from but in the endless strife, as in substance Hera¬ clitus so well and originally taught.
460 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY The problem of the existence of evil thus treated as our limits allow, we must return to a study of the visible world. That we formerly refused to find re¬ ligious comfort in that world, depended upon our previous manner of approaching it. It was, so approached, the world of doubt; but now it may prove no longer disheartening, so that we may be able to get in it a concrete hold of useful truth. W e must briefly sketch the process of return. Our Infi¬ nite, once known, is known not as an abstraction, but as an immediately actual object of knowledge. His then is this visible world; and, knowing the fact, we return cheerfully and courageously among the facts that before seemed dead externalities, to find his truth in them. For our general belief in the infinite rationality of things is useless to supersede any jot or tittle of careful scientific study of the com¬ mon world of experience. Be this aspect of the mat¬ ter well understood. Some older forms of idealism have looked coldly on experience. Ours does not. To us, if you want to realize your ideal you must know the means, you must study applied ethics as well as the ideal itself; and only from science, from hard, dry, careful collection and collaboration of facts, from cautious generalizations, from endless ex¬ periments, observations, calculations, can mankind hope to learn the means of realizing their ideals. Yet more, only from exact science can you get the best concrete examples of that unity of conception, that mastery of complex details, that exhaustive per- THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT fection of insight, that we must attribute in an infi- nitely complete form to our all - embracing Ideal Thought, now that we have got it before us as our Ideal. That all facts and relations of facts should appear in one moment of insight to the all-knowing thought is our postulate, and, as we have shown, it is no mere postulate, but a necessary and absolute prin¬ ciple of philosophy. We must go to exact science to find illustrations of how all this can be in particular cases realized. As the equation of a curve expresses in one thought all the properties of the curve, as the law of a physical process includes all the cases of that process under any of the supposed conditions, as a function of a variable may be the sum of a long series of quantities, each one of which is a derived function of the first multiplied by a particular coeffi¬ cient, so that the one function is the united expres¬ sion of the numerous separate functions: even in such wise must the Infinite thought comprehend in some supreme highest unity all the facts and rela¬ tions of facts that are in the world of truth. For us then the highest achievements of science are the dim shadow of the perfection of the infinite thought. And to science, accordingly, we must go, not for the invention, but for the intellectual illustration of our ideal. And science we must treat as absolute mis¬ tress of her own domain. Of the world as a whole, of the eternal as such, of infinite past time, of the inner truth of things, science pretends to tell and can tell nothing. Nor does science invent, nor yet can she prove, her own postulates, as we previously defined them. But in the application of her postu- 462 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY lates to the facts, in the discoyery of particular laws, science is almighty. To doubt her capacity as high¬ est judge in this field is flagrant contempt of court. Science is just the Infinite Thought as far as it is yet by us realized in the facts of nature. A 'priori we can realize nothing about finite facts, save that they must be capable of rational comprehension. We know that the Infinite thinks them, and this is all that we know about them. What they are, ex¬ perience must tell us.
Such then are some of the restrictions imposed upon our thought. We must now consider more carefully how we must treat the scientific postulates that were our only comfort in studying reality before we reached our present insight.
When we postulated that the world must in the best sense satisfy our fundamental intellectual needs, we assumed what is necessary for science, but what science itself does not satisfactorily explain. Have we now reached any foundation for this theoretical postulate? We have in fact reached one. The pos¬ tulate of science amounts to this, that the real con¬ nections among facts must be such as would be ra¬ tionally comprehensible if they were known. But we have found in fact that all facts not only must be rationally comprehensible, but are rationally com¬ prehended, in and by the one Divine Mind. The postulate of science expresses therefore in part and as a mere assumption, what we now know as a whole, and as a result of demonstration. The unity of the Divine Thought implies that all facts, if we knew them well enough, would appear rationally interde- THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT pendent, reducible to unity, a total of realities ex¬ pressible as one truth. Just as in the one concept of the nature of number is implied all the infinite series of properties that a complete Theory of Numbers would develop, so in the one concept of the universe, which constitutes the Divine Mind, all the facts of all possible experience are comprehended and are re¬ duced to perfect unity. There must be then in fact a universal formula. What this formula is we do not see, and just because we do not see it, we have to look here and there in experience for any traces of the unity and rational connection of facts. Nor can we ever be sure that a connection surmised by us is the really rational connection of things. A law dis¬ covered by us is only our attempt to imitate the Di¬ vine Thought. Our attempt may in a given case fail; our induction may be mistaken. But the foundation of our inductive processes is the thought that, since the real world is a perfectly rational and united body of truth, that hypothesis which reduces to relatively rational unity the greatest number of facts is more apt to represent the truth of things than any hypothesis of less scope, and of less rational significance. Just because this natural dualism with © which we set out is a blunder, just because in fact the world is not rent in twain by our arbitrary dis¬ tinction of object and subject, but is in deepest truth one united world, a single thought; therefore it is that when we consider those facts which we have from moment to moment to regard as external, we can be assured that there is a certain and not an arbitrary basis for our views about them. The vis- 464 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY ible world becomes again hard reality, which we ex¬ perience and try to comprehend, just because we know that in itself this world is once for all compre¬ hended.
Practically then, in dealing with the world of con¬ crete facts, we must be realistic. It is our duty, for humanity’s sake, to study and to believe in this ex¬ ternal world, to have faith in the great postulates of common sense, to use all the things of the world. But the basis of this faith common sense can never find. And we have found it in the Absolute.
y.
y.
Have we then discovered that something of infi¬ nite religious worth of which we went in quest? Or can we say that our life is in vain in such a world? Truly our religious longing has met with a genuine response, but it was not such a response as we at first expected, nor such as most systems appear to desire. Personal needs and hopes apart, most men who make systems to satisfy the impersonal religious longing, seek to prove that the world as a whole progresses towards goodness, so that, in the great consummation of this progress, evil shall certainly and finally disappear, leaving the world as innocent and insipid as in the days of Eden. Now we have found a thought that makes this concept of progress not only wholly inapplicable to the world of the in¬ finite life, but wholly superfluous. If, as we insisted above, moral goodness is not the absence, but the or¬ ganic subordination, of the evil will, its overthrow in THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT the good will, in which it is still actually present as subdued, then, whenever the world contains any moral goodness, it also, and for that very reason, contains, in its organic unity, moral evil. The world is morally good in spite of the evil will, and yet because of the evil will, since, as every moral ex¬ perience shows us, the good will is just this trium¬ phant rest in strife above the evil will. Therefore we have no sympathy with those who expect the fu¬ ture “ salvation ” of the world as a whole in time through any all - pervading process. The only de¬ struction of moral evil that ever takes place or can take place is the transcendence of the evil will by the good will in the very moment of the life of the evil will. If moral evil were to be, as the older systems often expect, absolutely destroyed, and the world so freed therefrom that the evil will was totally forgotten, then what remained would be no moral good any more, only the laziness of an infinitely va¬ cant life. Not indeed to set off the good by any ex¬ ternal contrast, but to constitute a moment in the or¬ ganic unity of the good act, is this evil in the world. And the whole vast trouble about understanding its presence arises because we usually separate it from the very unity with goodness in which we find it whenever we consciously do right ourselves. Then when so separated, as we separated it in a former chapter, moral evil, viewed as an external opaque fact, is inexplicable, disheartening, horrible. Only when we do right ourselves do we practically get the solution of the problem. Only the moral man knows how and why evil exists. For in him the evil will 466 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY is an essential element of his goodness. The conflicts of morality are and must be eternal.
Our present explanation of evil in the world is, we have seen, the only one that can both give us the absolute religious comfort, and save us from the terrible moral paralysis involved in destroying, for the Infinite, the distinction between good and evil. The moral experience itself contains the miracle of this solution in the simplest and clearest shape. And it relieves us of any need to long for an abso¬ lute peace. For in it the distinction of good and evil is the sharpest, the significance of the strife is the most vivid, at the very instant when, in the strife, the evil will, present and real still, is yet conquered by the good will, and so lost in the universal good¬ ness of the total good act. The distinction of good will and evil will becomes thus the greatest possible; and yet only through the reality of this distinction in the unity of the moral life is goodness present and triumphant. Progress in this world as a whole is therefore simply not needed. The good is eternally gained even in and through the evil. How far the actual process of evolution may in our part of the universe extend is a matter for empirical science.
But our own ideal of human life as a “ progres¬ sive realization of the good,” — what of that? The answer is obvious. The good will that is in us as a temporal fact, not being yet fully realized or trium¬ phant in us as ice are in ourselves as mere finite be¬ ings, must aim at complete expression of itself in time and in us, and through us in those whom we seem to influence. For only in so seeking to' per- THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT feet us in whom it exists, is this good will in us good at all. In so far as we, viewed abstractly, in our separateness from God, are good, we then do indeed try to realize that life of God in which we are all the time an element. For us this is progress. This progress is the form taken temporarily in us by the good will. But for God this is no real progress. Therefore is it indeed true that the moral insight in us must lead us to aim at progress in goodness, just as, on the other side, the rational element in us leads us to aim at progress in knowledge. But, meanwhile, our moral progress and our rational progress, mere minor facts happening at a moment of time, are but insignificant elements in the infinite life in which, as a whole, there is and can be no progress, but only an infinite variety of the forms of the good will and of the higher knowledge.
And so consciousness has given us in concrete form solutions of our two deepest philosophic prob¬ lems. The possibility of error, necessitating an in¬ clusive thought, is illustrated for us by our own con¬ scious thought, which can include true and false ele¬ ments in the unity of one clear and true thought at any moment. And the possibility and necessity of moral evil, demanding a real distinction between good and evil, a hateful opposition that seems at first sight fatal to our religious need for the supremacy of goodness in the united world, is illustrated for us in a way that solves this whole trouble, namely, in the unity of the conscious moral act. There at the one moment are good and evil, warring, implacable, yet united in the present momentary triumph of the 468 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY good will. A world in which this strife, this vic¬ tory, this absolute rest above the real strife and in the midst of the real strife, is the supreme fact, is the perfect world that religion needs. It is a world of the true Life of God.
VI.
VI.
And our insight appeals not only to our general religious needs. It comes with its truth home to the individual man. It demands that we consider what our individual life is really worth when it is lived in the presence of this Infinite Judge. O man, what is this thy daily life! Thou livest for the applause or in fear of the blame of thy neighbors. An unkind word cuts thee to the quick. A little public favor, or the approving word of a friend, is worth half thy soul to thee. And all the while thou knowest not that One infinitely greater than multitudes of neigh¬ bors is here, not above thee only, nor afar in the heavens, but pervading thy every thought. And that all-pervading Thought judges thee as these neigh¬ bors never can. Myriads of their blunders about thee are as nothing to an atom of this infinite Truth. That rain-drop yonder in the sunshine is not more filled with the light, than are all the most hidden re¬ cesses of thy heart filled with that Infinite Presence. No one of us is more famous than his neighbor; for no one is known save by God, and to him all alike are known. To be sure, to know this is the same as understanding rightly, that thou art in truth* what thou art. All truth is truth because it is known by THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT a conscious Thought: therefore whatsoever thou art, whether it is consciously or unconsciously existent in thee, is known to the all-seeing Universal Conscious¬ ness. But commonplace as this seems to the philos¬ opher, is it not more than a mere commonplace to thee, if thou lovest genuine righteousness? For is it not something to feel that thy life is, all of it, in God and for God? No one else knows thee. Alone thou wanderest in a dead world, save for this Pres¬ ence. These other men, how can they know thee? They love thee or scorn thee or hate thee, but none of them love or scorn or hate thee for what thou art. Whatever they hold of thee, it is an accident. If they knew more of thee, doubtless they would think otherwise of thee. Do they love thee? Then they know thee not well enough, nor do they see thy meanness and thy vileness, thy selfishness and thy jealousy and thy malice. If they saw these, surely they would hate thee. But do they hate thee? Then thou callest them unjust. Doubtless they are so. Some chance word of thine, a careless look or gesture, an accident of fortune, a trifling fault, these they have remembered; and therefore do they hate thee. If they knew better things of thee, perhaps they would love thee.
Thus contradictory is thy life with them. And yet thou must labor that the good may triumph near thee by thy effort. Now in all this work who shall be thy true friend? Whose approval shall encour¬ age thee? Thy neighbor’s? Nay, but it is thy duty always to suspect thy neighbor’s opinion of thee. He is a corrupt judge, or at best an ignorant judge.
470 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY He sees not thy heart. He is a respecter of persons. He is too often a bundle of whims. If he also pro¬ fesses to be trying to serve righteousness, it is thy duty to have ready faith in his good intent, if that be possible for thee; but by all means doubt his wisdom about thee, and thine about him. If he praises thee for thy righteousness, listen not willingly to his praise. It will deceive thee. He will most praise thee when thou inwardly art not righteous. If he blames thee for evil, let it warn thee; for if he is not right now, he doubtless soon will be. But take it not too much to heart. He is ignorant of thee. He talks of thee as he might talk of the other side of the moon, unless indeed he talks of thee just as man in general, and not as to thy particular acts. Trust him not in all these things. Realize his needs as thou canst, strive to aid him in being righteous, use him as an instrument for the extension of good¬ ness; but trust not his judgment of thee. Who then is, as the true judge of thy worth, thy only per¬ fect friend?
The Divine Thought. There is the opinion of thee to which thou canst look up. To be sure it is revealed to thee only in thy consciousness of what righteousness is and of what truth is. Nowhere else hast thou a guide that can do more for thee than to help to quicken thy insight. But, then, thy relig¬ ious comfort is to be, not that the moral law is thun¬ dered down from mountain - tops as if some vast town-crier were talking, but that when thou seekest to do right, the Infinite all-seeing One knoy^s and approves thee. If thou lovest righteousness for its THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT own sake, then this will comfort thee. If not, if thou seekest sugar-plums, seek them not in the homo of the Infinite. Go among thy fellow-men and be a successful hypocrite and charlatan, and thou shalt have gaping and wonderment and sugar - plums enough.
Herein then lies the invitation of the Infinite to us, that it is, and that it knows us. No deeper sane- tion is there for true righteousness than this knowl¬ edge that one is serving the Eternal. Yet when we say all this, are we simply doing that which we spoke of in the opening chapter of this work? Are we but offering snow to appease the religioua hunger? Is this doctrine too cold, too abstract, too far-off? Cold and abstract and far-off is indeed the proof of it. But that was philosophy. That was not the re¬ ligious aspect of our doctrine, but only the prepara¬ tion for showing the religious aspect of philosophy. Is the doctrine itself, however, once gained, so re¬ mote from the natural religious emotion? What does a man want when he looks to the world for re¬ ligious support? Does he want such applause as blind crowds give men, such flattery as designing people shower upon them, such sympathy as even the cherished but prejudiced love of one’s nearest friends pours out for him? Nay, if he seeks merely this, is he quite unselfishly righteous? Can he not get all that if he wants it, wholly apart from religion? And if he looks for reward, can he not get that also otherwise? But what his true devotion to the moral law ardently desires is not to be alone. Approval for what really deserves approval he needs, approval 472 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY from one who truly knows hiqa. Well, our doctrine says that he gets it. Just as deep, as full, as rich, as true approval as expresses the full worth of his act, — this he has for all eternity from the Infinite. To feed upon that truth is to eat something better than snow, but as pure as the driven snow. To love that truth is to love God.
We spoke in the former book of the boundless magnitude of human life as it impresses itself upon one who first gains the moral insight. To many this first devotion to human life seems itself enough for a religion. But then one goes beyond this point, and says that human life has, after all, very much that is base and petty in it. Here is not the ideal. “ Would that there were a higher life! To that we would devote ourselves. We will serve humanity, but how can we worship it? ” Such is the thought of many an ardent soul that seeks no personal re¬ wards in serving the good, but that does seek some great Reality that shall surely be worthy of service. To such, our religious insight points out this higher reality. You that have been willing to devote your¬ selves to humanity, here is a Life greater in infinite degree than humanity. And now is it not a help to know that truly to serve humanity is just the same as to serve this Infinite? For whatever had seemed disheartening in the baseness and weakness of man loses its discouraging darkness now that all is trans¬ figured in this Infinite light.
Let us then be encouraged in our work by this great Truth. But let us not spend too much time in merely contemplating this Truth. We, whose THE RELIGIOUS INSIGHT lives are to be lived in toil, — it is not good that we should brood over even an infinite Thought. For in our finite minds it will soon become petty, unless we realize it chiefly through our acts. Let us then go about our business. For every man has business and desire, such as they are.
As we turn away then for the time from our con¬ templation, we have one last word yet as to these practical consequences of our view. If the reader follows us at all in our argument, we want him also to follow us into the practical application of it to life. To work for the extension of the moral insight is, we have said, the chief present duty of man in so¬ ciety. All else is preparation for this work, or else is an anticipation of the higher stage when, if we ever grow up to that level, we shall have our further work to do in the light of the insight itself. But this chief present work of ours, this extension of the moral insight, is best furthered by devotion to our individual vocations, coupled with strict loyalty to the relations upon which society is founded. The work thus set before us demands the sacrifice of many ideal emotional experiences to the service of the Highest. Our comfort however in it all must be that the Highest is there above us, forget it as we may. If the reader accepts all this, then with us he has the assurance that, whatever becomes of the old creeds in the present religious crisis, the founda¬ tions of genuinely religious faith are sure.
Whenever we must pause again in our work for religious support, and whenever we are worn out with the jargon of the schools, we can rest once 474 THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF PHILOSOPHY more for a time in this contemplation of the Eternal Truth. Ilic breve plangitur. But not so is it in God’s life. Our problems may be hard, but there all is solved. Our lives may be poor and contempt¬ ible, but there all is wealth and fullness of worth. Our efforts may often prove vain, but there naught exists that is vanity. For the imperfection of the finite is but the fragment of the Infinite Whole where there is no true imperfection. Is it not a Re¬ ligion to feel this? And we shall then turn from such a contemplation once again as we do now, to look with fresher courage at this boundless, tossing sea of human life about us. This is not itself the Divine, but over it all God’s winds are blowing. And to our eyes it is boundless. Let us go down into this great sea and toil, fearing no storm, but seeking to find there treasures that shall be copies, however faint, of that which is Eternal.
EPILOGUE