The interpretation of religion : an introductory study of the theological principles

Front matter

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Preface

My primary purpose in preparing this book has been to set forth, to the best of my present ability, a true theory of religion. But I have also kept before myself the secondary purpose of offering to students the completest possible guidance through the winding labyrinths both of historical opinion and of contemporary literature on the subject. For my own mind the two aims have hardly been distinct from each other, because it has been in the course of reflection upon the thought of the past that my own | views have for the most part taken shape.

I have prefaced my inquiry into the nature of religion by a somewhat elaborate discussion of the: method which such an inquiry should properly employ. At the present time the stu-. dent who is desirous of making a beginning with the study of religion finds himself in a most perplexing situation. For it would seem that instead of one way there are many ways of studying religion. Even in the old days, no doubt, there were two. You could approach religion (so the student was taught) either by the light of reason or by the light of revelation; and so you could study either Natural or Revealed Theology. If that distinction has now broken down, its place has been taken by a confusing variety of new ones. There is the old Systematic Theology which (together with its prefatory discipline of Apologetics) still securely holds its place in our theological colleges. There is the

Philosophy of Religion, with its more secular and also more specu- Vii

Meat yi PREFACE ative associations. ‘There is the new “Science of Religion,”

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3 ‘claiming to be built on broader foundations than either, as well as to make use of more ‘scientific’ ways of investigation. There is the equally new ‘Psychology of Religion,” which at the moment seems to attract to itself a still greater number of interested inquirers. I have tried to guide the student to a right estimate of the justification of each of these approaches to the subject, and of their proper relation to one another; and have thus led him up to 2 point where they all become once more fused into a single comprehensive method of study.

Throughout the book I have made plentiful reference in footnotes to such recent literature bearing on the matter in hand as I had no occasion to mention in the text: and I have looked upon these footnotes as taking the place of a more formal bibliography.

What I have written is intended mainly for those who are minded to pursue the subject somewhat deeply. I have striven above all things to be lucid, but I fear that in so doing I have

_made my work too bare of other graces of style. Certainly I have always sacrificed the sound to the sense, wherever my limited powers rendered impossible the perfect marriage of the two. But it may not be out of place to mention that I have already published a little book! in which many of the conclusions here arrived at were presented in a way more likely to appeal to those who find the present discussion somewhat too severe.

The present work was put together at intervals between the Autumn of 1922 and the Spring of 1925, and while the years that have gone by since then have given opportunity for substantial revision, they have also made me more than usually sensible of the gulf between my endeavour and my achievement, and of the +The Roots of Religion in the Human Soul, London and New York, 1926. :

"PREFACE ae many directions in which even my own thought on these great — matters is likely soon to carry me beyond the statement it here receives.

The defects of the book would, however, have been even greater than they are, had it not been for the skilled and generous help of four kind friends. My manuscript was carefully read by the Reverend Professor H. R. Mackintosh of New College, Edinburgh, and by my brother, the Reverend D. M. Baillie of Cupar- _

Fife, Scotland; and I have made the fullest use of their numerous suggestions and criticisms. The book has been read in galley — slips by Mrs. John Dow of Toronto and by Professor J. Y. Campbell of Yale University, and has profited immensely from their expert assistance; while in pages it has once more been diligently read by my brother. To each of these my cordial thanks are due.

JOHN BAILLIE, Toronto, September 1928.

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Tee ote Bi sh ew =a Fon : Tate g Ch eee ee sae ig oe ek en ee ee gy

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Part I. The Method Chapter I. What Theology Is

I. THEOLOGICAL SCIENCE DEFINED ,. . « ec ec. c« e II. THE PROBLEM OF THEOLOGICAL SCIENCE . 2. « e -¢ HI. THE PARALLEL NATURE OF THE ETHICAL PROBLEM ,. . IV. THE NATURE OF THEOLOGICAL CRITICISM eff ea ei ain

II. THE RELATION OF THEOLOGY TO OTHER BRANCHES OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY.

I. THEOLOGY AS A SPECIAL SCIENCE. . . 4 + e

II, THE RELATION OF THEOLOGY TO THE OTHER SPECIAL SCIENCES, ESPECIALLY TO NATURAL SCIENCE . . .

Ill, THE RELATION OF THEOLOGY TO GENERAL OR META- PHYSICAL PHILOSOPHY Vise ie 6) 6) fe © ue) lars

Ill. THE SCOPE OF THEOLOGY.

I. THE TRADITIONAL VIEW OF PROTESTANT THEOLOGY AS TOTTS OWN SCOPE Vs sc « ve. \6 fs. «Medes iw

TI. THE VIEW OF SCHLEIERMACHER . 2. «© « © « eo NERso Pi RITOCH LIANG VIEW ver Sep 9 0) Ve) ee) fe) Lie le

IV. CRITICISM OF THESE VIEWS aa eae shee see Mee TAS) lee Vv. A TRUER VIEW AND ITS CONSEQUENCES FOR THEOLOG- RCALISTUDL © cat vel oe (el ey \se See ws ce” a) a ae

IV. A CRITIQUE OF THE SPECULATIVE METHOD IN THEOLOGY.

ToHISTORY OF RATIONALIAISM 5 46 fe “« © s) «sue

TI. HISTORY AND CHARACTERISATION OF THE SPECULATIVE APOLOGETIC FOR RELIGION .« «© «© «© «2« « « « TI. THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN CONSIDERED..; < . IV. THE ANIMISTIC OR ‘IDEALISTIC’ ARGUMENT CONSID- RED aegis) ore lets eres te el ie ete re 8 Se

V. GENERAL OBJECTIONS TO THE SPECULATIVE METHOD . xi

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11 15 18

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87 93

APTER

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“THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION” AND THE “HISTORICAL “SCIENCE OF RELIGION” IN THEIR RELATION TO THE THEOLOGICAL

INQUIRY.

I. ORIGIN OF THE TENDENCIES REPRESENTED BY THESE II, THE PLACE OF HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE THEOLOGICAL TNGUIRY eG ote ga aa ares ean ee ae III. A CRITIQUE OF “THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION” . . . Iv. A CRITIQUE OF “THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION” . .

V. CONCLUSION OF PART I cyl ss” J lst soar cba fe ae ais

Part II. The Inquiry The Phenomenon Of Faith

I. THE PHENOMENON BROUGHT INTO CLEAR FOCUS Sr Bee ‘Il. IS If MERELY A CHILD OF OUR DESIREET en

III. OR A MERE SURVIVAL OF PRIMITIVE BELIEFS? , . .

THE RATIONALISTIC THEORY OF RELIGION.

I, THE VIEW THAT RELIGION CONSISTS ESSENTIALLY IN PHILOSOPHICAL SPECULATION . « «© ses « « ds CRITICISM /ON DHISSVIE Wives ts cel jc oe) Melek cakes sane

.

Ill. RELIGIOUS FAITH NOT BASED ON THE CONTEMPLATION OR SNA TORE GS cita went Be ciel (oie eM ane

IV. RELIGIOUS FAITH NOT A PRODUCT OF THE ANIMISTIC OUTLOORY ci ai ieat sveete hy vel hde neat ete

V. THE HEGELIAN THEORY OF RELIGION. . . .

. .

THE ROMANTICIST THEORY OF RELIGION.

I, THE THEORY DEFINED . .. .

II. SCHLEIERMACHER’S VIEW THAT RELIGION IS AN AFFAIR OF PEEEING irae “mune enone s

II. CRITICISM OF THIS VIEW . . .

IV. REAPPEARANCE OF THIS VIEW IN THE AMERICAN PSY- CHOLOGY OF RELIGION . . . we i ater

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110 119 132 145

151 160 164

174 178

186 190 ty bo

CHAPTER

Vv.

VI.

Wa ee ee ee ee Serer cee fre CONTENTS

PERCEPTUALIST VIEWS OF THE NATURE OF RELIGIOUS SEN OWE DGG Mee eet eit at ca tat er Meets eke

THE VIEW THAT RELIGIOUS FAITH IS POSTERIOR TO ‘RE- TIGIOUS HRPERIENCE Sack) sl yieli sy Gs aa ees

IV. THEOLOGICAL INTUITIONISM AND THE “RELIGIOUS A PRIORI.”

I. It

iit.

Iv.

Vv.

INTUITIONISM a THEOLOGY

THE IDEA OF A ‘‘RELIGIOUS A PRIORI”: THE VIEWS OF TROELTSCH Pee eS Eo” atte epee. Jen ele

CRITICISM OF THESE VIEWS .

THE VIEWS OF PROFESSOR OTTO

CRITICISM OF THESE VIEWS .

VY. RELIGION AS GROUNDED IN OUR CON- SCIOUSNESS OF VALUE; AN HISTORICAL SURVEY.

I.

II. . THE LIMITATIONS OF KANT’S THEORY op Tat egies ean ete . FICHTE’S THEORY OF RELIGION . . . «0 2s 6 2 LOTZE § THEORY OF RELIGION ,. css | see

. RITSCHL’S THEORY OF RELIGION . . . . .

Vir.

FAITH AS ROOTED IN MORAL INSIGHT .

KANT’S THEORY OF RELIGION, <2) 2) Yen) es tea ee

HERRMANN’S THEORY OF RELIGION

VI. RELIGION AS GROUNDED IN OUR CON- SCIOUSNESS OF VALUE: A RECONSTRUC- TIVE STATEMENT.

I.

II

i.

Iv.

Vv.

VI.

Vi.

THE ORGANIC NATURE OF THE RELATION BETWEEN RE- LIGION AND MORALITY . 1. ~©~ «© «© «© «© -«@

OBJECTION FROM THE SUPPOSED NARROWNESS OF THE CUETO ED TAI Gene oh Wise) Pes visi a) aed 8, yy wink ele Cn

OBJECTION FROM THE SUPPOSEDLY NON-ETHICAL CHAR ACTER OF PRIMITIVE RELIGION . ate Ws ae

RELIGION DEFINED AS A MORAL TRUST IN REALITY .

BUT DOES PRIMITIVE RELIGION CONCERN ITSELF WITH ULTIMATE REALITY ? dc ir .4 ees oes ee

AND NEED OUR RELIGION DO SO? .

WHAT CHARACTERS DO. WE ATTRIBUTE TO sgt WHEN WE PUT MORAL TRUST IN IT? ahs

236 242 246 250

272 276 279 282 291

307 Sil

320 322

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XIV CONTENTS 4 CHAPTER PAGE VIII. THE NATURE OF OUR INTEREST IN MAKING THIS AT- TRIBUTION: Gettin ts) eh. + nce eek Meee re metOLe

VII. THE FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF.

I. THE FUNDAMENTAL CERTITUDE OF DUTY AND VALUE . 340 II, THE WITNESS OF OUR VALUES TO THE STRUCTURE OF

REALITY \ fs. td) 2s, Stes st a 3 eee ee 346 JiLy THE. LOGIC OF FAITH tis, ie ae. coe en es OL IV. AN OBJECTION FROM THE DEVOTEES OF A PURELY SEC- ULAR MORALITY fee) com een roma ce inten eos nS ORY “‘V. THE LIMITS OF DEDUCTIVE PROOF . . . . . . 308 VI. LOVE AS THE ULTIMATE ORGAN OF SPIRITUAL DISCERN- MENT 0 Cy (RIES ee ee ee ee OS: VII. MEANING OF THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE)» |. iso. ula, fe ecient ole Bemroel

VIII. FAITH NOT A PROBABLE HYPOTHESIS TO BE AFTERWARDS VERIFIED, BUT AN EVER-DEEPENING PERSONAL TRUST 373

VUI. THE CONCEPTION OF GOD.

I. THE HISTORICAL BEGINNINGS OF BELIEF IN GOD egosl

Il, WHAT ARE WE TO SAY OF BUDDHISM AND JAINISM— ‘HIGHER’ RELIGIONS WHICH ARE APPARENTLY ATHE- ISTIC? «6... “hoe ee oa se ee ee ee OS:

JII. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF MAINTAINING A RELIGIOUS OUT- LOOK ON THE WORLD WITHOUT BELIEVING IT TO BE UNDER SPIRITUAL CONTROL. . . «= «© « « e« oo

IV. THE QUESTION OF IMMANENCE AND TRANSCENDENCE . 392

IX. THE CRITERION OF RELIGIOUS TRUTH AND THE NATURE OF RELIGIOUS PROG} RESS.

I. THE CRITERION OF TRUTH AND FALSITY IN RELIGION . 400 II. THE NATURE AND LAWS OF RELIGIOUS PROGRESS . . 409

III. STAGES IN RELIGIOUS PROGRESS AND THE ‘CLASSIFICA= TION SOF RELIGIONS. oo tenet einen ree arm 1

IV. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPTION OF GOD AS II- LUSTRATED IN THE CASE OF THE HEBREW PEOPLE . 417

VY. THE SAME CONTINUED: DIGRESSION CONCERNING MONO- THEISM. (oven Zs) sD 0 ea aici oe ree

VI. THE SAME CONTINUED: ITS CONSUMMATION IN CHRIS- ETANITY. |. cc. ed tay feat wate) oe am Tee Sinn ERGO eres CONTENTS x

. PAGE

CHAPTER z X. THE IDEA OF REVELATION.

I. THE PROBLEM DEFINED ......... 448 i. HISTORY OF THE IDEA OF DIVINE REVELATION IN ITS RE- LATION TO THAT OF HUMAN DISCOVERY .. . . 449

Ill. HOW AND WHERE DOES GOD REVEAL HIMSELF? . . . 458 Iv. THE REVELATION OF GOD IN JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD . 466 ik eam i Loe

PART I | THE METHOD

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CHAPTER I WHAT THEOLOGY IS x

WE are to be engaged in the following pages with the attempt to understand religion. We are to make religion the object of systematic scientific study. It is well known that this kind of study is a relatively late product of the evolution of the human mind, and that only a few peoples have indulged in it. Indeed we are almost certainly right in saying that there never had been anything genuinely worthy of the name of science in the world until it was introduced by the Greeks in the sixth century B. C., and there is no doubt at all that all the science that is in the Western world to-day is directly traceable to that beginning. “Rational science,” says a distinguished historian, “is the creation of the Greeks, and we know when it began.”! Among the phenomena which the Greeks made the object of systematic study may be mentioned those of number, figure, matter; the heavenly bodies, the weather; plant life, animal life, the parts of animals, the internal processes of animals; the human mind, the processes of reasoning, human conduct, civic or national life, music, poetry, religion. And so there came into being, among many others, far too numerous to be detailed here, the sciences of arithmetic, geometry, physics; astronomy, meteorology; botany, zoology, anatomy, physiology; psychology, logic, ethics, political science, musical theory, poetics, theology—all of which we still call by Greek names.

It is with theology alone that we are here concerned, for that’ was the name by which the Greeks, beginning with Aristotle in the middle of the fourth century B. C., designated the scientific study of religion. Theology may therefore be defined as the science of religion—the science, that is, which selects religion as its special object of study.

It is, however, necessary to make a further important distinc-

1J, Burnet, Greek Philosophy: Thales to Plato, p. 4, 3 eater eee Se ae a eter ae +) Mere ORY x H ge cree ore A “THE _ INTERPRETATION OF RELIGION | tion. The sciences which we have inherited from the Greeks are of two very different kinds. In the first place there is what we ’ “gall natural science, that is to say, the science of nature; and by nature is here meant the environing complex of things which externally confronts the human mind. It was with this “Inquiry Concerning Nature,” as they called it, that the Greeks began. But after about a hundred and fifty years there was opened up by Socrates a totally new vista of research, in that he turned aside from the study of nature to the study of “human things” (ta anthrdpina), or “the things of the soul” (fa ¢és »sychés). How then are we to describe in English this second kind of science? Various qualifying adjectives have been proposed. Some writers have made the distinction as between the natural and the philosophical sciences; but that is plainly a confused way of speaking, for either philosophy is to be taken (as the Greeks took it) as merely another word for science in genf eral or it is to be taken as a name for that coping-stone of sci- ; entific knowledge to which all the particular sciences stand in the same relation. Others have attempted to retain the word originally used in the Socratic school and have spoken of the anthropological sciences; but unfortunately the word anthropology has come to be falsely associated in our minds with what ought to be : called “paleanthropology,” that is, with the study of primitive human things, and not least with the purely natural science which studies the primitive human body. Still others have turned for guidance to the other Socratic phrase quoted above, which - described the new study as being concerned with “the things of the soul,” and have accordingly distinguished the natural from the mental sciences. In Germany they are now coming to make habitual use of the term Geisteswissenschaften—“the sciences of the spirit”; and that, if we could only find a convenient English equivalent for it, is perhaps the best name of all. Theology, then, is to be reckoned along with psychology,? logic, epistemology, ethics, sociology, political theory, musical w

1 Some psychologists look upon psychology as a natural science, and their psychology may indeed be a natural science, that is to say, it may be based on such knowledge of the nature of mind as may be obtained by regarding mind from the outside, through the study of the brain and nervous system or of the external behaviour of the organism, There is, however, a psychology which offers us such a knowledge of the mind as can be gained only from within: and this is not a natural science, eee ieee He SR PCR EATS vy hema sage - WHAT THEOLOGY Is in ® theory, etc., as a science not of nature but of spirit. Indeed, when Xenophon gives us a list of the “human things” to which his master Socrates was in the habit of devoting especial study, the very first thing he mentions is religion.1 It would not be true to say that no attention had been paid to the problem of religion by the pre-Socratic scientists, any more than it would be true that these had paid no attention to the problems of politics and esthetics. But the trouble was that before the time of Socrates and the Sophists the study of all such problems | was vitiated by a strong naturalistic bias. The things of the spirit were treated merely as part of nature and were approached only from the point of view of natural science. And in the case of religion it was almost universally held by the early thinkers that they could explain the whole business of it by summarily identifying the gods of the populace with those ultimate physical elements into which they were now discovering the natural world to be resoluble. Theos, they said, is just physis; an equation which, in its Latin dress of deus sive natura, was destined, thanks to its reintroduction into post-Socratic thought by the Stoics, to have a long career in theological history. Socrates, however, firmly refused to have any part in this or any other attempt to prejudice the study of “human things” by introducing into it initial preconceptions derived from the study of nature. Theology being thus classed as a Geisteswissenschaft, or science of spirit, it next becomes necessary to ask what is the main respect in which such sciences differ from natural science. The answer seems to be that in them we are approaching the objects of our research no longer from the outside but from the inside. Indeed it is possible that spirit should be regarded as no more than another name for the insideness of things and that, as has been well said,? “the soul of man is the universe turned outside in”; from which it would follow that, as so many celebrated philosophers have believed, there is nothing in the universe which would not, if only we could view it from within, turn out to be spiritual in nature. But however that may be, it is certain that what distinguishes studies like psychology, logic, ethics, and theology from studies like physiology, astronomy, and the other natural sciences is that in them the studying mind takes up its

1 Memorabilia, I, 1. 2Ry Dr. L. P. Jacks.

oer ore . * Seen ’ Tie ee ae i) oe 6 THE INTERPRETATION OF RELIGION | position within the phenomena it is studying. In the one case we have spirit investigating nature; in the other we. have spirit ‘investigating spirit.

Another notable characteristic of the ‘sciences of spirit,’ very closely connected with this one, is the fact that in them there is | an affinity, not present in the natural sciences, between the object | of study and the study itself. Thus theology is said to be the science of religion; yet theology and religion are things not entirely different from one another, and no quite hard-and-fast line can be drawn between them. Similarly no hard-and-fast line can be drawn between the moral consciousness, which is the subject-matter of ethics, and ethical theory itself; nor yet between the consciousness of beauty and esthetical theory.

From these characteristics a further important consequence follows. The ‘sciences of spirit’ have as their object certain spiritual activities, such as the moral or the esthetic or the religious consciousness. But these activities are themselves directed towards objects (direction towards an object being of the very nature of spirit) such as (in the three cases chosen) righteousness, beauty, God. And since the sciences of spirit take up their position within that spiritual consciousness which is the immediate object of their investigation, and regard themselves as sharers of that consciousness at the same time that they are students of it, it follows that the knowledge to which they attain is at once a knowledge of that consciousness and a knowledge of the objects of that consciousness. Thus ethics, at the same time that it is concerned with our moral consciousness, is also concerned with good and evil; and theology, at the same time that it is concerned with religion, is also concerned with God.

Should we then perhaps have defined theological science from the start not as the science of religion but as the science of God? This is a definition which has often been defended and which indeed can claim in its favour several centuries of unbroken tradition;! and it is also and very obviously the definition which is etymologically responsible for the formation of the word. Nevertheless there is more than one serious objection of scien-

1 For a modern example, vide Cardinal Newman's Idea of a University, II, 7: “What I mean by Theology is . . . simply the Science of God, or the truths we know about God put into system; just as we have a science of the stars and call it astronomy, or of the crust of the earth and call it geology,””

a

WHAT THEOLOGY IS 7 tific principle which can be urged against it. (1) To begin with, if we employed such a definition, we should be begging the very important question whether God and religion, though admitted by all to stand in the closest interrelationship, are yet wholly and in every. respect conterminous. A number of distinguished modern thinkers, such as Sir J. R. Seeley and the late F. H. Bradley, have even taken the view that religion need not have anything at all to do with God, but may entirely centre round some other and lesser object of adoration; and while we shall in the sequel find it necessary to dissent from this view, we shall at the same time have to admit, with the large majority of modern students of primitive cultures, that religion is, historically regarded, a considerably older phenomenon than is the definite conception of deity. (2) But again, it would not commonly be held that God is at any time the only object of religious faith and religious feeling. Human immortality, for instance, is’ a very common object of both. Recognition of this evident fact has often led theologians to the very clumsy expedient of subdividing their theology, which they had begun by defining as the science of God, into a number of different doctrines of which the first was the doctrine of God, and others the doctrines of man, salvation, the future life, etc.; and they have even given to the first of these doctrines the same name of theology, distinguishing it in this sense of it from anthropology, soteriology, eschatology, etc.; a confused division which is clearly to be avoided, if at all possible. (3) More important still, however, is the doubt which cannot but arise in our minds as to the appropriateness of regarding God as a possible object of scientific investigation. We feel that it is not by science that we know God, but by religion, by faith; and that faith’s way is the only way of knowing Him that is ever open to us. We feel that what the scientific student of theology, regarded as such, possesses in greater measure than the unlearned saint is not so much an understanding of God as an understanding of the nature of that act of religious knowledge in and through which God may be known. (4) Closely connected with this consideration is this other one: that theology appears to be concerned with God or the Supreme Being only in so far as He is conceived of as entering into a religious relationship with the human soul. There is a great deal

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~ of conceivable knowledge about the Supreme Being in which the- — ology, even if it could attain to it, would not have the remotest interest; and the reason why it would not be interested is simply that such knowledge does not concern religion.

Thus although we should insist that the scientific theologian, in having to do with the religious relationship, has at the same time and of necessity to do with whatever objects man is in that relationship found to be dealing with; and although we should allow that for most purposes it makes little difference whether we conceive of the theologian’s business‘as being with the rela-

_ tionship itself or with what stands, as it were, at the further or - Godward end of it; yet we find it no less necessary on the other hand to insist that it is only so far as these objects are known through the religious relationship that the theologian is properly concerned with them at all. It is, then, the boundaries of man’s religious interest that mark the limits of the theologian’s provue ince; and it is for this reason that we prefer to define our study _ in the first instance as the science of religion.

_ This being the case, how does it come about that ‘we are using

_ for the name of our science a word which, regarded etymologi- _ eally, means not the science of religion but the science of God?

In answer we must point to two historical facts. The first of these facts is that our science was first given a definite name by a thinker who really did believe in the possibility of making the God of whom religion discourses the object of an independent

-_sclentific investigation; and who, in conducting this investigation, made no use whatever of any knowledge obtained through specifically religious channels of insight. This thinker was Aristotle. Socrates, in the line of whose philosophical tradition Aristotle stood, had been in the habit of defining the function of a science as the giving of a logos, or account, of a special set of phenomena. Socrates himself was not fond of compound technical terms; but Aristotle was, and he formed convenient names for many of the sciences by suffixing the root of this word logos to the roots of the words describing their several subject-matters. It is therefore he who is originally responsible for the use of the word ‘theology’ to designate our present study, and the phrase ‘theological science’ (epistémé theologiké) makes its first apwt i ee eRe eer eis LS ajc ea en, WHAT THEOLOGY IS 9 pearance in his pages. The other historical fact above referred to is that the name theology, after having long fallen into comparative disuse, was once again restored to currency by a group of thinkers who in some ways outrivalled even Aristotle in the boldness with which they reasserted the possibility of attaining to a knowledge of God in entire independence of such revelation of Him as comes by way of religious faith, namely, the scholastic doctors of the Middle Ages.?

Socrates himself, however, would probably not have allowed himself to speak of a science of God. He insisted on approaching every such investigation from the nearer or human end of it. He would have said with Pope, and indeed, if we are to trust the report of his disciple Xenophon, did say before Pope:

“Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is Man.”

“He was the first,” says Cicero, “who called philosophy down from the heavens to the earth.’* In a famous passage in the Phedo Plato makes him relate how he had once, in his youth, essayed an independent inquiry into the ultimate nature of things after the manner of the Ionian physicists, but had long ago given it up, and preferred now to examine the truth of existence only through men’s existing conceptions of it. In this, he

says, he is like a wise man who, in viewing an eclipse, does not — blind himself by examining the sun directly, but looks at it only as reflected in water or some other medium; but he adds: “Perhaps my illustration is not entirely accurate, for I am not prepared to admit that he who examines existence through conceptions is dealing with mere reflections of it.”* The result is that where we find Aristotle conducting a direct speculative inquiry into the nature of the Divine Being without making the slightest reference to the religious knowledge of Him (and indeed ignoring, except in one short paragraph, the very existence of religion