fair. Subordination of the Pos¬ tulate of Causation to other Postulates. Criti¬ cism of the Notion of “ Possible Experience ”.. 354 IV. Difficulty as to the Nature of Error, and Transi¬ tion to Absolute Idealism. Religious Conse¬ quences anticipated. 370 CHAPTER XI.
The Possibility of Error. 384 L Sketch of the History of the Investigation...*.. 386 H. The Doctrine of the Total Relativity of Truth and Error. 390 TABLE OF CONTENTS xxiii PACK III. The Problem of the Nature of Error stated. 396 IV. Psychological Aspect of the Problem. 402 V. The Problem in Case of Errors about one’s Fel¬ low-Beings. 406 VI. The Problem in Case of Errors about Matters of Experience. *417 VII. Summary and Solution of the Problem. 420 VIII. Answer to the Objection that views Error as barely Possible. 426 IX. Absolute Idealism as the Result of the Chapter.. 431 CHAPTER XII.
The Religious Insight. 436 I. General Survey and Religious Aspect of Philo¬ sophical Idealism as stated in the previous Chap¬ II. The Doctrine of the Absolute Thought as Perfect 441 III. The Problem of Evil. 449 IV. The World of the Postulates and the External World once more. 460 V. The Conception of Moral Progress. 464 VI. Practical Bearings of the Doctrine. 468 Epilogue...
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION; RELIGION AS A MORAL CODE AND AS A THEORY Auch bezweifl’ ich, dass du glaubest, Was so rechter Glaube heisst, Glaubst wohl nicht an Gott den Vater, An den Sohn und heil’gen Geist.
Heine.
Intending in the following pages to sketch certain philosophic opinions that seem to him to have a religious bearing, the author must begin by stating what he understands to be the nature of religion, and how he conceives philosophy to be related to religion.
We speak commonly of religious feelings and of religious beliefs; but we find difficulty in agreeing about what makes either beliefs or feelings religious. A feeling is not religious merely because it is strong, nor yet because it is also morally valuable, nor yet because it is elevated. If the strength and the moral value of a feeling made it religious, patriot¬ ism would be religion. If elevation of feeling were enough, all higher artistic emotion would be relig¬ ious. But such views would seem to most persons very inadequate. As for belief, it is not religious merely because it is a belief in the supernatural. Not merely is superstition as such very different from 2 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY religion, but even a belief in God as tbe highest of beings need not be a religious belief. If La Place had needed what he called “ that hypothesis,” the Deity, when introduced into his celestial mechanics, would have been but a mathematical symbol, or a formula like Taylor’s theorem, — no true object of religious veneration. On the other hand, Spinoza’s impersonal Substance, or the Nirvana of the Bud¬ dhists, or any one of many like notions, may have, either as doctrines about the world or as ideals of human conduct, immense religious value. Very much that we associate with religion is therefore non-essential to religion. Yet religion is something unique in human belief and emotion, and must not be dissolved into any lower or more commonplace elements. What then is religion?
I.
I.
So much at all events seems sure about religion. It has to do with action. It is impossible without some appearance of moral purpose. A totally im¬ moral religion may exist; but it is like a totally un¬ seaworthy ship at sea, or like a rotten bank, or like a wild-cat mine. It deceives its followers. It pre¬ tends to guide them into morality of some sort. If it is blind or wicked, not its error makes it religious, but the faith of its followers in its worth. A relig¬ ion may teach the men of one tribe to torture and kill men of another tribe. But even such a religion would pretend to teach right conduct. Religion, however, gives us more than a moral code. A moral INTRODUCTION 3 code alone, with its “ Thou shalt,” would be no more religious than is the civil code. A religion adds some¬ thing to the moral code. And what it adds is, first, enthusiasm. Somehow it makes the faithful regard the moral law with devotion, reverence, love. By history, by parable, by myth, by ceremony, by song, by whatever means you will, the religion gives to the mere code life and warmth. A religion not only commands the faithful, but gives them something that they are glad to live for, and if need be to die for.
But not yet have we mentioned the element of re¬ ligion that makes it especially interesting to a stu¬ dent of theoretical philosophy. So far as we have gone, ethical philosophy would criticise the codes of various religions, while theoretical philosophy would have no part in the work. But, in fact, religion al¬ ways adds another element. Not only does religion teach devotion to a moral code, but the means that it uses to this end include a more or less complete theory of things. Religion says not merely do and feel, but also believe. A religion tells us about the things that it declares to exist, and most especially it tells us about their relations to the moral code and to the religious feeling. There may be a religion without a supernatural, but there cannot be a relig¬ ion without a theoretical element, without a state¬ ment of some supposed matter of fact, as part of the religious doctrine.
These three elements, then, go to constitute any religion. A religion must teach some moral code, must in some way inspire a strong feeling of devo- 4 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY tion to that code, and in so doing must show some¬ thing in the nature of things that answers to the code or that serves to reinforce the feeling. A religion is therefore practical, emotional, and theoretical; it teaches us to do, to feel, and to believe, and it teaches the belief as a means to its teaching of the action and of the feeling.
II.
II.
We may now see how philosophy is related to re¬ ligion. Philosophy is not directly concerned with feeling, but both action and belief are direct objects of philosophical criticism. And on the other hand, in so far as philosophy suggests general rules for conduct, or discusses the theories about the world, philosophy must have a religious aspect. Religion invites the scrutiny of philosophy, and philosophy may not neglect the problems of religion. Kant’s fundamental problems: What do I know? and What ought I to do? are of religious interest no less than of philosophic interest. They ask how the highest thought of man stands related to his highest needs, and what in things answers to our best ideals. Surely no one ought to fear such ques¬ tions, nor ought any philosophic student to hesitate to suggest in answer to them whatever after due reflection he honestly can suggest, poor and tenta¬ tive though it may be. In fact there is no defense for one as sincere thinker if, undertaking to pay at¬ tention to philosophy as such, he willfully or thought¬ lessly neglects such problems on the ground that he has no time for them. Surely he has time to be not INTRODUCTION 5 INTRODUCTION 5 merely a student of philosophy, but also a man, and these things are among the essentials of humanity, which the non-philosophic treat in their way, and which philosophic students must treat in theirs.