christ inanity and greek ideal

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BR 121 .W35 1897Watson, John, 1847-1939.Christianity and idealism


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PUBLICATIONS OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL UNION OF THEUNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIAEDITED BY

G. H. HOWISON, LL.D.MILLS PROFESSOR OF INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY

AND CIVIL POLITY

VOLUME II

CHRISTIANITY AND IDEALISM


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J^^y^


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Christianity and IdealismThe Christian Ideal of Life in its Relations

TO THE Greek and Jewish Ideals andTO Modern Philosophy

BY

/JOHN WATSON, LL.D.PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY

KINGSTON. CANADA

THE MACMILLAN COMPANYLONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.

1897

Ail rights reserved


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Copyright, 1896,By the MACMILLAN COMPANY.

TCorfajDotJ ^rcssJ. S. CusliiiiK & Co. Berwick & SmithNorwood Mass. U.S.A.


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CONTENTSPAGE

Note by the Editor viiIntroductory Preface XXI

Part ITHE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE IN RELATION TO

THE GREEK AND JE WISH IDEALSCHAPTER I

Historical Connexion of Morality and Religion . . i

CHAPTER nThe Greek Ideal 23

CHAPTER IIIThe Jewish Ideal 45

CHAPTER IVThe Christian Ideal 60

CHAPTER VMedi^.val Christianity no

V


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yi CONTENTS

Part IIMODERN IDEALISM IN ITS RELATION TO THE

CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFECHAPTER VI

PAGEGeneral Statement and Defence of Idealism . . .121

CHAPTER VIIIdealism in relation to Agnosticism and the Special

Sciences ^53

CHAPTER VIIIIdealism and Christianity 192


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NOTE BY THE EDITORThe present volume, though the first to

come from the press, is in its proper orderthe second in a series of pubHcations projectedby the Philosophical Union of the Universityof California. The first volume, entitled TheConception of God, by Professor Royce ofHarvard University and a number of his critics,has been thrown out of its natural place bythe stress of circumstances, but will presentlybe issued, and in due time will be followed byothers from various writers of philosophicalweight. Each volume in the series will in amanner represent the culmination of a groupof studies prosecuted by the Union, usuallyduring an academic year ; it will consist,mainly, of the contribution made to thosestudies by some thinker of note whose pre-vious writings have formed the nucleus ofthe year's work, and \\\\o comes at the invi-


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viii NOTE BY THE EDITORtation of the Union to take in person thechief and concluding part in the work.The society whose pursuits are to result

in these publications contains members ofnearly every shade of current philosophicalopinion: the positivist, the agnostic, the un-settled inquirer, all have their free expressionand hearing in it, as well as the idealist ofnearly every type. It is true, however, thatthe dominant tone of the Union is affirma-tive and idealistic. The decided majority ofits members are animated by a conviction thathuman thouo;ht is able to solve the riddleof life positively ; to solve it in accord withthe ideal hopes and interests of humannature. TJiey are convinced that, for betteror worse, enlightened mankind has in mattersof belief taken a final leave of mere tradi-tion and of blank authority, of miraculismin every form. It is accordingly clear tothem that the only safety for human prac-tice henceforth, the practice of each or thepractice of all, lies in founding it on a phil-osophic criticism that shall be luminous, un-relenting, penetrating to the bottom, and that


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Erratum.Page viii, line lo from bottom, for "They" read " Many.'


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NOTE BY THE EDITOR ixyet, just because of this unsparing thorough-ness, will affirm the reality of all those moralbeliefs and religious hopes on which theachievements of western civilisation havehitherto rested, and by the undermining ofwhich the stability of society now threatensto give way.A certain thread of continuity, comingfrom this affirmative aim, is discernible inthe writings that form the first two volumesin the proposed series. Indeed, this is obvi-ous from their titles The Conception ofGod and Christianity and Idealism. Wereone to say that a logical march seems mani-fest here, as if there were an advance fromthe question of Theism in general to themore specific question of Christian Theism,the statement would not be incorrect. Sucha line in the discussion, such an advance init along the historical course of religious be-lief, has actually been in mind. It corre-sponds, too, to the course of attack uponthe ideals of past culture which the negativephilosophical criticism in our century hastaken. That attack has accustomed us to


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X NOTE BY THE EDITORthe repeated sceptical questions : Is thereany proof that there is even a God ? Isthere any, at all events, that Christianity istrue ? Are we any longer Theists, even ?In any case, are we any longer Christians ?A philosophical procedure aiming to affirmthe reality of the ideal elements in ourachieved civilisation would naturally followthe path of these questions, and, by a criti-cal appreciation at once of their supportsand of their limits, would pass to the justi-fication of a rational Theism, and onward tothat of a rational Christianity.The present volume thus has for its theme

the interdependence of Christianity and Ideal-ism ; of Christianity regarded, not as histori-cal theology, but as an ideal of conduct, andIdealism so stated as to become, in theauthor's conviction, completely self-consistent,and thus expressive of a reason completelyself-critical. Professor Watson argues, tacitly,that Christianity and Idealism, when each isduly understood, lend each other a stablesupport. From this point of view, no doubt,a large part of historical theology called


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NOTE BY THE EDITOR xiChristian will fall away, even of that whichhas been regarded as of the essence ofChristianity, and Christianity will be seen asin its truth the new but abiding principleof personal and social action that marked afresh and higher stage in human develop-ment, and that amid all foreign surroundingsor accretions has ever since been the realprime mover in the progress of civilisation.On the other hand, Idealism, responding toa like logic, will assume the form proper toit as simply the philosophical expressionof whatever is most characteristic of manin his animation by rational ideals. In thiscommon light each will prove the other true;for each will be seen to be but a differentexpression of the same indivisibly threefoldFact God, human responsible freedom, andhuman immortality. Idealism will prove tobe nothing more nor less than the principleof morality and religion on the one hand,the principle of advancing history on theother, in their comprehended fulfilmentwhile Christianity, now discerned in itsessence, distino-uished from its accidental


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xii NOTE BY THE EDITORembodiments and encumbrances, will beseen to be that in germ which Idealism isin full issue. Both get in this way the vastand impressive sanction that attaches toeverything structural in the growth of his-tory. Neither can any longer be viewed asan accident or a caprice, but both are dis-covered to be intrinsic in things as thingshistorically are ; both to be aspects of thatReason which is the reality of the real, bothconstitutive in the Reality which is rationalthrough and through. Necessary to thismassive style of proof, would be an exhibi-tion of Christianity in its historical develop-ment out of and above earlier religions,especially Judaism and Hellenism, and anexposition of Idealism as rising out of andover lower philosophies, surmounting in logi-cally natural sequence Empiricism, Positiv-ism, Agnosticism, and the successive inchoateor arrested forms of its own doctrine. Tothis course of argument the plan of thepresent work, as set forth in its successiveparts and their chapters, manifestly corre-sponds.


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NOTE BY THE EDTTOR xiiiThe book forms a natural sequel to its

author's previous work Conitc, Mill, and Spen-cer, and, though in its second part beginninglike that with a polemic against the scepticaland agnostic factors in the thinking of thesewriters and of Kant, seeks to bring into viewthe deep affirmative implication, the largerIdealism, that forms the silent presuppositionof their reasoning, however little suspected bythem. Directed upon the negative thoughtso prevalent in our century, both works aimto re-establish the human values invaded byit, not by thrusting it out as worthless,but through supplementing it by the largeraffirmation which at once gives to the nega-tive its relative justification, its function inthe reasoned total truth, and yet exposesthe one-sidedness that would recognise itexclusively. It was in view of this perti-nence to the mental situation of the times,that the Union made the Comte, Mill, andSpencer the basis of its studies for the year1895-96, submitted the criticism advanced inthe book to a counter-criticism by such of itsmembers as might fairly lay claim to expert


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xiv NOTE BY THE EDITORknowledge in the various sciences concerned mathematics, physics, biology, the theory ofevolution, the history of philosophy andinvited the author to visit the Union fromhis distant home, to complete his part of thediscussion in a series of lectures. The resultis the book before us.

The reader, however, would be insecure inassuming that because the new work is issuedat the instance of the Union, the philosophyset forth in it is regarded by the members asa final solution of the grave questions agitat-ing our times. Certainly, the most activeand influential of them are in strong sym-pathy with the general position of its author:belief in our responsible freedom, in our im-mortality, and in God, they regard as lying atthe foundation of civilised society, and theythink its defence is only achievable throughsome form of Idealism. But many of them,and among these the present writer, are im-pressed with the difficulty under which allphilosophy labours since Kant, in the effort toreach the complete ideal desired the insepa-rably correlated truths of God, real human


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NOTE BY THE EDITOR XVfreedom, and immortality genuinely personal.The clue to this threefold union of truths isfastened in human free-agency, comprehendedas meaning self-activity profoundly inward andunqualifiedly real ; and the difficulty lies inseeing how the conception of an immanentGod, joined with the seeming impossibility ofproving any other God on Kantian principlesof knowledge, can be consistent with suchfreedom. Those of us who are convinced ofthis inconsistency are therefore looking for an-other way with Idealism ; we believe that thetime has perhaps arrived when this other waycan be opened, and a new philosophical de-parture begun. This is not the place, ofcourse, to set forth its method ; let the merehint suffice, that, for its starting-point, w^e shalllook to a renewed criticism of Kant, addressedprimarily to closing the gap which he leftbetween the Practical and the TheoreticalReason, and to establishing an effective insteadof a merely nominal primacy of the formerover the latter: it would be shown, namely,that the moral and rcliijious consciousness,with its postulate of a world of Persons, really


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xvi NOTE BY THE EDITORfree, enters as a constitutive condition intothe possibility of the world of sense-percep-tion itself, and is thus the finally determiningfactor in the logic of nature and of predictivenatural science. In this way the world of themoral and religious consciousness would beembraced in the complete and genuine worldof science ; knowledge directed upon naturewould be shown to be only one special func-tion of intelligence, and the world of absoluterealities would be recovered for the intellect.To those who may feel that the reconcilia-

tion of human freedom with the literal im-manence of the Divine Being is more thanhuman wit can compass, it may be well topoint out that this is the only conception ofGod left possible by Kant for minds whoaccept his Analytic^^\\\\ its necessary "sche-matism " of the Categories, limiting know-ledge to the range of possible experience,and w^ho still would lay hold on God byknowledge rather than by unsupported faith.If the tenet of Kant is to stand, that no know-ledge is possible unless the knowing subjectand the known object fall within one and


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NOTE BY THE EDITOR xviithe same self-consciousness, then the Godof knowledge must be this immanent God,and human freedom must make the bestof it. But will the tenet stand ? mustit stand ? It is in direct contradiction withthat other tenet, Kant's very starting-pointThat a perceptive consciousness implies, un-mistakably, some reality other than its own.Which of the two tenets is to reign and toendure? To us of the Union who look forthe new way with Idealism,' these are thesignal questions for the future of philosophy.To minds at a loss to find a God knowableand yet compatible with their freedom, or,in other terms, with their genuine reality,our word would be : Return to Kant's criti-cal starting-point, follow his critical methodby interpreting the necessary transcendentobject in the light of Practical Reason, butdo this with critical consistency; at onestroke, give his foundation-tenet a logicalfooting and refute his opposing tenet, byshowing that his world of the Practical Rea-son, the world of real Persons, is a conditionof the possibility of perception itself, if this


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xviii NOTE BY THE EDITORis to be objective and not a mere experience a mere state of the particular subject.There is no conceivable criterion by whichan experience could be discriminated as ob-jective, except the consenting judgment of atotal society of minds.

But, differ as they may from the author,if indeed they do differ, the members of theUnion are happy in being the agents ofgiving to the world a writing of his thathas the solid philosophical worth which theybelieve the present work possesses. Afterall, and in these times of fundamental doubtespecially, one of the greatest philosophicalservices is to rouse men to a thoroughlycritical search into the whole course of seri-ous thought and its meaning, and to dothis in the only effective way by exhibit-inor the encourai>in2: truth that it has ameaning:, that its earnest efforts cannot endin mere scepticism, indifference, or despair.We offer this book to the reader, confi-dent of the secure wisdom of its author'ssentence : " The failures of successive philoso-phies are not in any sense absolute ; with


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NOTE BY THE EDITOR xixeach step in advance, the problem becomesclearer and more easy of solution." Webelieve, too, that the work has a live rela-tion to the questions most urgent just now.These amount to no less than this : eitherthe entire abandonment of the moral and re-ligious conceptions upon which the culture ofour western nations has been bred, or elsetlie preservation of their living heart despitethe free stripping away of the coverings inwhich they have been protected and nour-ished. It is all-important that belief in thisliving heart of Christianity shall be rationallypreserved, and that in the process of castingoff its foreign and outworn integuments itsvital substance shall neither be lost, impaired,nor adulterated. To repeat the language ofthe lamented author of Literature and Docrnia," An inevitable revolution, of which we allrecognise the beginnings and the signs, butwhich has already spread, perhaps, fartherthan most of us think, is befalling the re-ligion in which we have been brought up";and, amid its course, the greatest need ofthe times is a deep and accurate definition


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XX NOTE BY THE EDITORof Christianity as it really is, when its belief isstated in the highest and simplest terms, pureyet sufficing. For lack of this, Arnold's owneffort to take advantage of the tide in thisreligious revolution proved to be too greata yielding to the prevailing current of scep-ticism ; the distinction between his "Eternal,not ourselves, that makes for righteousness"and the "Unknowable" of the agnostic be-came so attenuated as to be without practicalsignificance, and in abandoning the person-ality, sacrificed the vital quality of God. Thepresent work, by its comprehensive yet lumi-nous interpretation of the teaching of Jesus,and its organic connecting of this with thehighest philosophic insights, we believe goesfar toward settling the desired definition asit is. For this reason, we feel that it willmeet a profoundly real want in all earnestand quickened minds, and we send it forthwith a large and hopeful confidence.

G. H. HOWISON.University of California, Berkeley,

October 27, 1896.


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INTRODUCTORY PREFACEThe present work has grown out of lect-

ures recently delivered before the Philosophi-cal Union of the University of California.What is called Part I. is the expansion of alecture on " The Greek and Christian Idealsof Life," and the remainder contains the sub-stance of two lectures in defence of Idealism,with a good deal of additional matter.The historical matter of the first part does

not pretend to be a complete presentation ofthe development of religion. It was my firstintention to attempt such a presentation, butI soon found that it was impossible to com-press so abundant a material within the limitsassigned to me, and I have therefore con-fined myself to a statement of the generalcourse of religious development, with a moreparticular consideration of the Greek andJewish ideals of life, as compared with the


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xxii INTRODUCTORY PREFACEChristian. In treating of these topics, I haveavoided all polemical discussion, aiming ratherto give the results of many years of readingand reflection, than to occupy space with aconsideration of conflicting views. The chap-ter on the Christian Ideal is based upon astudy of the synoptic gospels, as read in thelight of modern historical and philosophicalcriticism. Here, above all, it seemed advisableto avoid as far as possible all purely doc-trinal topics, concentrating attention entirelyupon the conception of life which may be, asI think, constructed from the sayings of Jesushimself. I am by no means indifferent to thedevelopment by theologians of the fundamentalideas of the Founder of Christianity, but itseems to me that the wonderful power andpersuasiveness of those ideas is most apparentwhen they are exhibited in their naked purity.

It seems almost necessary to say a wordor two upon the use of the term " Idealism."The objection has been raised that no schoolof thought has an exclusive right to the title.In answer to this objection perhaps I can-not do better than try to explain why I


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INTRODUCTORY PREFACE xxiiithink the term " IdeaHsm " may be fairlyemployed to designate the general theorywhich is here advocated.

I presume it will be admitted that theoriginator of the philosophical doctrine ofIdealism was Plato, and that Plato conceivedof the first principle of all things as reason(N0D9), also maintaining that it is in virtue ofreason, as distinguished from sensible percep-tion, that man obtains a knowledge of thatprinciple. Now, modern Idealism, as I under-stand it, agrees with Plato on these twopoints, and therefore its claim to the namedoes not seem either arrogant or unreason-able. No system has a right to call itself" idealistic," in the Platonic sense, which doesnot in some form accept the doctrine ofthe rationality and knowability of the real.Applying this test, we must exclude Agnosti-cism, which denies that we can know thereal as it is in itself; Scepticism, which re-fuses to admit that we can make any abso-lute affirmation whatever, either positive ornegative ; and Sensationalism or Empiricism,which finds in the sensible and its custom-


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xxiv INTRODUCTORY PREFACEary modes of conjunction the only knovvableworld. To call by the name of Idealism, asis sometimes done, a doctrine which reducesall knowable reality to individual states orfeelings, is surely an unwarrantable use ofthe term.

If it is said that, interpreted in the widesense here given to it. Idealism must includesystems differing so greatly as those of Des-cartes and Hegel, or of Spinoza and Lotze,I entirely agree. The systems of Descartes,Spinoza, Leibnitz, Kant, Fichte, Schelling,Heofel, and Lotze all seem to me to be formsof Idealism, and the only question is howfar any of them can claim to be true to theprinciple that " the real is rational." Thetest, therefore, of an idealistic philosophy isits ability to provide a system of ideas whichshall best harmonise with the principle uponwhich Idealism is based ; or, rather, the suc-cess of an idealistic philosophy must consistin its ability to prove that " the real isrational," and that man is capable of knowingit to be rational. I am very far from affirm-ing that the hurried sketch of an idealistic


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INTRODUCTORY PREFACE xxvphilosophy here presented fulfils that demandall that is attempted is to expose the irrele-vancy of certain objections which have beenmade from a misunderstanding of what Ideal-ism affirms, and to indicate the main line ofthought which it must follow, and the mainconclusions to which it leads.

It may help to indicate the points in whichIdealism, as here presented, differs from someof the great historical forms which it hasassumed, if I state wherein these seem to bedefective. In doing so, it will not be possi-ble to enter into detail, or to support by rea-soned proof the conclusions to which I havebeen led. I shall therefore have to assumea general acquaintance with the history ofphilosophy on the part of the reader, and Ibeg him to take the criticisms which I shallmake simply as results, the evidence for whichI hope to give in detail on another occasion.

Plato may be called the Father of Idealism,though, no doubt, his doctrine was a develop-ment from the Idealism implied in the N0D9of Anaxagoras, and still more clearly in theSocratic view of universals. How far, then,


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xxvi INTRODUCTORY PREFACEmay it be said that Plato was untrue to hiscentral idea of the rationality and knowabilityof the real ? His main defect, as it seemsto me, was in virtually opposing the real tothe actual or so-called "sensible." Thisdefect is obvious in his theory, or one of histheories, that Art consists in the " imitation "of ordinary " sensible " actuality. The simi-lar defect in his Philosophy of Religion itwill not be necessary to exhibit here, as Ihave dealt with it in the body of the work;but a word may be said in regard to hisdefective Theory of Knowledge. Just asPlato at last rejects Art on the ground thatit only represents or imitates the " sensible,"so he shows a decided tendency to separatethe universal from the particular. He does,indeed, maintain that whatever is real mustbe self-active ; but in separating reason, asit exists in us, from sensible perception, hevirtually empties reason of all content, andmakes its objects pure abstractions.The philosophy of Aristotle is beset by

similar defects, though in him the contrastof the real or ideal and the actual is less


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INTRODUCTORY PREFACE xxviirigid and is more obviously in process ofbeing transcended. Like Plato, he startsfrom the " mimetic " theory of Art, but heis led to make assertions which are contra-dictory of his starting-point. Thus hevirtually asserts (i) that Art is such an in-terpretation of the actual as serves to bringout its deeper meaning, (2) that it gives riseto a feeling of self-harmony, and (3) that itsobject is spiritual forces in their deepestreality. Yet, since he never abandoned theview that Art is an " imitation " of thesensible, it cannot be said that he attained toa self-consistent theory. The reason for thisdiscrepancy comes to light in his Philosophyof Religion, where he does not get beyondthe idea of God as a self-centred Being, andis therefore forced to conceive of the worldas related to God in an external or arbitraryway. Similarly, in his Theory of Knowledge,he shrinks from the admission that the actualis rational. There is always in things, as hethinks, a recalcitrant element or " matter,"which is the source of "contingency" or" chance." It is not merely that human


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xxvill INTRODUCTORY PREFACEknowledge cannot completely comprehendthe actual, but the actual is itself imperfect,and therefore the ideal " forms " as theyexist for the divine reason, being entirelyfree from " matter," are essentially differentfrom the actual, in which " form " is alwaysmore or less sunk in " matter."When W'C pass from ancient to modern

philosophy, we find the same problem of thereconciliation of the real and the actual con-fronting us ; but the antagonism seems moredifficult of solution, because the contrast ofthe finite and the infinite has been sharpenedby the explicit claim of the individual to ac-cept nothing which does not commend itselfto his reason.

By Descartes, two opposite methods areemployed, the method of abstraction andthe method of definition. In the use of theformer, he is led to maintain that the onlypermanent or unchanging attribute of bodyis geometrical extension ; in employing thelatter, he assumes that there are a numberof real things, each having a definite orlimited amount of extension. Spinoza turns


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XXX mTRODUCTORY PREFACEcould discover them. Such a' doctrine is mani-festly self-contradictory, and therefore Spinozawas only following out this side of the Car-tesian doctrine to its logical result when hedenied final causes altogether. Leibnitz, onthe other hand, refused to admit that humanknowledge is limited to the orderly movementsof nature, as both Descartes and Spinoza as-sumed, and therefore he maintained that, with-out the idea of final cause, or activity directedtowards an end, we cannot explain the worldat all. We must therefore conceive of everyreal being or " monad " as self-active and pur-posive. Each " monad " is ever striving tomake explicit what is already contained ob-scurely in it, and each " represents " the wholeworld from its own point of view, so that all" monads," without any actual connexion withone another, harmonise in their perceptions.Now [a) it is a pure assumption that thereare absolutely independent "monads," in w^hichthere already exists obscurely all that after-wards comes to more or less clear expression;an assumption which has no better warrantthan the preconception that identity is incom-


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INTRODUCTORY TREFACE xxxipatible with development, {b) It is equally anassumption that each monad " represents " theworld. On the Leibnitzian hypothesis ofpurely individual beings, each shut up withinitself, there can be no way of proving thatthere is any world to " represent." The onlyreal individuality, as I should maintain, is thatof a beinQ[ which knows itself because itknows other beings, {c) When he comes toexplain the " harmony " of the monads withone another, Leibnitz has to fall back uponthe idea of the selective activity of the divinewill. Out of all the possible worlds whichlay before the divine mind, that was chosenwhich was the best on the whole. Here,therefore, in the final result of the Leibnitz-ian philosophy, we see the fundamental dis-crepancy which vitiates his whole system.The actual world after all is not rational,but only as rational as God could make ita theory which leaves us no ground for in-ferring the rationality of God at all, but onthe contrary presupposes an absolute limitin the divine mind. Thus the Idealism ofLeibnitz, suggestive as it is, ultimately breaks


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xxxii INTRODUCTORY PREFACEdown ill contradiction. Can we, then, acceptthe Critical Idealism of Kant ?

I cannot do more here than indicate thedefects in the philosophy of Kant whichprevent us from regarding it as final. Itsfundamental imperfection is the abstract op-position of the empirical and the ideal, as ifthe former were not implicitly the latter.This opposition meets us first in his theoryof knowledge, in which a virtual contrast isdrawn between what is knowable and whatlies beyond the boundaries of knowledge.Such a contrast is ultimately unmeaning.The only reality by reference to which wecan criticise the knowable world of ordinaryexperience is a reality which includes, thoughit further elucidates, that world. Failing torecognise this truth, the philosophy of Kantis vexed by the perpetual recurrence of self-contradiction in some new form, a self-con-tradiction which is never finally transcended,(i) In the Esthetic, Kant adopts the com-promise, that space and time belong to thesubject, while individual things in space andtime are relative to an unknown object. But,


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INTRODUCTORY PREFACE xxxiiias these individuals must enter into know-ledge, he is compelled to regard the unknownobject as a mere blank, and such an objectcannot be contrasted with anything; it is, infact, merely the known w^orld stripped of itsdeterminateness and hypostatised. Kant ishere really criticising the known world by anabstract phase of itself, and pronouncing theformer to be lower instead of higher thanthe latter. The pure object can only beregarded as higher than the known world,in so far as the spatial and temporal worldis seen to be a lower form of the knowableworld. In this sense, no doubt, we may saythat the undefined object, or thing in itself,indicates the world as it exists in idea, i.e.the world as completely determined. (2) Inthe Analytic, Kant takes another step in theprocess by which he gives a higher meaningto the thing in itself. The luliolc of theknowable world is now shown to involve theunifying activity of the knowing subject,though with the reservation that the objectis conceived as the source of the undefined" manifold of sense." But, in truth, there is


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xxxiv INTRODUCTORY PREFACEno undefined " manifold " for knowledge^ andhence the thing in itself is, even more pal-pably than before, a magiii 7iominis umbra.(3) This is partly recognised by Kant him-self when he goes on to consider the Un-conditioned in its three forms, the soul,the world, and God. (a) His criticism ofRational Psychology is virtually a recognitionof the truth, that the pure or unrelated sub-ject is a mere fiction of abstraction. Yet hedoes not draw the proper inference, that thereal subject exists only in and through itsrelations to the object. Such a subject isnot mechanically determinable, being self-conscious and self-active, but it does notand could not exist, were not the system ofnature what it is. (b) Kant's criticism ofRational Cosmology is valid, so far as itpoints out that the reflective understandingseeks to affirm one of two related terms asif they were mutually exclusive ; but Kantdoes not see that the reconciliation of theseopposites is possible without recourse beinghad to the unknowable region of " noumena."{c) The criticism of Rational Theology is


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INTRODUCTORY PREFACE xxxvvalid as against the dualistic separation ofbeing and thought, the world and God ; butKant's own solution is inadequate, becausehe regards these oppositions as holding ab-solutely within the sphere of the knowable,whereas they are really oppositions whichcarry their own refutation with them.When he passes from the Theoretical to

the Practical Reason, Kant at last recognisesthat the self-conscious subject is synthetic orproductive ; in other words, that here thereal object is not opposed to the subject assomething unintelligible, but, on the contrary,is bound up with the very nature of thesubject. But the shadow of the " thing initself" still haunts him, and therefore he con-ceives this objective world as merely anideal which demands realisation, but whichcan never be realised. The way out of thisdifficulty is to recognise that the ideal is thereal: that morality is not a mere ''beyond,"but is actually realised objectively in humaninstitutions, which themselves have perma-nence only as they are in harmony with theeternal nature of the world, or, in otherwords, with the nature of God.


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xxxvi INTRODUCTORY PREFACEIn the Critique of Judgnie7it Kant makes

a final effort to overcome the dualism withwhich he started. In aesthetic feeling hefinds a sort of unconscious testimony to theunity of the phenomenal and the real, and inorganised beings he meets with a phase ofthings which refuses to come under the headeither of the phenomenal or the noumenal.Thus, " as by a side gesture," Kant pointsbeyond the abstractions of the sensible andthe supersensible to their actual concreteunity ; but the preconception with which hestarted prevents him from identifying theideal and the real, and the most he can per-suade himself to say is, that man is entitledto a rational faith in God, freedom and im-mortality, though these are objects which liebeyond the range of his knowledge.

I should be sorry if what has been saidshould suggest the idea that philosophy ismerely a series of brilliant failures, in whicheach new thinker vainly strives to prove theunprovable proposition, that the actual worldwhen properly understood is rational ; rather,as it seems to me, faith in the rationality of


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INTRODUCTORY PREFACE xxxviithe universe is the incentive and presupposi-tion of all philosophical progress. Nor arethe failures of successive philosophies in anycase absolute ; with each step in advance theproblem becomes clearer and more easy ofsolution. How far the outline of Idealismcontained in the second part of this essayis free from the objections which I havetried to indicate, must be left for the readerto determine. Perhaps I may venture tosay that, if it has any special value, thatvalue lies in the attempt to reconcile thereality of individual things, and especiallythe freedom and individuality of man, withthe fundamental principle of Idealism, that theactual properly understood is a manifestationin various degree of one self-conscious andself-determining spiritual Being.

It would be difficult to enumerate all thebooks to which I have been directly or in-directly indebted, especially in the prepara-tion of the first part of this essay ; but Imust not omit to mention the various worksof the Master of Balliol, and of ProfessorPfleiderer, as well as Leopold Schmidt's Die


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xxxviii INTRODUCTORY PREFACEEthik der alteî Griechen, Mr. J ebb's Growthand Influence of Classical Greek Poetry, withthe introductions in his edition of Sophocles,Mr. Bosanquet's History of Êsthetic, Dr.Driver's Introduction to the Literature of theOld Testament and Isaiah, Weber's Systemder altsy7iagogalen palastinischeî Theologie,Schlirer's History of the fewish People, Keim'sfesus of Nazara, and Weizsacker's Das Apos-tolische Zeitalter. In preparing the chapteron the Christian Ideal I also received valu-able assistance from my colleague, ProfessorMacnaughton.

JOHN WATSON.Queen's University, Kingston, Canada,

October i, 1896.


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PART ITHE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE INRELATION TO THE GREEK AND

JEWISH IDEALS


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THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFE

CHAPTER IHISTORICAL CONNEXION OF MORALITY AND

RELIGION

Christianity, as it issued fresh from themind of its founder, embodied a conceptionof life which brought rehgion into indissol-uble connexion with morality. The wholehuman race was conceived of as in idea asingle spiritual organism, in which each mangains his own perfection by self-consciousidentification with all the rest, and this com-munity of life was held to be possible onlybecause man is identical in nature, thoughnot in person, with the one divine principlewhich is manifested in all forms of being.Man, it was therefore held, is unable tocome to unity with himself until he hassurrendered his whole being to the influence


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2 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OE LIFEof the Holy Spirit. On this view there isno basis for the moral ideal, and no possi-bility of its realisation, apart from the relig-ious ideal ; for man cannot accept as thestandard of his life an ideal which is notin absolute harmony with the ultimate prin-ciple of the universe ; nor, even if he did,could his effort to realise it be anything butthe struggle with an alien power too strongfor him, a struggle as futile as the attemptof the Teutonic giant of the northern Sagato lift the deep-seated earth from its foun-dations. Affirming that the life of man ismoral, just in so far as it is in harmonywith the divine nature, Christianity restsupon the belief that "goodness is the natureof things," and therefore it maintains thatevil, which it regards as positive and an-tagonistic to good, exists in order to betranscended, and must succumb to the all-conquering power of goodness. Accordingly,man's religious faith, which alone gives mean-ing to his moral effort, is for the individualthe source of a joyous consciousness of unitywith himself, just because in overcoming the


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CONNEXION OF MORALITY AND RELIGION 3world he overcomes his own lower self. It istrue that the evil which exists without andwithin him can never be completely abol-ished, but it is always in process of beingabolished ; and therefore the Christian is en-abled to preserve his optimism even in faceof the worst forms of evil.No one will deny that in this triumphant

faith Jesus and his first followers lived, butthe objection may be raised, that the simplefaith of an earlier age is not possible forus in these days, or at least not until thedoubts and perplexities, which the facts ofexperience, the results of science, and thedeepened reflection of our time inevitablysuggest, have been fairly weighed and re-solved. The wounds of reflection, it may besaid, are too deep to be healed by a child-like faith in God and man, which rests ratherupon sentiment than upon rational evidence.Many will go even further, and maintain thatmorality not only can, but must, be divorcedfrom religion, and that in any case it doesnot depend for its support upon any formof religious belief.


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4 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFEVarious reasons may be given for this sep-

aration of morality from religion, but theywill all be found to rest ultimately on theassumption that It Is not possible for man,with his limited faculties and knowledge, toget behind the veil of phenomena and graspreality as it is in itself. Thus the real be-comes simply a name for that which liesbeyond the range of our finite vision, andmorality is therefore conceived as merely thatcourse of conduct which we must adopt inorder to make the most of the circumstancesin which we happen to be placed. So firma hold has this doctrine taken of the mod-ern mind, that not merely those who rejectChristianity, but even some of its professedchampions, such as Mr. Balfour, regard moralideas as the only foundation upon which evena " provisional theory " of life can be basedand we even find Browning, in one of hismoods, suggesting that the limitation ofknowledge is essential to the stability andprogress of morality.An attempt will be made, in the second

part of this essay, to show that religion and


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CONNEXION OF MORALITY AND RELIGION 5morality cannot be separated from each otherwithout the destruction of both, and that theessential identity of the human and divinenatures, which is the central idea of Chris-tianity, is the legitimate result of philosoph-ical reflection. Meantime, it may be pointedout that the whole history of man goes toshow that the connexion of morality withreligion is so close that no advance in theone has ever taken place without a corre-sponding advance in the other. What isdistinctive of Christianity is not the unionof morality with religion, but the comprehen-siveness of the principle upon which thatunion is based. Every religion embodies thehighest ideal of a people, and the moralitywhich corresponds to it is the special formin which that ideal is sought to be realised.It follows that, when the religious ideal isno longer an adequate expression of themore developed consciousness of a people,the moral ideal is also perceived to be inneed of revision. Thus the history of re-ligion is inseparable from the history ofmorality.


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6 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFEThat religion and morality have, as a mat-

ter of fact, always been connected in theclosest way, might be proved by a detailedexamination of the whole history of religionbut, as the proof would lead us too farafield, one or two instances where the con-nexion seems at first sight to be broken willhave to suffice.

(i) It has been maintained that in earlytimes religion had nothing to do with moral-ity. That this view is untenable, it willnot be difficult to show. One of the earliestforms of religion is the belief in a god ortotem, who is at once some being lower thanman, and yet is regarded as the ancestor ofa particular family or tribe. The theory ofMr. Spencer, that this form of religion orig-inated in the worship of ancestors and wasafterwards developed into totemism, cannotbe accepted, because it assumes that primi-tive man was at a higher stage of devel-opment than his descendants. If primitiveman was able to draw a clear distinctionbetween himself and lower forms of being, itis inconceivable that his descendants should


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CONNEXION OF MORALITY AND RELIGION 7have seen no fundamental distinction betweenthem. The truth seems to be that thetotem, which is ahnost always a plant, ananimal, or other natural object, is viewed asdivine because it forms the medium for thathaunting sense of something incomprehensi-ble and therefore divine, of which even earlyman is not entirely destitute. The totem isthe form in which this feeling is objectified,and it then becomes the vehicle for the idealunion of the family or tribe. Thus the re-ligion of early man is bound up with theelementary moral ideas which rule his life.The only social bond of which he can con-ceive is that of the family or tribe. More-over, the members of each family or tribe,while they are closely related to one another,are usually hostile to other families or tribesand hence the morality which corresponds tothis phase of religion is based upon hatred ofall who fall beyond its limited range. Here,therefore, the correspondence of religion andmorality is obvious: a religion in wliich theobject of worship is viewed as the ancestorof a certain stock naturally goes with a form


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8 THE CHRISTIAN- IDEAL OF LIFEof morality which involves hatred of themembers of all other stocks. This hatred,as it is inseparable from the moral ideas ofearly man, finds its expression in his relig-ion : and hence the totems of other familiesor tribes are regarded as evil spirits, whosebaneful influence can be counteracted only bycunning and magical spells.

(2) Perhaps it may be conceded that themorality of early man is a faithful reflex ofhis religion, but it may be held that theirconnexion is dissolved when an advance hasbeen made to a more developed form ofsociety. It is easy to understand that, inthe earlier stages of human history, whateveris sanctioned by religion should be blindlyfollowed ; but at a more advanced stage, whenreflection begins to claim its rights, it mayseem that progress in morality is ratherhindered than aided by religion. Was itreligion, it may be asked, which led in Greeceto the higher morality of the age of Pericles }Would it not be truer to say that the relig-ion of Greece was far behind its morality, andoffered a stubborn resistance to its progress }


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CONNEXION OF MORALITY AND RELIGION g" The Greek poets," as Mr. Max Mliller says," had an instinctive aversion to anything ex-cessive or monstrous, yet they would relateof their gods what would make the mostsavage of Red Indians creep and shudder."Does not this fact clearly show that moralityadvances independently of religion, and mayeven be in conflict with it ?The answer to this argument for the sepa-

ration of morality and religion is not farto seek. The moral ideas of the age ofPericles were no doubt antagonistic to theolder religious ideas preserved in Greek my-thology, but they were in perfect harmonywith the religious ideas which really ruledthe best minds. The sanctity which attachesto religion long preserves traditional forms ofbelief from being openly assailed, but this isquite consistent with a transformation of thewhole spirit of the earlier faith. In estimat-ing the character of a religion we must in allcases make allowance for the survival ofideas which have lost their power and mean-ing, and concentrate our attention upon thenew content which is preserved in the old


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10 THE CHRISriAN- IDEAL OF LIFEearthen vessels. The appHcatlon of this prin-ciple, which is universal in its range, is inthe present case obvious. The Greek relig-ion, like the religion of every progressivepeople, was in continuous process of develop-ment ; but in its later phases it retainedelements which, though they were not ex-plicitly rejected, occupied a very subordinateplace and were practically ignored. The realreligious beliefs of Greece in the age ofPericles were embodied, not in its mythology,but in the interpretation of the legends givenby Pindar, ^schylus, and Sophocles. Whenthis is once seen, it becomes obvious thatthe relio;ion of Greece, so far from beino^ atany time on a lower plane than its morality,was in all cases an expression of the highestideal of which the Greek was capable, an idealwhich he was seeking to realise in the variousforms of his social life.

(3) As the morality of Greece seems atfirst sight to be in advance of its religion,so it may appear that the religious ideal ofthe Jews is entirely divorced from their moralconceptions. The continual refrain of their


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CONNEXION' OF MORALITY AND RELIGION 1great prophets, especially those of the eighthcentury, is that Israel, while she accepts thelofty ideal of God revealed long ago to theirfathers, has, in practice, forsaken the Lord,and is governed by the lowest ethical ideal.When, however, we penetrate beneath theform of the prophetic utterances, it becomesobvious that the Jews are no exception tothe rule that the moral and religious ideasof a people are the precise counterpart ofeach other. The Jewish prophet refers thehigher conception of God, with which heis himself inspired, to an original revelationgiven by God to his people in the past,while in truth that conception has beengradually evolved out of a lower and cruderform of faith. It is no doubt true that thereligious ideal upon which he insists is farin advance of the moral ideas of his time,but it is equally in advance of its religiousideas. The mass of the Jewish people hadnever freed themselves from the earlier ideaof a tribal god who was gracious to Israeland terrible to her enemies; and hence theirmorality was not in harmony with that ideal


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12 THE CHRISTIAN- IDEAL OF LIFEof an absolutely holy God, "of purer eyesthan to behold iniquity," which had discloseditself in the higher consciousness of theprophets. The religious conceptions of theJewish people as a whole were, therefore, inentire harmony with their moral conceptions.The contradiction is not between a pure andlofty religion and a low moral ideal, but be-tween the lower ideal, religious and moral,beyond which the people had not advanced,and the higher ideal embodied in the pro-phetic utterances. It is no doubt a radicaldistinction between the Greek and the Jew-ish religion, that the former was simply anidealised transcript of society as it actuallyexisted, while the latter, in its higher form,was a picture of a righteous kingdom thatwas placed in some far-off future; but thisdistinction, important as it is, does not im-ply that the Jewish religion created a di-vorce between the ideal and the actual. For,though the prophets continually speak of atime when Israel shall " return " to the Lord,this " return " is in reality an advance to ahigher form of religion and morality. The


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CONNEXION OF MORALITY AND RELIGION 13ideal of the future is always conceived toconsist in a religious reformation whicli willmanifest itself in a moral regeneration ; andthough, at a very late age, the hope of de-liverance from outward and inward evil bya natural process of development had beenlost, the Jewish mind never entirely aban-doned its belief in the triumph of good andthe destruction of evil. It is thus evidentthat throughout the whole history of Israelreligion was in the most intimate connexionwith morality.

Without seeking further to elaborate apoint which seems almost self-evident, itmay now be assumed that as a matter ofhistorical fact there never has been any realantasfonism between the relis^ion and themorality of a people, but, on the contrary,the most intimate connexion. How, indeed,should it be otherwise, since every religionis an attempt to prevent the life of manfrom dissolving into a chaos of fragmentsby referring it to a principle which reducesit to order and coherence } There can beno morality without the belief in a life higher


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14 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFEthan sense and passion, and this beHef mustdraw its support from faith in a divine prin-ciple which ensures victory to the higherhfe. We must not forget, however, that re-hgion, hke morahty, is a process which canreach its goal only when the divine princi-ple is so comprehensive that it explains thewhole of life, and leaves no difficulty un-solved. Thus the religious and moral idealsof a people, though they sum up all thatis best and noblest in its life, may fall farshort of an ultimate explanation. That nei-ther the Greek nor the Jewish ideal hadreached a satisfactory conception of the truenature and relation of God, man, and theworld, it will not be hard to show; and itis therefore obvious that a higher synthesiswas imperatively demanded. But the impor-tant question, it will be said, is not whetherGreece and Judea failed, a proposition noone is likely to dispute, but whether Chris-tianity is not also another, even if it be amore splendid, failure. That this is the onlyreally important question for us may be atonce admitted, but it will hardly be denied


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CONNEXION OF MORALITY AND RELIGION 15that a clear conception of what the Christianideal of life in its permanent essence is, andwherein its superiority to other ideals con-sists, is a necessary preparation for an intelli-gent estimate of its claim to be the ultimateideal of life. To answer these questions thor-oughly would involve a critical estimate ofall the religions of the world. In the pres-ent essay, nothing so ambitious will be at-tempted; but perhaps a careful examinationand comparison of the Greek, Jew^ish, andChristian ideals of life may be as convincingas a wider survey.

Before entering upon this task it may helpto illustrate somewhat more fully the thesisof the present chapter, that religion andmorality have always developed pari passu,if we glance at the different paths which thereligious consciousness has followed amongdifferent peoples, and the goal which theyhave severally attained.

There seems reason to believe that all re-ligions are either totemistic or have devel-oped from totemism. We may, therefore,regard this form of religion as, if not the


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1 THE CHRISTIAN- IDEAL OF LIFEearliest, at least a very early form of religion.Traces of it are found even in those nationsin which civilisation originated, and whichreached a much higher ideal of life, such asthe Chinese, the Indian, the Greek, and theJewish ; and indeed it is, as we have seen,the natural form in which the ideal of thefamily or the tribe is embodied, since thatideal is based entirely upon the tie of blood.We may thus regard totemism as the orig-inal matrix from which all other forms ofreligion were developed.

Totemism, however, gives way to a higherform of religion, whenever a people advancesto anything like a settled form of society.This second stage of religion, among all thegreat nations of antiquity, except the Jewish,whose religious development is unique, con-sists in the worship of the divine as mani-fested in those universal powers of naturethe heavens, the sun, the winds, etc. which exercise so large an influence uponthe natural life of man, while yet they arealtogether beyond the control of his will.Now it is easy to see how a people, who


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CONNEXION OP MORALITY AND RELIGION \Jembodied their reliQ:ious ideal in these cfrcatnatural powers, should also have a highermoral ideal than races which never got beyondthe stage of totemism. Early man found inhis totem somethino^ hio-her than himself, butthe divinity he ascribed to it was not so muchin the object as in his own mind, or at leastit was only in the object in the sense thatnothing can exist which is not in some w^aya manifestation of the divine. But, when thedivine is found in objects, which in force orsplendour surpass the weak physical energyof man, the object selected is not altogetherinadequate as a symbol of that spiritual powerwhich man is feeling after; and as it is auniversal object, it is not an inappropriatemedium of the new ideal of a social unityembracing a number of tribes allied in blood.Thus the worship of the great powers ofnature supplies a religious ideal which helpsto unite all the members of allied tribes bythe bond of a common faith.From the worship of these natural powers

the hio-her races advance to the stao-e of whatis ordinarily called polytheism. The transi-


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1 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFEtion is effected by the tendency to personifythose powers, and thus to bring them nearerto man. It is at this point that a highlysignificant divergence takes place, a diver-gence which determines the direction in whichthe subsequent development takes place. TheEgyptian and Indian do indeed personify thegods, and thus for the time lift them out ofthe lower rank of mere powers of nature,but they do not Jutmanisc them. Hence theirpolytheism takes the form of what Mr. MaxMiiller has called henotheism. Tlie ten-dency to unity, as well as multiplicity, is inoperation from the very dawn of religion.Even races who have not advanced beyondthe primitive stage of totemism always have agod who is regarded as higher than the othertotems, and in nature-worship the heavens isnaturally taken as the highest embodiment ofthe divine. The tendency to unification istherefore present from the first, but in thehenotheistic phase of polytheism it assumesthe peculiar form that each god becomes atthe time of worsliip the only one who ispresent to the consciousness of the wor-


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CONNEXJON OF MORAL/TV AND RELIGION 19shipper, and hence to him are attributed forthe time beino- all the attributes which atother times are distributed among a numberof gods. Now the importance of directingattention to this tendency to henotheism isthat it explains why the Egyptian and Indianreligions developed, not into monotheism, butinto pantheism. The Greek religion, on theother hand, not only personified but human-ised the gods, and the clearly cut types thusformed became a permanent possession ofthe race. Hence, when the Greek finallyabandoned polytheism, his religion developedinto monotheism, not into pantheism ; andso long as he remained polytheistic the in-stinct for unity was satisfied by conceivingof Zeus as the Father and Ruler of the gods,or later as the representative of their unitedwill. Now, whether polytheism assumes thehenotheistic or the Greek form, it is obviousthat it presents an ideal which serves to uniteall the members of a nation by a commonworship. Nor does it seem fanciful to saythat polytheism is the natural form whichthe religious ideal assumes among nations


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20 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFEwhich have been either formed into a singlepolitical unit by a combination of tribes alliedin blood, or into a number of independentunits united only by the bonds of a commondescent and a common religion ; in any case,it serves as the vehicle for the religiousideal of peoples who cannot conceive of awider bond than that of the nation, or of thenation as other than a political unity basedupon the natural tie of blood. Polytheism,therefore, tended to perpetuate absolute dis-tinctions of caste, or of master and slave,and it naturally fostered a proud contemptfor all who belonged to another nation, andtherefore could not claim descent from thegods of their country. Here, therefore, wehave another proof, if further proof wereneeded, of the close correspondence betweenreligion and morality.

Polytheism, as has already been indicated,develops either into pantheism, or into mon-otheism. When it is of a henotheistic type,as in the case of the Egyptians and Indians,it naturally takes the former direction ; theGreek religion, with its definitely characterised


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CONNEXION OF MORALITY AND RELIGION 21human types, as naturally follows the latterdirection. Both the Egyptian and the Hinduare deficient in that poetic and artistic fac-ulty, which is characteristic of the Greek,and hence they never succeed in impartingfreedom and spirituality to their gods. Withthe rise of reflection the tendency to unity,which has already shown itself in their hen-otheism, carries them beyond the tendency tomultiplicity, and as their gods have not beenconceived as endowed with intelligence andwill, they come to conceive of the divineas a purely abstract being, of which nothingcan be said but that it is. To this relig-ious ideal corresponds the ethical ideal. Ifthe divine nature is absolutely without dis-tinction, man can become divine only bythe destruction of all that constitutes hisseparate individuality. Thus pantheism leadsto the dissolution of all fixed moral distinc-tions, and therefore to the denial of anyradical distinction between good and evil." Whatever is, is right." It can thereforelook with perfect calmness upon the wildestaberrations of passion, and it leads in men


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22 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFEof a higher type to asceticism, only becauseit regards passion as a form of that universalillusion, or Maya, which supposes the finiteto be real.The Greek religion, as the product of a

race of poets and artists, whose nature re-sponded gladly to all the divine beauty andorder of the world and of human life, couldnot thus pass into a joyless pantheism.Hence, under the influence of its poets andphilosophers, it developed into a monothe-ism, in which the divine was conceived asa single spiritual Being, endowed with in-telligence and will. It is significant thatthe Greeks only reached this stage, whentheir narrow civic state had already revealedits inadequacy, and when the bond of nation-ality, which had been hitherto preserved byloyalty to the national faith, had lost itspower. Thus the wider conception of re-ligion was reflected in the virtual dissolutionof civic and national morality. It is time, how-ever, to consider more carefully the strengthand weakness of the Greek ideal of life.This will be done in the following chapter.


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CHAPTER IITHE GREEK IDEAL

Starting, like the other Indo-Europeanpeoples, from the worship of the great powersof nature, the Greeks developed a form ofreligion which is the highest type of poly-theism. This religion was the embodimentof that love of beauty, truth, and freedom,which is distinctive of the Greek spirit. Inthe Homeric poems, the transition from theworship of nature has already been made.The gods are not only personified, but hu-manised. Turning his eyes to the expanseof heaven, the early Greek expressed hisconsciousness of the divine in the majesticform of Zeus, whose nod shook the wholeheavens and the earth. The physical splen-dour of the sun became for him the radi-ant form of Apollo, shooting down gleamingarrows from his silver bow. Thus was grad-

23


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24 THE CHRISTIAN- IDEAL OF LIFEually formed, not without the addition ofnew elements and even new gods, sometimesborrowed from Semitic sources but invari-ably transmuted into higher form, the pan-theon of glorious shapes which filled theimagination of Homer. The divine natureis conceived as manifested in distinct types,each possessed of intelligence and will, andembodied in human forms, which exhibit theutmost perfection of physical beauty. Thesegracious forms only differ from man in theperfection of their spiritual and physical qual-ities, and in their freedom from decay anddeath. Thus the Greek expresses in his re-ligion his ideal of perfect manhood as thecomplete harmony of soul and body. Wereit possible to secure and retain for ever physi-cal, intellectual, and moral beauty, the idealof the early Greek would be realised. Thatideal, however, was one which did not sepa-rate the good of the individual from thegood of society. Achilles is distinguished,not merely by splendid physical beauty,powers, and eloquence, but by his burningindignation against wrong : and, when he


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THE GREEK IDEAL 25carries his resentment against Agamemnon toan extreme which threatens the destructionof the whole Greek host, he is punished byan untimely death. So Zeus is the imper-sonation of a wise and just ruler, Apollothe divine type of the poetic and religiousmind, Athena the ideal of valour directedand kept in check by wise self-restraint.The Greek gods are thus the expression ofthe Greek ideal of a society in which thehighest natural qualities are valued as ameans to the realisation of a free community.The Homeric king is not a despot, but theguardian of the sacred customs on whichthe rights of his subjects are based. Hedoes nothing without consulting his councilof elders, and the public assembly consistsof the whole body of citizens. The world ofthe gods is an idealised counterpart of theheroic form of society; and, in fact, theearly Greek could only conceive of the di-vine as a community of gods, living in eachother's society, and sympathising with thefortunes of men.The Homeric eods are thus the embodi-


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26 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFEment of that free and joyous existence whichwas the ideal of life of the early Greek. TheGreek religion is essentially a religion ofthis world ; for, though the Greek believed in ashadowy realm of the dead, his heart was setupon the beauty, the joy, the sunlight of thisworld, and he looked forward to the future life,without dread, indeed, but with a melancholyresignation. With his intrepid intellect hehad a clear and sober apprehension of theshortness of life and the limitations of hu-manity, but he had not yet lost the freshexuberance of the youth of the world; andin devotion to his country and faith in divinejustice, he found all that was needed to satisfyhis highest desires. Entirely free from aslavish dread of the gods, he came into theirpresence with joyous confidence. He did notforget that his destiny lay on the knees of thegods, but, having perfect faitli in their justice,he did not prostrate himself before them withthe abject submission of the Asiatic.

Tlie charm of this conception of life hasnever failed to exercise a peculiar fascination,and indeed it contains elements which must


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THE GREEK IDEAL 27be embodied in the modern ideal, though thesemust be transmuted into a higher form. Itsfundamental defect is that it can be approxi-mately realised only by those who possessexceptional gifts of nature and fortune, andthat it conceives of the highest life as simplythe expansion of the natural life. The Greekwas destitute of that profound consciousnessof the Infinite which was characteristic of theJewish religion, and therefore of the wideinterval between man as he is and as he ous^htto be. No doubt in his deepest nature manis identical with God, but his deepest naturereveals itself only when he turns against hisimmediate self. Of this truth the Greek hadno proper apprehension, and therefore henever got beyond the ideal of a perfect naturallife, in which the spiritual and natural werein harmony with each other, and of a Statein which the individual citizen found his com-plete satisfaction in devotion to the commonweal. That this limited ideal could not bepermanently satisfactory is shown by the grad-ual emergence of a deeper conception of life,which as time went on came more and more


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28 THE CHRrSTlA^^ IDEAL OF LIFEinto the foreground, until it finally led, in thepoets and philosophers, to a complete trans-formation of the earlier belief.Though the Greek religion is the highest

form of polytheism, it has, like all polytheisticreligions, the fundamental defect of havingno adequate idea of the unity and spiritualityof the divine jmture. This defect is, in theGreek form of polytheism, made all the moreprominent by the individuality ascribed to theeods. The 2:ods, as embodied in sensiblehuman form, are limited in space and time,and hence their relation to man is inadequatelyconceived. There can be no proper compre-hension of the unity and spirituality of thedivine nature, so long as the divine is con-ceived as merely the perfection of the natural.Beings who are regarded as limited in spaceand time cannot be the source of all reality,and their relation to man can only be external.Hence the Greek o-ods themselves were .con-ceived as having come into existence at adefinite time, and their action upon men wasrepresented as their actual sensible appearanceto their favourites. Athena presents herself


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THE GREEK IDEAL 29in human shape to Achilles, and persuadeshim to abandon his purpose of slaying Aga-memnon ; Aphrodite hides Paris in a cloudwhen he flees from the spear of Menelaus.Thus the life of man is represented as directlyinterfered with by the gods, so that man seemsto be merely a puppet in their hands. Thisdefect is inseparable from the pictorial formof the religion, which necessarily representsthe spiritual as on the same plane with thenatural.Even in Homer, however, there are ele-ments which show that the Greek relictionmust ultimately accomplish its own euthana-sia. There was in it from the first a latentcontradiction which could not fail to mani-fest itself openly at a later time. The veryconcreteness and humanity of the gods wasat variance with the instinct for unity, whichcould neither be suppressed nor reconciledwith the polytheistic basis of the traditionalfaith. To a certain extent that instinct wassatisfied by the conception of Zeus as the" Father of gods and men," whose authority,though it is not absolute, is higher than that


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30 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFEof the other gods. But this conception couldonly be temporarily satisfactory ; and, indeed,even in Homer, there is already indicated adeeper sort of unity, which is inconsistentwith this mere unity of the pictorial imagina-tion. For Homer, like his successors, wasstrongly impressed with the belief that thelife of man is subject to divine control, andthat his destiny is determined in accordancewith absolute principles of justice. Parisviolates the sacred bond which united hostand guest, and punishment falls upon him-self and all his kindred. The Trojans breakthe oath to which they had solemnly sworn,and draw down upon themselves the punish-ment which they deserved. There was thusan absolute faith in the righteous judgmentsof the gods. Such a faith could not bereconciled with the caprice, partiality, andlawlessness, which were ascribed to the godsin their individual character. For they arerepresented as not only violating acceptedmoral laws, but as at variance with one an-other, and guilty of gross favouritism. Thisunreconciled antagonism was partly due to


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THE GREEK WEAL 3the survival of earlier and less elevated ideasof the divine nature, to which custom andtradition lent an adventitious sanctity, but itwas also inseparable from the anthropomor-phism of the Greek religion. The conflictof competing ideas is especially apparent inthe conception of Zeus, whose character asan individual is widely different from whathas been called his official character as theexponent of the common will of the gods.Sometimes Homer speaks of Zeus as reward-ing or punishing men ; sometimes this poweris vested in the gods as a w^iole. In theIliad Zeus is called the guardian of oaths,while yet Agamemnon speaks of the suffer-ings inflicted by " the gods " upon those whoswear falsely. In the Odyssey there are evenpassages in which an abrupt transition ismade from the gods to Zeus, as when Telema-chus invokes the gods, " If perchance Zeuswill punish the wickedness of the suitors(1. 378)." This tendency to conceive of Zeusas the sole administrator of justice, whichis manifest even in the Homeric poems,becomes more and more pronounced, so that


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32 THE CHRISTIAN WEAL OF LHEin the period between Homer and the Per-sian wars, it is ahiiost invariably Zeus whois spoken of as the guardian of moral order.Thus, without any explicit rejection of poly-theism, there was a continual tendency totranscend it. Isocrates, who is the spokes-man, not of philosophers like Anaxagoras,but of the educated common sense of histime, explains the poetic representation ofZeus as king of the gods by the naturaltendency to figure the divine governmentafter the fashion of an earthly state. Besidesthis explicit criticism of the popular faith,the striving after a higher idea of the divineis shown in the reverential feeling whichled the worshipper, in calling upon one ofthe gods to add, " or by whatever name thoumayst desire to be called." But nothingshows more clearly the tendency to go be-yond the earlier mode of thought than theindefinite terms by which the divine poweris designated by the prose writers. Theystill, no doubt, speak of " the gods," but theyusually employ such expressions as " thedivine," "the god," "the daemonic," when they


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THE GREEK IDEAL 33have to speak of the moral government ofthe world.

There is thus In the development of Greekthought a clearly marked tendency to unity,manifesting itself, on the one hand, in theconception of Zeus as the exponent of thecommon will of the gods ; and, on the otherhand, in the conception of "something divine,"which was not definitely embodied in thegods of the popular faith. It has been heldthat the Greek conception of a " fate," towhich the gods as v/ell as men are subject,indicates a certain pantheistic tendency inthe Greek mind, which was only kept incheck by the opposite tendency to conceiveof the divine as personal. This view seemsto imply that every attempt to transcendparticularism and anthropomorphism indicatesa movement towards pantheism. It seemsmore natural to say tliat the movement be-yond polytheism may be either towards pan-theism or monotheism, and that the specialdirection which the movement takes will bedetermined by the peculiar form of the poly-theism which forms the starting-point. In


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34 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFEthe Greek mind, which humanised the gods,the reaction against particularism was nat-urally towards monotheism. The idea of" fate " was therefore conceived, not as a mereexternal necessity, but as a rational law, andthe gods were regarded as subject to it onlyin the sense that even the divine nature wasnot beyond law.The more firmly the conception of a moral

government of the world was grasped, theclearer was the apprehension of the apparentexceptions to it. In Homer and Hesiod, faithin divine justice assumes the simple form ofa belief that the pious man is directly re-warded by a happy and fortunate life. In theOdyssey Ulysses says, that when a king ispious and just, the land is fruitful and thepeople prosperous. Hesiod declares that onthe just man, who keeps his oath, Zeus be-stows more renown and a fairer posterity thanon the unjust. It was a popular belief thatimpiety never fails to be punished by blind-ness, madness, or death. To the objectionthat the innocent were sometimes unfortunate,it was answered that they were involved in


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THE GREEK IDEAL 35the misfortunes of the wicked. The similardifBculty that the wicked are often prosperouswas met by saying that divine justice, thoughit may be deLayed, always overtakes them inthe end. The same idea is expressed in thewell-known saying of an unknown poet, that" the mills of the gods grind slow but verysmall." A further modification of the ideaof divine retribution was that, though thewicked man may himself escape, misfortune issure to fall upon his posterity. We also findamong the Greeks a growing scepticism ofthe reality of divine justice, but the bestminds surmounted this scepticism by a deeperview of the relation between the divine andhuman, a view which was most fully devel-oped by i^schylus and Sophocles. In thesepoets, in fact, the current religious and moralideas were so deepened as to result in anethical monotheism, though they never con-sciously surrendered the polytheism of thepopular faith.

^schylus, the poet of the men who foughtat Marathon and Salamis, has unbounded faithin the gods of his country. At the same time


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36 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFEhis plastic imagination works freely on themass of legendary material which he foundready to his hand, and into the old bottleshe pours the new wine of a higher conceptionof the divine nature and the destiny of man.This transforming process is exhibited in hisreconstruction of the myth of Prometheus.Zeus, the representative of intelligence andorder, when he has dethroned Chronos, findson the earth the miserable race of men. Theirchampion, the Titan Prometheus, steals " theflashing fire, mother of all arts," and conveysit to men in a hollow reed. For his insolenceand deceit he must undergo proportional pun-ishment, until he has repented and submittedto the sovereign will of Zeus. Suffering butintensifies his proud and rebellious spirit, andit is only after long ages of punishment, andthrough the influence of Heracles, the god-like man, whose life has been spent in toil forothers, that he is at last induced to give uphis purpose of revenge. There seems littledoubt that here, as elsewhere, ^schylus seeksto show that the world is governed with abso-lute justice, and that the true lesson of life is


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THE GREEK IDEAL 37to submit to the divine will. When man setsup his own rebellious will against the Rulerof the universe, he must expect divine pun-ishment. The triple Fates and the mindfulErinyes jealously guard the sanctity of theprimal ties. The doom of Troy is the divinepunishment for violated hospitality. Aga-memnon perishes because his hands arestained with his daughter's blood, ^schy-lus explicitly rejects the old doctrine of theenvy of the gods : it is sinful rebellion againstthe divine law which brings punishment inits train. The sins of the fathers are no doubtvisited upon the children, but the curse neverfalls upon those whose hands are pure. Thehouse of Atreus seems the prey of a malign,inevitable fate, but only because in each newrepresentative there is a frenzy of wickedness,an infatuate hardening; of the heart. When,therefore, a pure scion of this accursed stockappears, the curse is removed : he suffers in-deed, but his end is peace ; and at last hereturns in honour to reign over the housewhich he has cleansed. Thus the Erinyesbecome the Eumenides: the stern law of jus-


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38 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFEtice turns at last a gracious face to those whofear and honour the gods.

But, while yEschylus conceives of Zeus asthe divine representative of the whole orderof society, the divine law is still conceived byhim as an external law to which man mustsubmit. Sophocles, on the other hand, whilehe endorses the conception of a divine law ofjustice, seeks to show that this law operatesin man as the law of his own reason. CEdipusunwittingly violates the sacred bond of thefamily, and punishment inevitably follows; buthis punishment is also the recoil upon himselfof his defiant self-assertion, and therefore, whenhe recognises that his suffering was not un-merited, he is at last reconciled to the divinewill and comes to harmony with himself. Yeteven in Sophocles the limitation of the Greekideal of life is manifest; for, though he viewssuffering as a means of purification from self-assertion and overweening pride, he docs notreach the conception that in self-sacrifice thetrue nature of man is revealed ; the highestpoint to which he attains is the conceptionthat man can reach happiness only by vol-


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THE GREEK IDEAL 39untary submission to the divine will, whichis also the law of his own reason. It is onlyin Euripides that we find something like ananticipation of the Christian idea that self-realisation is attained through self-sacrifice.In Euripides, however, this result is reachedby a surrender of his faith in the divine justice.Man, he seems to say, is capable of heroicself-sacrifice at the prompting of natural affec-tion, but this is the law of human nature, notof the divine nature. Thus in him morality isdivorced from religion, and therefore there isover all his work the sadness which inevitablyfollows from a sceptical distrust of the exist-ence of any objective principle of goodness.This division of religion and morality couldnot be final, and hence the attempts of Platoand Aristotle to restore the broken harmonyby a higher conception of the divine nature.Though the transformation of the Greek

religion by the great poets of Greece was acontinuous movement towards a more spiritualview of the divine nature, it did not involvean explicit breach with polytheism, exceptin the case of Euripides. yEschylus and


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40 THE CHRFSTIAN WEAL OF LIFESophocles, though they virtually affirm theunity and spirituality of the divine will, arenot in conscious antagonism to the popularfaith. Such an antagonism was, however, in-evitable, so soon as philosophical reflectionarose, and proceeded to ask how far mythologycould be accepted as historical truth. Thequestion could not be raised without pro-ducing a temporary scepticism. The firstphilosophers were therefore almost entirelynesfative in their attitude towards the tradi-tional faith. *" It was only with Socrates andhis followers that a perception of the rationalelement implied in mythology was appre-hended. Hence, while Plato is severe in hiscondemnation of the unworthy representa-tions of the divine nature in Homer andHesiod, he recosfnises that the imaoi nativeform which that faith assumed was a neces-sary stage in the education of the race andof the individual. Poetry is a " lie," nodoubt, l3ut it is a " noble lie." Plato ishere seeking to separate the form from the

* "Whether there are gods or not T cannot tell," said Protagoras;" life is too short for such obscure problems."


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THE GREEK IDEAL 4matter, the spirit from the earthly tabernaclein which it is enclosed. The divine, as hecontends, is not immoral, malicious, or de-ceitful. What he is really seeking to show isthat the divine nature transcends the sensible,and is the ultimate source of all truth, beauty,and goodness. Plato does not, in the firstinstance, reject the pictorial representationsof the popular imagination, which he no doubtregarded as inseparable from the poetic garbendeared to the Greek heart by the hallowingassociations of ages ; but he insists that thegods must not be portrayed as violating thesanctities of moral law, as inflicting evil uponman from envy, or as appearing in lowerforms. The gods are absolutely good, truth-ful, and beautiful, and therefore are eternallyand unchangeably the same. It- is obvious,however, that Plato does not at bottom believethat the divine nature can be represented insensible form at all, and hence we cannot besurprised that, with his imperfect theory ofart as an " imitation " of sensible reality, themore he reflects upon the distorting influenceof all imaginative representations of the divine


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42 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFEnature, the more dissatisfied he becomes, untilat last he concludes, though with great re-luctance, that there is no place for the poetin that ideal city of which he dreamed suchbeautiful, philosophical dreams. The prepara-tion for this extreme view is already madein the contention that poetry is a "lie," evenif it is a " noble lie," and in the denial thatevil can in any sense proceed from God, orthat the divine can ever be manifested exceptin its own absolutely perfect form. For therepresentation of what is false, though it maybe necessary as an educational device, has noultimate justification ; the Manichean separa-tion of evil from the divine is at the same timethe exclusion of God from the actual worldand the only perfect form of the divine mustbe the supersensible. Thus, by the naturaldevelopment of Greek thought, Plato is atlast led to maintain a spiritual monotheism, re-sembling in its main features the conceptionof God, which by an independent path wasreached by the Hebrew people in the laterstages of their history. In his revolt fromthe pictorial representations of the divine, he


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THE GREEK IDEAL 43is led to conceive of God as dwelling in atranscendent region beyond the actual world,and this, though a necessary step in theevolution of the religious consciousness, isnot the last word of religion. The Infinitecannot be severed from the finite, God fromman, without becoming itself finite, unless weare prepared to regard the finite as pure illu-sion. Nor does Aristotle, though he protestsagainst the Platonic separation of the realand the ideal, succeed in avoiding the rockon which Plato's philosophy of religion makesshipwreck ; for he too conceives of God as apurely contemplative being, alone with Him-self, and self-sufficient in His isolation, whoacts upon the world only as the sculptor hewsand shapes the block of marble, which cannever be quite divested of its material gross-ness.

If this is at all a fair account of the the-ology of Plato and Aristotle, we must admitthat their solutions are not final. The ne2:a-tive movement by which the creations of artand the products of the religious conscious-ness in its imaginative form have been re-


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44 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFEjected, and the first unquestioning faith inthe outward manifestation of reason in natureand human Hfe " sickHed o'er with the palecast of thought," is only imperfectly supple-mented by a positive movement in whichthe real is virtually declared to lie beyondthe actual. For, so long as the world ofour experience is regarded as containing anirrational element, the human spirit musteither fall back baffled upon the phenomenal,or seek to fly beyond the " flaming walls ofthe world " by some other organ than reason.It is, therefore, not surprising that Platoand Aristotle were succeeded, on the onehand by the individualistic philosophies ofthe Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics, and onthe other hand by the Neo-platonists andGnostics, who in despair of reason took ref-uge in a supposed " immediate intuition " or" ecstasy."


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CHAPTER IIITHE JEWISH IDEAL

The religion of Greece, as we have seen,developed from a humanistic polytheism,through the influence of its great poets andphilosophers, into monotheism. Even in itspolytheistic stage there was a marked ten-dency towards unity, but this tendency wasnot realised until Plato affirmed the unityand spirituality of the divine nature. Thereligion of Israel reached the same point bya more direct path. There seems to beclear evidence that Israel had passed froma primitive totemism to the worship ofgreat powers of nature before the captivityin Egypt. Evidence of the former stage isto be found in the household gods or tera-phim, and of the latter in the early concep-tion of Jehovah as the God of the tempest,who had His seat on Mount Sinai. What is

45


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46 THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL OF LIFEunique in the development of the rehgionof Israel is that it passed without a breakfrom the worship of nature, to the worshipof Jehovah, without g

christ inanity and greek ideal

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