The philosophy of religion

Preface

The volume of the " International Theological Library " on the Philosophy of Religion was originally undertaken by the late Professor Flint. Unfortunately the state of Dr. Flint's health prevented him from accomplishing any part of the work. At the request of the Editor of the Library — the late Professor C. A. Briggs, of New York — and the Publishers, the present writer agreed to take the place of his respected teacher.

The reader will find in the Introduction a statement of the method adopted in the book, and the reasons for adopting it. Throughout the work an attempt has been made to keep the facts and movements of religious experience in the foreground, and to discuss the problems of religious philosophy in the light of their historic development. And though this may have led sometimes to a certain amount of repetition, the course followed has the distinct advantage of bringing the philosophic theory of religion into closer relation with the life of the religious spirit.

In the matter of philosophical principles the author is in general sympathy with the movement called Personal Idealism ; and he has learned much from writers like Lotze, Professor James Ward, and Professor Stout. At the same time, it is hard to resist the conclusion that even a monadistic type of idealism requires modifications, if it is to do justice to the realistic implications of exvu

Vlll PREFACE

perience. A speculative theory of religion, however, must be judged mainly by the fairness with which it interprets, and the adequacy with which it explains, the religious experience as a whole.

To meet the wants of those interested in the subject a Bibliography has been added, which, it is hoped, may prove useful.

For kind help in revising some of the proofs, thanks

are due to the Eev. D. Frew, D.D., and the Eev. W. E.

Henderson, B.D.

GEORGE GALLOWAY.

Contents

Introduction- .......

A. The Growth of Religious Philosophy

B. Problem and Method .....

PART I. The Nature and Development of Religion (Phenomenological) 54-250

CfTAPTER I.

A. The Psychical Nature of Man .... 54-72

JB. The Psychical Elements and the Religious Consciousness 72-82

C. The Religious Relation : Its Subjective and Objective Aspects 82-87

CHAPTER II. The Beginnings and Growth of Religion

A. Tribal Religion ....

(a) Primitive Religious Ideas . .

(6) Magic and Religion

(c) The Main Features of Tribal Religion

B. National Religion

(a) The Transition from Tribal to National Religion (6) The Specific Features of National Religion (c) Sacred Things, Acts, and Persons C. Universal Religion

(a) The Rise of Universal Religion

(b) Main Features of Universal Religion

(c) Phenomena of Survival

88-152

88-109 89-98

The Nature of Knowledge .

A. Theories of Knowledge .

(a) Empirical and Realistic (&) Rational and a Priori (c) The Critical Theory

B. The Development of Knowledge

C. The Presuppositions of Knowledge

D. The Validity of Knowledge

CHAPTER VIII. Religious Knowledge

A. The Attitude of the Religious Mind to its Object

B. The Sphere and Character of Religious Knowledge

(a) Religious Knowledge and Empirical Knowledge (6) The Religious Ideal and Historic Experience (c) Authority and Religious Knowledge

C. Special Problems of Religious Knowledge

(a) The Significance of Religious Doubt •

(&) Knowledge and Faith . . •

802-333

CONTENTS

XI

CHAPTER IX. Modes of Religious Knowledge and the Problem of Truth

A. The Principle of Analogy ....

B. Teleological Interpretation ....

C. Values and their Rationality ....

D. The Idea of Truth in Religion . • • .

?AGE8

334-370

PART III. The Ultimate Truth of Religion (Ontologioal)

371-590

CHAPTER X. A Speculative Theory of Religion : Its Data and Aim 371-401

A. The Data and the Problem they Raise . . . 371-381

^. Proofs of the Existence of God .... 381-394

C. Experience and its Relation to God . • • 395-401

CHAPTER XL

The Speculative Conception of a World-Ground . 402-449

A. The Problem of Reality : Realistic and Idealistic Solutions 404-418

B. Individuality and Unity in Experience, and their Basis 418-434

C. Personality and the Claims of Religious Experience . 435-442

D. Developing Experience and the World-Ground . . 442-449

NOTE.

449-456

CHAPTER XII. God : His Relations and Attributes

A. Historic Conceptions of God

(a) Deism

(&) Pantheism .

(c) Theism

B. God in Relation to the Experienced World

(a) God as Creative

(&) God as Immanent and Transcendent (c) God as Infinite, Eternal, and Absolute G. Metaphysical Attributes of God .

(a) Omnipotence . . •

(J) Omnipresence . . •

(c) Omniscience . . .

Xll

CONTENTS

Chapter XIII

A. God as Personal . .

B. God as Ethical . .

PAGES

CHAPTER XIV. The Problem of Evil

A. The Rise of the Problem .

B. Natural and Moral Evil .

O. Theism and the Existence of Evil

D. Human Freedom and Evil

E. Optimism and Pessimism .

512-549

CHAPTER XV. The Progress and Destiny of Man

A. The Goal of Human History ,

B. The Idea of Immortality

C. The Temporal and the Transcendent World

D. Revelation and Man's Religious Development Concluding Remarks ....

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX ,

691-593 695-602

THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION.

Introduction

^.— THE GEOWTH OF KELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY.

Philosophy is reflexion on experience in order to apprehend its ultimate meaning. The philosophic spirit is relatively a late growth in the process of human development, and man is religious long before he philosophises. Plato and Aristotle have traced the birth of philosophy to the feeling of wonder which arises in the mind of man as he contemplates the moving spectacle of things. But even among primitive men the phenomena of uature evoked feelings of awe and wonder which stimulated them to religious acts. Such wonder, however, did not provoke men to philosophise. Only at a higher stage of development, when man has won for himself a certain independence and so enjoys leisure to reflect, does his wonder assume that intellectual cast which issues in philosophy. The; philosopher steps on the scene after the social organisation has so perfected the material basis of life, that man is no longer daily anxious about the satisfaction of his bodily needs, and so has time and opportunity to speculate on himself and his surroundings. This truth Aristotle long ago fully realised.-^ A considerable progress in civilised life on the part of society, and in self-conscious activity on the part of its members, are the conditions which precede

Z INTRODUCTION

the emergence of philosophy in the proper sense of the word. The instinctive way of explaining things, and the naive attitude to nature and life, are already part of a distant past, ere man's developed powers of thinking lay on him the burden of self-conscious reflexion upon the meaning of his experience. Philosophy is the fruit of a society's maturer age, not of its youthful spring-time. Hegel has expressed this truth in a striking fashion : " As the thought of the world, it makes its first appearance at a time when the actual fact has consummated its process of formation, and is now fully matured. . . . The owl of Minerva does not start upon its flight till the evening twilight has begun to fall."

The philosophic spirit, then, when it enters upon its self-imposed task, finds its matter to hand. Questions are before it demanding an answer. The development of culture has organised experience in specific forms — in politics and art, in law and religion, for example. These have come to present problems to the mind which call for solution. What are the origin and the end, the meaning and the value of these characteristic forms of life ? What part do they severally play in the larger drama of human experience ? The case of religion especially invites philo- > sophic thought. For religion is one of the earliest and j most constant, one of the deepest and most engrossing '' forms of human activity, and in tendency and outlook it 1 can claim a near kinship with philosophy. In its developed forms, religion seeks to present a view of the world and life which satisfies the spiritual and emotional needs of man ; hence it deals with the same problem which exercises the mind of the speculative thinker. It does so, however, in a practical and spiritual interest, and not in a way that fully satisfies the demands of reflective thought.. But a developed and living religion is sensitive to the claims of philosophic thinking, and, under favouring conditions, theology readily assumes a speculative form. Eeligious doctrines are purified and deepened, so that they approximate to philosophical conceptions and convey a reflective view of the world as a whole. We have, in other words, a reflective movement growing up within a religion, and lifting the religious consciousness into the region of speculative thinking. This is not a Philosophy of Eeligion in the modern sense of the word, but it is the form in which religious philosophy first appears in the course of human history. I shall illustrate this by referring to Brahmanism and then to Christianity.

(1) The Indian Vedas reveal to us a stage of polytheistic religion where the forms of the gods, if no longer primitive, still retain traces of their original connexion with the powers and forces of nature. But as individualities these gods are not drawn in sharp outlines : they are shadowy creations, and one tends to blend with, or to be absorbed by another in the mind of the worshipper. This native bent towards unification was steadily fostered by reflexion, and became the basis on which philosophical thought slowly transformed the Vedic theology into a speculative system. Brahman and Atman, which in the Vedas mean respectively prayer and vital breath, were transmuted into universal cosmic principles : they were identified in the Upanishads, and made the all-embracing principle of life and existence. There is One being and no second : the gods of earlier religion gradually dissolve into floating appearances of the single and ever-present soul of things (Atman). Even the distinction of worshipper and worshipped, which seems so essential to the religious attitude, dwindles and fades, till the Hindu thinker, in the act of knowledge, recognised that he was one with the All, with Brahma. The very appearance of difference is explained away; it is the product of illusion (Maya). The end of the Vedas, as the Vedanta is termed, is a strict pantheism which proclaims the identity of man with the one and indivisible Being. Here then is a conspicuous illustration of a speculative process growing up within a historic religion, slowly transforming its earlier features, and at last restating the issues in the form of a thoroughgoing monistic philosophy. The result is not an arbitrary reconstruction upon a new principle : it was reached by the exclusive development of certain tendencies which were present in the religion from the first.

^ (2) India supplies us with the earliest example of the beginnings and growth of a religious philosophy : a later illustration is found in Christianity. In the latter case, ,. however, an important difference has to be noted. The I speculative impulse did not proceed from within the Christian religion itself ; it was due to its contact with an independent body of philosophical conceptions. C^ The great religious movement which had its centre and origin in Christ was an ethical and spiritual movement ; and the gospel when it was first preached was a way of life and not a theology. But in an active and expanding religion theological statement became necessary, and when Christianity passed into the Gentile world it encountered an atmosphere impregnated with philosophical ideas. To escape the influence of these ideas was hardly possible ; and the biblical literature already shows traces of their working, notably so in the Johannine Gospel./ This comtmerce with philosophy, which at first seemed a merely human wisdom and a " conceit of knowledge " to be avoided by Christians, was hastened by the rise of Gnosticism. The bold and fantastic constructions by which the Gnostics strove to explain Christianity as the centre of a great world-movement or cosmic process of redemption fascinated many, while they distorted the spirit of the gospel. That Gnosticism appealed to a need was clear from the attraction it exercised : the question lay to hand whether Christian thinkers could not respond to that need in a better way. A statement of Christian truth in a larger perspective was wanted, and the method, as it seemed, was to oppose to the false a true yp(oa-t,<;. Already in the second century, Justin Martyr proclaimed that Christianity was the true philosophy, and that all who lived in fellowship with the divine Word were Christians even before Christ. The influence of Platonic and Neo-^ Platonic ideas is very apparent in the Alexandrian Fathers.

To Clement of Alexandria and his disciple Origen it was a firm conviction, that the truths which were the object of faith (TTtcTTt?) could be made the object of philosophic knowledge (<yvcoaL<;). In Origen especially we see Platonic and Neo-Platonic elements conspiring to elevate the doctrines of the Church into the form of a speculative theology. Through the doctrine of the Logos, Origen construes the Incarnation and explains revelation. With the Neo- Platonists he holds the nature of God to be incognisable in itself, and to be the subject of negative predicates only. ;God belongs to the region of eternal and immutable Being, land this region, after Plato, is contrasted sharply with the I lower world of becoming and decay. So the creation of ' the world and the generation of the Son, Origen thinks, must be conceived as eternal processes, if we are not to draw down into this temporal and mutable world the changeless and transcendent Deity. A fusion of Neo- Platonic and Christian influences also meets us at a later date in Augustine. If we generalise the impressions derived from a study of this movement in the Church of the first three centuries, we may describe it as an endeavour to prove that the content of Christian faith can be made the object of knowledge. Under the shaping influence of Greek thought the philosophical theologians of the Church tried to reach a deeper ground for religious doctrines than authority pure and simple. They attempted to show that Christian doctrines are the expression of a rational and comprehensive order which thought is able to apprehend. Whatever value we may put on the work of the Hellenistic Fathers, we must at least recognise that, in the place and function they assigned to speculative insight, they were the pioneers of religious philosophy in the West.

Over the history of religious philosophy in the Middle Ages, and in modern times up to and including the work of Kant, I must pass rapidly. When we reach the nineteenth century the subject calls for fuller treatment.

The Middle Ages exhibit a remarkable development of reason on its purely formal side and a great dialectical acuteness. But the old freedom of thinking has vanished, and philosophy, once the mistress of the mansion, has become the handmaid of theology which rules in her place. The inviolable truth of the dogmas of the Church is presupposed, and, while the thinker may explicate and justify them, he is not free to alter or discard them. That it was possible to attain a rational knowledge of the truth of the Dogma was at first generally assumed by the Scholastics, and under Aristotelian and Neo-Platonic inspiration they developed a speculative theology which was meant to elucidate the truth of the Church's dogmatic system. Yet, notwithstanding its dialectical subtlety, mediaeval philosophy suffered from an incurable defect. It rested on a dualism which excluded fruitful interaction between the form and matter of thought, and it was therefore incapable of a real progress. A mobile form was confronted with an intractable matter. Whenever the truth of the Dogma was called in question, the elaborate constructions of the Schoolmen, like a building whose foundations have been undermined, gradually collapsed. This result was visibly foreshadowed in the last phase of Scholasticism : theologians had lost faith in the possibility of rationalising the Dogma, and now based its truth on authoritative revelation. Meanwhile, the difficulty of reconciling ecclesiastical doctrines and philosophical thought led to the theory of the " double truth." It was urged, with covert irony no doubt, that what was true in theology might be false in philosophy, and what was true in philosophy might be false in theology. Thought had now come to an impasse, and religious philosophy had ceased to be possible. Progress could only ensue when philosophy returned on its steps, revised the assumptions on which it had proceeded, and resumed its journey under fresh auspices. The Eeformation signalised the beginning of this new movement which has given birth to Modern Philosophy.

Not immediately, however, nor even very soon, did the modern mind apply itself to work out a philosophy of r^ religion. Only the one religion was really before men's minds ; and philosophy, delivered after a severe struggle from the tyranny of an imperious master, naturally turned first to other fields which had long been waiting to be cultivated. In the seventeenth century, with Leibniz, we^ have a really important attempt to bring philosophical: principles to the solution of religious problems. In his; Theodicde, Leibniz sets out from the theistic standpoint and tries to prove it is compatible with the present order of the world, an order which contains within it both natural and moral evil. The aim of the work, however, is not so much to unfold a philosophy of religion as to show that religious and philosophical conceptions harmonise, and that specific Christian doctrines can be philosophically justified. It is objected, for instance, that the goodness of God is inconsistent with the evil in the world. Here Leibniz reminds us we have not merely to consider what is possible, but what is " compossible." In other words, when we regard the limitations which elements within a whole impose on each other, he thinks he can show this is the best of all possible worlds, and that the evil in it is not inconsistent with its government by an allwise and righteous God. The arguments of the Theodicde are not always convincing, and in general Leibniz was over sanguine about the prospects of reconciling opposing principles and movements. At the same time his philosophical work is of outstanding interest and importance in its bearing on religion ; for he insists throughout on the teleological character of experience, and on the reference of all monads to God, the Supreme Monad, who is the ground of the system of existences. The speculative theology of recent times owes much to fruitful suggestions thrown out by the profound and fertile mind of Leibniz.

But while Leibniz set himself with a keen insight to prove the harmony of faith and reason, it lay beyond the scope of his purpose to discuss the question whether the existing ecclesiastical religion did not contain non-essentialelements. This interesting question was raised and debated by the Deistic writers in England during a period that extended from the latter part of the seventeenth well into the eighteenth century. The criticism of the Deists was marked, no doubt, by the defect in historical insight which was common to the age. It was an unhistorical assumption that Christianity was the corruption of an original " natural religion," a corruption due to priestcraft. Just as unhistorical was it to suppose that this " natural religion," rational and ethical in its features, was the original religion of men. Indeed, "natural religion," with its well defined " notes," was as much a fiction as " the state of nature" of eighteenth-century theorists. Still this attempt to draw out the essentials of religion in general was in its way an anticipation of the task of a philosophy of religion. For the Philosophy of Eeligion has as part of its problem to distinguish the permanent from the accidental in religion, and to exhibit those constitutive principles which underlie all religions. But ^ut was the purely rational side of religion which interested the Deists, and like their age they were ignorant of the forces which go to the making of religion. Hume, writing a little later, showed his remarkable acuteness by pointing out some of the real influences which go to develop the religious consciousness. He was one of the first to appreciate the significance of the psychological side of religion, and his Natural History of Religion contains many discerning remarks on the workings of feeling, sentiment, and reflexion in the growth of religion.

Kant's theory of religion suffers just as much as his ethical theory from his neglect of psychology. His Religion within the Limits of Mere Reason, in its spirit and outlook, remains true to the eighteenth-century tradition. His ideal is a rational and ethical religion, purged of alien elements, and emancipated from all that savours of intolerance and superstition. According to Kant the content of ^religion is just the performance of our moral duties conceived as commands of God. There is a certain severity

I and simplicity in the Kantian conception, but it does no justice to the inner nature and motives of the religious consciousness. In truth, if Kant had grasped the idea of historic development, if he had realised the part played by religion in the life of culture, he would have found it impossible to reduce religion to an appendage of morality. / The rebirth of philosophy in Kant, and the change in temper and ideals which marked the transition to the nineteenth century, had the most important effects on religious conceptions. The narrow rationalism and the superficial acuteness which characterised the previous age, and appeared conspicuously in the criticism of religion, were gradually dissipated by a larger sympathy begotten of a new feeling for historic values. Men were beginning to realise that ideas and institutions, as well as society itself, must be regarded from the point of view of development if they were to be appreciated fairly. It need hardly be said that this modern attitude was favourable to the better understanding of religion, for it meant a broader way of looking at religious phenomena and a deeper insight into the motives and forces which were at work in the evolution of religion. As a symptom of ths' fresh spirit which was growing up, we may refer first to the work of Schleiermacher. His Eeden (1799), delivered in the full flush of the Eomantic movement, transports us into a spiritual world far removed from that of Eeligion \ within the Limits of Mere Reason. Eecognising early the significance of feeling in religion, he never lost sight of it ; and through all the changes of his keen and progressive mind, he continued to treat the feeling-experience as fundamental and religious doctrines as the outcome of reflexion on this experience. The Church or Christian society was the historic medium of this spiritual experience, and the Church's doctrines were the derivative ideas by which from time to time its inner life was defined and formulated. Eeligion is a continuous development, and it has not yet reached its final dogmatic form.^ Schleiermacher's interest in historic religion was centred in

Christianity, but in tracing the psychological origin of religion to the feeling of dependence, he tried to reach a universal principle which was constitutive of the religious consciousness. That principle he saw reflected with varying degrees of truth in the multiplicity of human religions. And while his direct contribution to the Philosophy of Eeligion was less important than Hegel's, he has a better appreciation of the psychological nature of religion.

The historical value of Hegel's Philosophy of Religion is not easily overrated ; and this can be acknowledged by those who do not accept his principles or results. He was the first to draw out in large lines the task to which the religious philosopher must set himself, and to illustrate the comprehensive spirit in which he should strive to fulfil that task. A Philosophy of Religion, he shows, must include in its purview primitive religion, the ethnic religions, and Christianity : it has to make plain that all religions express the principle of the religious relationship and reveal in varying degrees the ideal of religion. Through the manifold forms of religion the Absolute Religion was in process of becoming, and was finally manifested in the fulness of the time. Hegel recognises that religion is a universal and necessary attitude of the human spirit, and his endeavour to show that all the historic religions are related as moments in a great developmental process was interesting and impressive. At that time, now nearly a century ago, the means for properly interpreting the primitive and the historic religions were meagre, and Hegel's generalisations are hasty and sometimes crude. Moreover, his theory of religious development as a dialectic process led to much arbitrariness in the construction put upon historical materials. But the value of his catholic outlook is not impaired by the questionable nature of some of his results. After Hegel there has been general agreement that a Philosophy of Religion must deal with religion as a universal phenomenon in human history, and a fact to be studied in its evolution. Nor has Hegel's conception of the function and method of a Philosophy of Eeligion lost its significance. In religion, he held, we have ideas presented to us in the form of imaginative or figurative thinking, and philosophy has to purify this material in order to raise it to the speculative form of truth. As we look back on Hegel's work our faith in his dialectic may be feeble, and our confidence in the power of thought to solve all mysteries may not be great. Still beyond doubt the application of philosophy to religion does involve a criticism of ordinary religious ideas so as to bring them into consistent relations with the larger whole of knowledge. The shortcomings of Hegel's religious philosophy are well known. It is impossible to characterise the great national religions by any single epithet, however striking and suggestive. His psychology of religion is meagre and defective : the high importance of feeling is ignored, and the function of thought is much exaggerated. But from the historical point of view the stimulus which Hegel gave to the study of the whole subject was decisive, and this ought to be frankly recognised.

In following the growth of religious philosophy after Hegel, I can only try to indicate the broad movements with some of their characteristic representatives. The first, and in some ways the most important, of these movements was that mainly initiated by Hegel himself, and j may be described as Absolute or Speculative Idealism. A i common feature of this school of thought is a monistic idealism which treats nature and finite minds as differentiations of the all-inclusive Absolute. Yet in carrying out this principle there have been many divergences, and the interpretation of religion has varied greatly according as stress was laid on the unity of the Whole or on the reality of the differentiations within it. From Hegel's death in 1831 up to and beyond the middle of the century, the bearing of Speculative Idealism on religious (problems was a subject of engrossing interest in Germany. But the movement found expression rather in Speculdtive Theology than in Philosophy of Eeligion in the proper sense of the term. Good illustrations of the work done in this field are Vatke's Die menschliche FreiJieit, and, at a later date, Biedermann's Christliche Dogmatik} The latter work is a very thoughtful and able attempt to elevate the theology of the Church, conceived as a matter presented in the form of figurative thought, into the form of speculative truth. Though Biedermann in his epistemology came to stand on independent ground, the general principle of his treatise is Hegelian : and he is at one with Hegel in overlooking the importance of psychology and in magnifying the function of reason in religion. Nor does he abandon the conviction that Speculative Theology can reach the truth and express it in a final form.

The tendency seen in Biedermann to follow an inductive

I method in dealing with religious problems is much more pronounced in Pfleiderer, whose Philosophy of Kehgion claims to be developed on " a historical basis." ^ His contention is, that only a careful study of the developing * religious consciousness, through the various forms which it has assumed, can enable us to rise to the conception of its real meaning. Pfleiderer's contribution to the fulfilment of this task is important and valuable. But while Pfleiderer follows the idealistic method of solving differences by referring them to a deeper unity when he is dealing with problems of development, his relation to /Speculative Idealism is really one of considerable in- ! dependence. He abandons any attempt to force historical ^material into a priori categories, and acknowledges the /importance of the psychology of religion. He realises the significance of the feelings and the will in religion, and he recognises that the value-judgments of spiritual experience must play a part in giving content to the idea of God. Nor does he contend that our reason can penetrate all things and evolve truth in an absolutely final form. It is in keeping with these reservations that Pfleiderer adopts an epistemology of a realistic type, and this enables him to reject the pantheism into which Hegelian idealism

* 1st ed., Zurich, 1869 ; 2nd ed., revised, in 1884.

2 2nd ed. 1884, Eng. tr. 1886 ; 3rd ed., revised and reconstructed, 1896.

naturally drifts. At the same time the question arises, whether these gradual modifications of an original standpoint should not, in the interests of consistency, have carried him further than he has gone in the direction of some form of personal idealism. Be this as it may, Pfleiderer's luminous and suggestive treatment of the mass of historical materials which confront the religious philosopher constitutes a weighty contribution to the subject.

As also representing Speculative Idealism in Germany, it may be enough to refer to the works of E. von Hartmann and A. Dorner. In von Hartmann the influence of Schopenhauer blends with that of Hegel and gives a pessimistic colour to his philosophy of religion. But he by no means neglects the study of the development of religion, and he has a just appreciation of the relative values of the psychical elements in the religious consciousness. The curious thing is that the writer, despite his study of the psychological facts, should conclude that religious ideas and values are determined by the un- - conscious life, of whose deeper movement consciousness is the surface manifestation. At the same time, Hartmann's theory of an unconscious Absolute helps him to overcome a difficulty which Speculative Idealists had not frankly faced, the difficulty, namely, how a self-conscious Absolute could embrace personal selves as elements in its own being. According to the " Concrete Monism of the Unconscious," the Absolute only becomes conscious through its specific determinations in finite minds : religion is really f a process in which the Deity works out his own redemption by gradually returning to the Unconscious from the consciously felt ills of the world. Von Hartmann's conception of religion is interesting, for it represents the issue of an attempt to think out consistently the implications of an idealistic Monism. How far it does justice to the facts of the religious consciousness is, of course, another matter.^