The two systems of philosophy which were dominant at the turn of the century were unfriendly to theistic and Christian belief. Naturalism on the one hand and Absolutism on the other could find no place for a positive faith in God, freedom and immortality. The opening years of the century witnessed a revolt against these two systems; and the leading characteristic of twentieth century thought, over against an agnostic naturalism and a pantheistic or impersonal absolutism, has been its reaffirmation of spiritual values. There has been a new emphasis upon the rights of personality, as against the enmeshing and enchaining forces of nature on the one hand and an all-engulfing Absolute on the other.

Philosophical readers will remember the moral tonic of James' collection of essays, "The Will to Believe" (1902), with its picturesque style, its originality of standpoint and its moral enthusiasm. Here was a philosopher of medical training and of unquestioned scientific standing, and yet with the insight and earnestness of a prophet, making a valiant defense of spiritual realities, of human freedom, and the rights of the volitional and moral sides of our nature. As an evolutionist he contended that "the strenuous type of character will on the battle-field of human history always outwear the easy-going type, and religion will drive irreligion to the wall."[149] And as a psychologist he found that theism appealed to every energy of our active nature and released the springs of every emotion, and held that "infra-theistic conceptions, materialism and agnosticism, are irrational because they are inadequate stimuli to man's practical nature."[150]

Readers who had been breathing the stifling air of naturalism, so fatal to spiritual aspiration, or the too rarified atmosphere of absolutism with its "transcendence" of personality and moral distinctions, will remember also the sense of satisfaction and relief with which they read that other volume of protest, from the other side of the water, "Personal Idealism" (1902). It was refreshing to find that there was a body of brilliant young thinkers, alive to the scientific atmosphere of the time, and trained in the philosophic orthodoxy of the English schools, and yet boldly asserting the rights of personality in God and man.

This twofold protest against a denial, from whatever side, of the rights of personality was organized into the movement we call Pragmatism, under the leadership of William James, ably assisted by F. C. S. Schiller in Oxford and John Dewey in this country.[151] It is not to be wondered at if this reaction went too far, as the pendulum swung from the extreme of Being to that of Becoming. We find Pragmatism, reacting against monism, whether materialistic or idealistic, going over to pluralism; from the extreme of a "block universe" in which time is nothing passing to the other extreme of a "strung-along universe" in which time is everything; from pantheism going over to a vaguely indicated polytheism; from an absolute truth and an absolute Being sitting in smiling repose above the strife of time to a "God in the dirt" and a truth that could be made, or unmade, perhaps too easily.

Our discussion will be more concrete if we select leading representatives from the four nations most addicted to philosophy, and examine their attitude towards the Christian Faith and towards its theistic foundations.

I. Bergson and Creative Evolution

In close relation to the pragmatic movement, and set forth with a wonderful magic of style, is the philosophy of Henri Bergson which finds its mature expression in his "Creative Evolution." It is a remarkable testimony to the wealth of suggestion and many-sidedness of Bergson's philosophy that its support has been claimed by a number of movements of diverse aim. Modernists in theology, syndicalists in the sphere of social agitation, and even, it is said, cubists in art, appeal to Bergson for philosophical support; and affinities have been pointed out between his Élan vital and Schopenhauer's will-to-live, Von Hartmann's philosophy of the unconscious, and Nietzsche's aggressive individualism. We must ask whether his Élan vital can be baptized, and his "Creative Evolution" be made the basis for a spiritual philosophy.

It will be useful to notice some features of Bergson's system before attempting to estimate its bearings upon religious problems. The story of evolution as Bergson describes it, certainly in an engaging manner, is a drama in three acts. The Élan vital, or otherwise consciousness, is the hero, but is imprisoned by matter (the villain), and is striving blindly for release. In the first act, the vital impulse tunnels its way through the opposing element of matter into the vegetable world. The result is only the lethargy and immobility of vegetable forms, and is so far a failure. The next act finds consciousness working its way into the animal world and attaining mobility and becoming in so far free from the entanglements of matter; but here again there is partial failure. Consciousness is arrested at the stage of instinct, and, resting content with a response to the environment which is patterned after the mechanical action of matter, fails to attain freedom. In the third act, "by a tremendous leap," consciousness, in spite of the efforts of matter to drag it down to the plane of mechanism, reaches at last spontaneity and freedom in man. The drama reaches its dÉnouement in man and his ability not only to move in response to environment, but to control the environment. It is intimated that there may be a sequel, in which life pursues its career in another stage of existence.

1. It is evident at a glance that the view of evolution here set forth in barest outline offers many points of contrast to what has been accepted as evolutionary orthodoxy. The history of life with both Darwin and Bergson is a struggle: but with Darwin it is a struggle for existence, with Bergson a struggle for freedom, for efficiency, for complexity. With Darwin there is a struggle of living beings with one another, conceived after the analogy of economic competition; with Bergson there is a struggle of life against matter and necessity. The struggle for existence, in a sense, has been moralized. It is a struggle for the existence and higher life of consciousness.

2. Creative evolution is not materialistic evolution, for life is not a development from matter but is an upward tendency opposing the downward current of matter. The increasing complexity of living forms is not the result of the movements of matter, or of chemical-physical laws, but of an opposition, successful in a unique degree in men, to the imprisoning and entangling forces of matter.

3. The later stages in evolution, while connected with the earlier in continuity of development, may contain elements that are essentially new. A living being is "a reservoir of indetermination and unforeseeability."[152] The new species cannot be explained, except by an illegitimate process of thought, by what is presented in the old. The appearance of a new species is something as new as the composition of a symphony of Beethoven. Man, then, in his powers and destinies is not to be judged by his likeness to the brutes, but by what he possesses over and above the qualities of animal life, by those achievements and endowments to which animals have failed to attain. Since man, and man alone, has come so far, and in him alone consciousness has broken the chains of mechanical necessity, "we shall have no repugnance in admitting that in man, though perhaps in man alone, consciousness pursues its path beyond this earthly life."[153]

4. Creative evolution is the antithesis of mechanical evolution. Bergson protests that the conception of mechanism as applied to life is inadequate, because (1) it is artificial, growing out of our habits of controlling matter. It is an instrument of the intelligence, not giving us an insight into life, which we must gain rather in intuition, the higher faculty in Bergson's system. A mechanical representation of nature is always a "representation necessarily artificial and symbolic."[154] (2) Mechanical conceptions are inapplicable to living beings, because of the irreversibility of the movements of living forms; and (3) the mechanical theory is negatived by the facts of the psychophysical connection. "The hypothesis of an equivalence between the psychical state and the cerebral state implies a veritable absurdity, as we tried to prove in a former work."[155] No mechanical theory and no theory of accidental variations, whether insensible or abrupt, can account for the production of so complex an organ as the eye.[156]

His critique of other theories prepares the way for Bergson's own view that the forms of living beings are due to an original vital impulsion, not in the single organism, but in life as a whole, seeking, without foresight of the result, to overcome the downward tendency of matter.

Bergson's suggested via media between creationism and evolutionism, his rejection of a theory of chance variations, and his vigorous polemic against mechanism, all seem to prepare the way for a spiritualistic philosophy. It is true that the land of the spirit has not yet been explored, but Bergson, as one writer expresses it, has at least thrown a bridge across the chasm between the material and the spiritual. While his "Creative Evolution" has been placed upon the Index, we must remember that he himself claims that this work and those that preceded it have resulted in the conceptions of liberty, of spirit and of creation. "From all this," as he says, "we derive a clear idea of a free and creating God, producing matter and life at once, whose creative effort is continued, in a vital direction, by the evolution of species and the construction of human personalities."[157]

The point in Bergson's system which seems least in harmony with theistic belief is his criticism and rejection of finalism. Bergson fears that the temporal series will be swallowed up in the "dark backward and abysm of time," or rather of eternity. The finalism of a foreseen end means with him fatalism, fixity, with no play for freedom, and a reality in time only of a secondary order. Again, in opposition to finalism he urges the variety of living forms. Could the end of all the varied history be merely the production of man? This cannot be proved, because everywhere we see in nature contingency and variety, and apparent cross-purposes if purpose at all. There is no single line of evolution leading up to man. Some fossil forms from remote periods show exactly the same structure as living forms to-day. Further, the vital impulse striving towards freedom meets with obstacles, and failure and arrest are manifest in the lethargy of vegetables and the mechanical reflexes of animals, if these are viewed with reference to the assumed end of the creation of man. The only finalism which Bergson will admit is that of a push towards freedom in virtue of an original vital impulse, blindly and often vainly seeking to overcome the movement of matter towards necessity. It is a vis a tergo happening at last to issue, without any foresight of the result, in the appearance of man.

It is not clear, however, that Bergson has been able to dispose of finalism, or to find some conception between it and the theory of chance which he rejects. The disc of a talking machine, to one not familiar with it, with its spiral lines broken in a haphazard way, would seem to exclude purpose; but when it is properly adjusted the voice of a Melba or a Caruso can be heard. So there may be some standpoint from which the bewildering variety of nature will reveal some unitary purpose. It may be, to use the figure of the artist, that the purpose is not solely the production of man, but that the variety and beauty of the natural world is an expression of the joy of the Creative Artist in his work. The purpose may be more comprehensive, and the fact that all natural history does not plainly lead to the production of man is not in itself a proof that man was not the intended consummation of the process.

It is noteworthy that Bergson, a master in the use of illustration, cannot find any exact illustration of the kind of evolution he wishes to describe. He compares the course of evolution to a road, leading to a city, but hastens to add that, for evolution, the end of the road is not seen.[158] He says again that "if one wished to express himself in terms of finality, it must be said that consciousness ... has sought an issue in the double direction of instinct and intelligence. It has not found it in instinct and it has not obtained it upon the side of intelligence, except by a sudden leap from animal to man. So that, in the last analysis, man would be the raison d' Être of the entire organization of life upon our planet."[159] He adds again, however, that this would be but a manner of speaking, and that there is nothing in reality but a certain current of existence and an antagonistic current, whence all the evolution of life. Once more it will be asked, how is this sudden leap, so tremendous in its consequences, to be conceived? Is it a leap in the dark, like the leap of a fish from the water into a rowboat? Is man thus only a happy accident? Or must we see in the vital impulse, or behind it, some real instrumentality of guidance? If the original current of life is wholly blind and purposeless, it would arrive nowhere, or else its arrival at humanity would be as much the result of chance as if it were due to a fortuitous collocation of atoms.

But let us return to Bergson's favourite and beautiful figure of the artist. The effort to objectify the ideal, and to put it in concrete form in words or upon canvas, is said to be precious though painful. It is precious and more precious than the work it results in, "because, thanks to it, we have drawn from ourselves not only all there was there, but more than was there: we have raised ourselves above ourselves."[160]

Is the Divine Artist subject to this kind of evolution? In moments of creative activity does He thus avail Himself of a "plus-power" in the universe, to use Emerson's expression, and does He thus, like the human artist, raise Himself above Himself? If so, we must think of God as altogether such a one as we are, rather than as the source and ground of being and the life and light of men. Such a deity is rather to be identified with the stream of life than with the Ultimate lying behind both life and matter. The Divine Artist, so conceived, would lack the clearness of human prevision of ends, and would be of a relatively lower order of endowment. The striving of the vital impulse without foresight of an end is of an infra-human rather than a super-human kind; for even a "complete and perfect humanity," Bergson says, "would be that in which these two forms of conscious activity [intuition and intelligence] attain their full development."[161]

A recent critic has said that while Bergson has removed the mechanical obstacles to liberty he has not discovered the spiritual conditions requisite for it, and that "he has, most unintentionally, brought us back, in this anti-Finalism, to that Naturalism which he has so successfully resisted when it masqueraded as a sheer Mechanism."[162] There can be no doubt that the spirit of his philosophy is one of progress, and that the tendency of his thought is spiritualistic; his Élan vital is an Élan en avant, and his God (if one be admitted in his system) is a God of hope. But the questions will still arise whether the vital impulse means for society a destructive radicalism or a constructive renewal; whether, in its ethical aspect, it means a will-to-live no matter what happens to any one else, or a will-to-live-better; and whether it will eventually be transformed into a pessimistic resignation or transmuted into spiritual aspiration.

In the religious aspect of his philosophy, Bergson stands at the parting of the ways. He must associate with creation not merely an impulse vaguely psychical, but the personal attributes of will, intelligence and purpose, and so advance towards theism; or else he must be content to rest in naturalism, albeit of a glorified type.

II. Eucken and the Truth of Religion

Since the death of William James, the brightest stars in the philosophical firmament have been Henri Bergson of Paris and Rudolf Eucken of Jena. One reason for the popularity of both is that the centre of interest in their best-known works is not in epistemology. They do not approach the problem of existence as beholders, merely asking how they can see, and whether what they see is real, but their standpoint is that of intimate, vital human experience. Both writers place themselves in the stream of life, and find that the moments of deepest insight into reality are those of creative activity in art or other constructions of the mind, or else, with Eucken, of moral achievement and victory.

Eucken has been called the German Emerson, and his message to his time is that of a seer rather than of a systematizer. He is the prophet of a spiritual life, protesting against materialism and secularism, and vindicating the sovereign rights of the spiritual aspects of existence. In the term "Activism," which he applies to his philosophy, he intimates that there must be an activity of the soul upon its material and social environment, before the insights of philosophy and the achievements of art and the experiences of religion can be attained. There must be an assertion by the soul of its own spiritual nature. The conviction that man is not merely the product of nature, but in his spiritual life is independent and supreme, is not the result of a revelation to a passive recipient. It is an achievement, a venture of faith, a self-assertion of the soul in the face of hostile forces which would confine it within the trivial and the phenomenal.

Eucken's relation to Christianity will appear if we notice briefly (1) his critique of other philosophical theories; (2) his own constructive theory of religion; and (3) his answer to the question, Can we still be Christians?

1. As an exponent of the "monistic trinity" of the Good, the Beautiful, and the True, Eucken is brought into comparison with his famous colleague, Haeckel, with whose "brand-new monism" he has little sympathy. Against Naturalism, Eucken holds that the life of man in its ideal constructions such as science, art, morality and religion, cannot be explained from below, but only from the Higher in him and above him. From the material supplied to it by nature the soul, out of its own activity, builds the more stately mansions of science, philosophy, art, social organization and religion. "A consistent naturalism," he contends, "is not able to permit science of any kind. Science is constructed through the activity of the human mind alone."[163]

Against Pragmatism, with which Eucken's Activism has some superficial resemblance, he argues for the "independent character of reality over against our experience of it." He believes that our deepest nature can be called into action only by the recognition of an Ought, which has an existence and value of its own, regardless of the opinions of any group of individuals or of the whole human race. "When the good of the individual and of humanity becomes the highest aim and the guiding principle, truth sinks to the level of a merely utilitarian opinion.... Truth can exist only as an end in itself. 'Instrumental' truth is no truth at all."[164]

The method of the intellectualist as well as of the voluntarist is inadequate to reach the truth of religion. Religion should be a fact of the whole man, and of his own decision, and it should recognize by a unique experience, which cannot be called exclusively feeling or thought or will, an encompassing and basal whole. Thought "left simply to its own resources would never be able to get beyond empty forms and highly abstract conceptions."[165] No merely intellectual form of religion is able to overcome doubt. Thus "the transformation of the Spiritual Life into an impersonal thought-process destroys it to its very foundation."

2. This effort, already in part described, to assert an independent spiritual world over against a natural world, this recognition of over-individual standards and of an absolute, self-subsistent Spiritual Life (Geistesleben), is called Universal Religion. The term Godhead to indicate this conception is in some ways preferable to that of God. A higher stage of religion is indicated by Eucken's term Characteristic Religion, by which is meant a deeper insight into the divine, a more personal experience of the divine energy of Spiritual Life. Universal Religion, it may be said, is the demand or the feeling after God; while Characteristic Religion is the supply or the finding of God. In the effort to conform to the over-individual standards and to attain harmony with the divine, there is an inevitable sense of weakness and failure. It becomes evident that man's own energy cannot save him from inner discord. "If a rescue is possible, Divine power and grace must do the work. That such power and grace really accomplish this, is the fundamental conviction of religion."[166] There originates a mutual intercourse with the soul and God as between an I and a Thou; and "consequently, there culminates here a movement away from the colourless conception of the Godhead to that of a living and personal God."[167]

Eucken's teaching has been called a philosophical restatement of Christianity. He reiterates in philosophical language the theological doctrines of sin, of the new birth, of divine grace, and of the supremacy of Christian love. His argument for immortality is the religious argument: "The Infinite Power and Love that has grounded a new spontaneous nature in man, over against a dark and hostile world, will conserve such a new nature and its spiritual nucleus, and shelter it against all perils and assaults, so that life as the bearer of life eternal can never be wholly lost in the stream of time."[168]

3. From our exposition thus far it would seem unnecessary to ask the question, Can we still be Christians? and we are not surprised that Eucken's answer is, "We not only can but must be Christians."[169] A closer examination of his teaching shows that this question, and even the previous question, Can we still be theists? may naturally be raised. It is true that Eucken recoils from pantheism as lessening the energy of life,[170] and declares that the transcendence of the Divine must be asserted; but on the other hand we are warned that "the notion of the personal is here only a symbol for something transcending all conceptions and words."[171] It is too emotional and anthropomorphic. Eucken will not declare unqualified allegiance either to pantheism, to theism in its usual form or to agnosticism. In the Spiritual Life the opposition of monism and dualism, and apparently of the personal and the impersonal, are transcended. The overcoming of opposites in a way impossible for reason is precisely the office and prerogative of religion. It is to be noticed in his account of spiritual life that prayer, "the core of religion," is singularly absent; and in his exposition of Christianity he gives no prominence to the Fatherhood of God, central as that conception was in the teaching of Jesus.

With the doctrine of personality thus loosely held, it is no wonder that there are many elements in Christianity as usually understood which are uncongenial to Eucken's mode of thought. We cannot, he says, confine the union of God and man to one unique instance, and we must demand an immediate relationship between God and man throughout the whole breadth of the Spiritual Life; nor can we make the expression of divine love and grace dependent upon its one expression in Jesus Christ.[172] One time cannot set the standard for all time,[173] nor one historical person, absolutely, for all persons. The denial of sensible miracle, he allows, cuts deep into historical Christianity, but such a denial is necessary.[174] To affirm miracle is to make the spiritual too dependent on the sensible, and such a central miracle as the Resurrection "would mean an overthrow of the total order of nature, as this has been set forth through the work of modern investigation."[175]

However great the figure of Jesus may be, His greatness must be confined to the realm of humanity. "If Jesus, therefore, is not God, if Christ is not the second Person in the Trinity, then He is man; not a man like any average man among us, but still man. We can, then, revere Him as a leader, a hero, a martyr; but we cannot directly bind ourselves to Him or root ourselves in Him (bei ihm festlegen); we cannot submit to Him unconditionally. Still less can we make Him the object of a cult. To do so would be nothing less than an intolerable deification of a human being."[176]

What of those, we may ask, who in religious experience find themselves "rooted and grounded" in Christ? Eucken's readers cannot expect relief from this quarter, for religious experience, he holds, is too subjective and human to ground an inference to the nature of Spiritual Life.[177] It is evident that Eucken has cut deep into Christianity alike on its historical, its doctrinal and its experiential sides. He distinguishes between form and substance, but acknowledges that "religion has lost unspeakably much through the upheaval of the old form";[178] and that this must somehow be made good. We might, without violence in the comparison, imagine the case of a Mohammedan who, trained in modern modes of thought but clinging to old associations, asked himself the question, Can we still be Mohammedans? "Yes," he might reply, "but we must retain only the essence or soul of Mohammedanism—its monotheism. The historical body or existential form of Mohammedanism, namely, that Mohammed was the prophet of God and that the Koran is a revelation from heaven, must be given up. And even when we speak of the unity and personality of God, we must remember that we are employing symbol and metaphor."

Eucken presents the remarkable phenomenon of a man whose thought is saturated with Christian influence, who appreciates the moral power and splendour of Christianity and its regenerative effects in history, and yet is unable to reconcile its distinctive features with the fundamental concepts of his philosophy. He shows the close connection of the questions, What think ye of Christ? and, What think ye of God? and that assured belief in the personality of God and in His incarnation in a Person belong together. "No one cometh to the Father but by me." That a Christianity such as Eucken preaches, removed from supports in history, in authoritative doctrine, in religious experience, perhaps even in a rational theism, can retain its moral power and act as a spiritual lever for the elevation either of the masses or the classes, remains to be proved.

Our twentieth century philosophers are the prophets of a new age. Bergson's teaching opens before each individual and before humanity new possibilities of achievement, as, in obedience to the vital impulse, the army of humanity rushes on "in an overwhelming charge, able to beat down every resistance and clear the most formidable obstacles, perhaps even death."[179] Eucken, with the more serious burden of a moral message, has proclaimed with voice and pen the gospel of a new spiritual life and a new spiritual world. Do not these twentieth century prophets reËcho in a certain sense, each in his own language, the message which was heard among the Galilean hills in an age from which the centuries are measured, "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand"?

III. Ward and the Realm of Ends

Our English speaking philosophers, in the more usual fashion, base their religious philosophy upon a theory of knowledge. It is noticeable, however, that both James Ward and Josiah Royce, while belonging to the idealistic tradition coming down from Kant and Hegel, show the influence of a revolt from that tradition. Ward begins with the many, with pluralism, while he ends with the one; and Royce declares himself an advocate of Absolute Pragmatism.

The great services of Ward to religious philosophy in his "Realm of Ends" are, first, his transition from pluralism to theism, and, second, his demonstration anew of the strength of the philosophical argument for immortality.

1. His theistic argument in a nutshell is this, that while there is no road from the One to the Many, there is an open road from the Many to the One, with sign-posts upon the way. We must start with pluralism, says Ward, because no reason can be given why the One, in whatever way conceived, should become the Many. Why should the homogeneous become heterogeneous, or the indeterminate determinate, or why should the absolute become split up into finite spirits? A creation out of nothing cannot, for Ward, solve the problem, for his conception of creation is that of "intellective intuition," in which God as subject is necessary to the existence of the world as object, but the world, from this standpoint, is equally necessary to God.

There is no way of passing, then, from an absolute One to the Many, from singularism to pluralism. We must start with Babel and achieve, if we can, "one language and one speech." In its modern form Pluralism is a revolt alike from nineteenth century Absolutism, which was the dominant school in Germany and England, and from the Naturalism brought to the fore by the advance of scientific research, and interpreting mind in terms of nature. Pluralism has been called a means of escape alike from "Naturalism's desert and the barren summit of the Absolute." The ancient pluralism took the form of atomism, but the concourse of atoms may account for rigidity and uniformity but not for spontaneity. The modern type of pluralism, starting at the level of self-consciousness, posits a multitude of monads or individuals acting towards self-conservation and self-realization, and can, it is believed, do full justice alike to law and contingency, to spontaneity and fixity. The pluralist, operating on the principle of continuity, assumes that there are conscious individuals or monads in various degrees lower than man down to the minimal point of complete unconsciousness; and higher consciousnesses than man up to a being who may be called in a sense supreme, but is never more than one of the many, not inclusive of them, and, however exalted, is never more than primus inter pares.

The modern pluralist as described by Ward is a "pampsychist"; he believes that all existence is soul-like. There is a multiplicity of soul-like beings of various grades of development, some dominating, some serving, "conative and cognitive individuals bent on self-conservation and seeking the good."[180] All existence is soul-like, although, in what we call inorganic matter, these cognitive and conative monads have been largely "denatured" and reduced to the semblance of mechanism and routine. They have become "finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark."

The pluralist assumes at the outset a multiplicity of soul-like beings; but he cannot explain satisfactorily their inter-action, or their action towards a common end. If, indeed, a pluralistic standpoint were hopelessly infected with contradictions, as the Eleatics might hold, then "the way to theism would be hopelessly barred; for from pluralism speculation really always has and always must begin."[181] Pluralism begins with the many and ends with the many. But did it really begin at the beginning, and does it really reach the end? Pluralism, Ward insists, "points both theoretically and practically [and both forward and backward] beyond itself."[182]

Following Ward in his transition from pluralism to theism, we notice: (1) The pluralist stops with "the totality of a Many in their inter-action regarded as the ultimate reality." But this position "is incomplete and unsatisfying. A plurality of beings primarily independent as regards their existence and yet always mutually acting and reacting upon each other, an ontological plurality that is somehow a cosmological unity, seems clearly to suggest some ground beyond itself. The idea of God presents itself to meet this lack." But this idea of God would be meaningless "unless God were regarded as transcending the Many; so there can be no talk of God as merely primus inter pares."[183] There can be no democratic idea of God, for by its very nature the idea of God implies something unique and incomparable and sovereign. The existence of the Many then looks back to the existence of the One as ground or creator.

The pluralistic view, then, does not, apart from theism, make a unified world; a pluralistic universe is in fact a contradiction in terms. Such a unifying conception as theism affords answers to the subject in relation to the manifold objects of experience; in fact it is doubtful if an absolute pluralism is a possible conception since we never know of the Many apart from the One. Theism, again, in its doctrine of a dominant monad and a supreme world spirit, is in agreement with the generalizations of science. All theories of the derivation of finite spirits, whether evolutionist, creationist, or traducian, agree in deriving the Many from the One.

(2) The coÖperation of the Many also points in the direction of the One if, as is generally assumed, this coÖperation is towards any common goal. The coÖperation, it may be said, is due to chance, a fortuitous concourse of purposes; but if there is a tendency to one end, the question is inevitable, Why should the Many tend towards one end unless they had in the One their source? Theism is reached as the alternative of supposing that the inter-actions of the Many are a mere welter of happenings without meaning or purpose. Evolution and history show an increase of complexity and coÖperation, and if all things work together it is natural to believe that all things work together for good. "The God who knows all loves all," and only the immanence of God in the world as defined by theism can give assurance that the pluralist's ideal will be fulfilled.[184] Apart from theistic belief there would be no reason to expect progress on the whole, for "a world entering upon a fresh evolution cannot start where it left off and may even begin in less favourable conditions than before." "In a word, without such spiritual continuity as theism alone seems able to ensure, it looks as if a pluralistic world were condemned to a Sisyphean task. Per aspera ad astra may be its motto, but facilis descensus Averno seems to be its fate."[185]

Further (3) theism enriches and enhances the pluralist's ideal by all the ineffable blessedness that the presence of God must yield. To sum up: "The theoretical demand for the ground of the world, then, as well as the practical demand for the good of the world, is met by the idea of God."[186] As related to the Many the One is the "ultimate source of their being and ultimate end of their ends."[187]

2. While Ward is a Platonist alike in his belief in immortality and in connecting that belief with the doctrines of the preËxistence and transmigration of souls, his general argument for a future life follows the more usual lines. It is based upon both rational and moral grounds and expressed with unusual beauty and power.

Man's native capacities and preËminently the moral law within him point far beyond any ability he has in the present life, and it is to be assumed, with Kant, that "no organ, no faculty, no impulse, in short nothing superfluous or disproportionate to its use, and therefore aimless, is to be met with."[188] Against a continuance of life there are no valid objections to be raised. We cannot prove a negative, and the burden of proof rests with those who deny its possibility. The immortality of influence or of the race cannot be substituted for personal immortality. If humanity or society is an end in itself, "then the persons who constitute it must share in this end."[189] "The wearisome procession of generation after generation of mortals in pursuit of an ignis fatuus, all hoping, all working for what none attain, might divert a Mephistopheles but would certainly not be a realm of ends."[190]

The moral arguments for a future life are bound up with an estimate of the worth of human personality, but are ultimately rational as well. If death ends all, not only are we of all creatures most miserable, but God also, if in this case He exists, is mocked, and the world whose highest ideals are not and cannot be fulfilled is without ultimate meaning. We have then the dilemma: "Either the world is not rational or man does not stand alone and this life is not all. But it cannot be rational to conclude that the world is not rational, least of all when an alternative is open to us that leaves room for its rationality—the alternative of postulating God and a future life."[191]

A belief in transmigration is with Ward organically connected with his pluralism and pampsychism. For the pluralist "all the individuals there are have existed from the first and will continue to exist indefinitely";[192] and it follows that "'metempsychosis' in some form seems an unavoidable corollary of thoroughgoing pampsychism, so long as we look broadly at the facts of life as a whole."[193] The same doctrine that "all the individuals there are have existed from the first" affects, it should be noticed, the quality of Ward's theism. God is not transcendent in time, for we cannot conceive God without the world. He is not transcendent as being in His existence independent of the world, for a God who is not a creator is an abstraction.[194] Again He is not transcendent in the sense that He can now exercise creative power, for there can be no new creation since the beginning.

Before pampsychism, with its "unavoidable corollary" of metempsychosis, is adopted this theory itself should be subjected to a closer examination. While pampsychism has undoubted advantages as a philosophical theory, it has serious difficulties as well. It appears to have but slight relation to the progress of science in any of its lines. The whole scheme of evolution, from the inorganic through the vegetable to animal and man, is seriously modified. The movement is from consciousness to what is called matter, but consciousness seems to have suffered a sort of a "fall"; for in the geologic and astronomic ages before the introduction of life consciousness was at any rate reduced to the vanishing point. What, then, of the reality of those processes which geology and astronomy describe? Their reality as more than an imaginary prelude to human or animal life is open to question. The physiologist, moreover, will contend that there is no evidence of the presence of consciousness except in connection with a nervous system, or will at most admit a kind of diffused consciousness in all organic matter. The astronomer, finally, will think it strange to be told that while "we cannot, of course, affirm that a star or a meteor or a cluster of particles is an individual," we must as pluralists believe "that the real beings these phenomena imply have some spontaneity and some initiative."[195]

Both pampsychism and mechanism may be accused of pushing the principle of continuity too far. It is an error to reduce all objects and all activities, all thinking beings and all objects of our thought, to mechanism and its products and by-products, thus explaining away the peculiar nature of man as a conative and cognitive being. But it is equally an error in the other direction, it may be contended, to reduce all of reality, by an exaggeration of anthropomorphism and a return though in a refined form to the method of primitive animism, to the analogy of social intercourse.

It is hazardous to stake the interests of theism upon a technical theory of knowledge such as that upon which pampsychism is based. One may gratefully appreciate the cogency and value of Ward's theistic argument in its general aspects without being convinced that the doctrine of pampsychism is the only, or indeed the firmest, basis upon which theistic belief can be reared.

IV. Royce and the Problem of Christianity

Our American philosopher, Josiah Royce, has always been occupied with the religious aspects of philosophy, but has of late shown a special interest in the philosophical interpretation of the doctrines of the Christian Faith. His mature views are expressed in his essay on "What is Vital in Christianity?" in his volume, "William James and Other Essays" (1911), and in his Lowell lectures, "The Problem of Christianity" (1913).

Royce believes that if there is to be a philosophy of religion at all, such a philosophy must include in its task "the office of a positive and of a deeply sympathetic interpretation of the spirit of Christianity, and must be just to the fact that the Christian religion is, thus far at least, man's most impressive vision of salvation, and his principal glimpse of the homeland of the spirit."[196]

In Christianity Royce finds a religion of loyalty, defined as "the practically devoted love of an individual for a community." Christianity is in its essence "the most typical, and so far in human history, the most highly developed religion of loyalty;"[197] and it was in Pauline Christianity that the Christian ideas of the community, the lost state of the individual and of atonement or grace first received their full statement, though not their complete formulation. Paul's addition to the doctrine of love, thought by himself to be inspired by the Spirit of the Ascended Lord, consisted in his placing love to the church side by side with love to God and to one's neighbour. "Christian love, as Paul conceived it, takes on the form of Loyalty. This is Paul's simple but vast transformation of Christian love."[198]

The reduction of what is vital in Christianity to the so-called pure gospel of Christ, as recorded in the body of the presumably authentic sayings and parables, is to Royce profoundly unsatisfactory. "If He had so viewed the matter, the Messianic tragedy in which His life-work culminated would have been needless and unintelligible."[199] What is most vital in Christianity "is contained in whatever is essential and permanent about the doctrines of the incarnation and atonement."[200]

In these respects Royce shows his sympathy with traditional Christianity as over against the standpoint of modern liberalism. He protests in effect, in the first place, against a "reduced" Christianity based upon the Synoptic teaching of Jesus alone, and upon this teaching only after alleged Johannine and Pauline elements have been cut out. Secondly, he finds that Christianity includes doctrine as well as ethics. And, third, he finds in Paul's teaching not a perversion of the gospel, but a developed statement of the central ideas of Christianity.

Unlike many philosophers, Royce takes an austere view of the misery and tragedy of sin, as "grave with the gravity of life, and stern only as the call of life, to any awakened mind, ought to be stern."[201] The sinner cannot save himself. By his own deed he has banished himself to the hell of the irrevocable. If there is to be atonement which shall reconcile the traitor to his own deed and the community to the act of treachery against it, an atonement stated in purely human terms, it must be an "objective" atonement, not merely one of moral influence upon the traitor. It must be by some creative deed of loving ingenuity by which the world is made better than it would have been had the treason never been done. Thus the family of Jacob was reunited in peculiarly tender ties after the reconciliation. "Through Joseph's work all is made better than it would have been had there been no treason at all."[202]

In his purely human and untheological treatment of sin and grace, Royce's thought has professedly moved within the limits of social relationships. Sin is an act of broken faith or disloyalty to the community. The sinner is restored from his estate of misery by the saving grace of the community.[203] "'Atonement' and 'Divine Grace' may be considered as if they were expressions of the purely human process whereby the community seeks and saves, through its suffering servants and its Spirit, that which is lost."[204]

While Royce's exposition of sin and grace is full of suggestion and insight, it is more philosophical than Biblical. Thus at important points the contrast between Paul and Royce's interpretation of Paul is very striking. Royce hints at the divinity of the community, while Paul asserts the divinity of Christ. Royce says, Be loyal to the community, while Paul would say primarily, Believe in Christ and be loyal to Him. "Loyalty to the personal Christ," says a reviewer of Royce's work, "has been (and surely is) even a more vital element in Christianity than loyalty to the community."[205] Royce would say that by the grace of the community we are saved; while with Paul the Saviour is personal and it was the vision of Christ, not of the community, that transformed his life.

Again it is not easy to read the doctrine of the beloved community and of the community as the source of grace into the words or the spirit of the teaching of Jesus. The attempt, however, is made. In the parable of the Prodigal Son, the voice of the father, who is "for the moment simply the incarnation of the spirit of this community,"[206] is said to be the voice of the family, welcoming the wanderer; and the joy of the father is the joy of the family in his return. If this be so the father should have said, "The family fellowship is restored," instead of saying, "This my son was dead and is alive again."

Even Royce's Old Testament illustration from the story of Joseph, where we find a grievous betrayal and then a deed which leaves the community, in this case the family, richer in love and more united in heart than if the deed of betrayal had not been done, does not support Royce's principle that the ideal community is the saviour and the source of atoning grace. The story to be illustrative should have been reversed; Joseph should have been the betrayer and destroyer of the family life, and then the brethren unitedly by their love and ingenuity should have won him back.

How then does the loyal community which is to be the source of grace originate? Royce admits that it can only be by "some miracle of grace,"[207] and the problem becomes acute when we consider the origin of the historical community of the Christian Church. The usual view is that here a miracle of grace has happened in the person of Jesus, the author and finisher of loyalty, but in that case there could be no such "simplification of the problems of Christology,"[208] as Royce desires. Who, then, was the founder of the Christian Community? It was not Paul, for he found a community already in existence. It was not the human Jesus, though He gave the signal, for we cannot say that, speaking of Jesus as an individual man, we know that He explicitly intended to found the Christian Church.[209] It was not the divine Christ, for "the human source of all later Christologies must be found in the early Christian community itself."[210] We must in fact renounce our quest for the origin of the Christian Church, for its foundation depended "upon motives which we cannot fathom by means of any soundings that our historical materials or our knowledge of social psychology permit us to make."[211] Such recourse to a convenient agnosticism, however rhetorically it may be expressed, does not bring us out of the circle, that the church founded itself, and in that case, as a source of grace, saves itself. The modern man, under Royce's guidance, is relieved from the problems of Christology only to find that those of ecclesiology are equally pressing.

The conception of the community is obviously fruitful alike in its ethical and its theological implications, and Royce's discussion of it, so elevated in its tone, will doubtless be for the "strengthening of hearts" as he desires. But inferences foreign to Christian thought are drawn when it is suggested that "Man the community may prove to be God,"[212] and that in "this essentially social universe" the community is "the Absolute."[213] This is the voice of Hegel rather than that of Paul.

In an essay on Browning's theism Royce has remarked: "To say God is Love is, then, the same as to say that God is, or has been, or will be incarnate, perhaps once, perhaps—for so Browning's always monistic intuitions about the relation of God and the world always suggest to him—perhaps always, perhaps in all our life, perhaps in all men."[214] The doctrine of the incarnation is thus acknowledged to be vital not only for Christianity but for theism as well. "The fact of the Incarnation," as Westcott has said, "gives reality to that moral conception of God as active Love without which Theism becomes a formula."[215] But the meaning of incarnation and its support of theistic belief is weakened in proportion as it is interpreted not in an historical sense but as an incarnation "perhaps always, perhaps in all men."

In his emphasis upon the incarnation and atonement, Royce has shown a profound appreciation of what is vital in Christianity, but his discussion shows also that these doctrines themselves, in being removed from their historic setting and adapted to the requirements of a philosophical theory, may easily lose what is for religion their most vital elements.

Each of our four philosophers has performed an important service for religious thought. Bergson has made an effective protest against materialism. Eucken has asserted the reality of the spiritual world. Ward has strengthened the philosophical foundations of belief in God and immortality. Royce has found in the distinctive ideas of Christianity the crown of religious philosophy.

The deeper thought of our age, judged by its leading exponents, has been working towards Christianity and not in the opposite direction. It has broken away from materialism with its denial of a spiritual world. It has broken away from an idealism which denies personality in God and man. It has been strongly attracted to Christianity, and influenced in its intellectual constructions by the teaching of Christ and of the Apostles. It is at one with Christianity in its ethical standpoint and emphasis. The Cross is no longer foolishness to the Greek, when leaders of philosophic thought find in Christianity their brightest glimpse into the homeland of the spirit, the source of their deepest insights into truth, the inspiration of their most fruitful activity and the key to the solution of their profoundest problems.