Theism

Preface

This work is a revision and extension of my previous work, " Philosophy of Theism." An invitation to deliver the Deems lectures before the New York University gave a welcome opportunity for revision. In the earlier work the argument was somewhat meagerly presented, and the arguments from epistemology and metaphysics were only hinted at. This shortcoming I have sought to remedy. The work has been largely rewritten, and about fifty per cent of new matter has been added. In all this, however, I have confined myself to my original plan of giving the essential argument, so that the reader might discern its true nature and be enabled to estimate its rational value. To do this is more important at present than to mak^ collections of facts and illustrations, however bulky, which decide nothing, so long as the logical principles of the discussion are not cleared up and agreed upon. The point at issue among thinkers concerns the nature and value of theistic logic ; and this cannot be settled by eloquence, or by question-begging illustrations. From this point of view the work might be called The Logic of Theism.

Kant pointed out that the ontological argument properly proves nothing, and that the cosmological and the !■ ill iv PREFACE

design argument depend on the ontological. The argument, then, is not demonstrative, and rests finally on the assumed existence of a perfect being. In a different form I have maintained the same position ; but so far from concluding that theistic faith is baseless, I have sought to show that essentially the same postulate underlies our entire mental life. There is an element of faith and volition latent in all our theorizing. Where we cannot prove,-^ we believe. Where we cannot demonstrate, we choose ♦ sides. This element of faith cannot be escaped in any field of thought, and without it the mind is helpless and dumb. Oversight of this fact has led to boundless verbal haggling and barren logic chopping, in which it would be hard to say whether the affirmative or the negative be the more confused. Absurd demands for "proof" have been met with absurd "proofs." The argument has thus been transferred from the field of life and action, where it mainly belongs, to the arid wastes of formal logic, where it has fared scarcely better than the man who journeyed to Jericho from Jerusalem. In opposition to this error I { have sought to show the practical and vital basis of belief, and have pointed out that logic has only a regulative function with respect to the great beliefs by which men . and nations live. These beliefs are formulations and^ expressions of life, rather than syllogistic and academic inferences ; and they depend for their force on the energy of the life that produces them. The conclusion is that theism is the fundamental postulate of our total life. It cannot, indeed, be demonstrated without assumption, but it cannot be denied without wrecking all our interests.

PREFACE V

This claim has been especially emphasized in considering the bearing of theism upon the problem of knowledge. I have sought to show that our cognitive and speculative interests, as well as our moral and religious interests, are so bound up with theism as to stand or fall with it. If we say, then, that theism is strictly proved by nothing, we must also admit that it is implicit in everything. Anti-theistic schemes are generally in the instinctive stage of thought, where knowledge constitutes no problem and is taken for granted. In this stage any theory whatever may be held, however self -destructive ; and when its suicidal implications are pointed out, the theorist falls back on unreasoned common sense, and repudiates, not his own theory, which is the real offender, but the critic. He sets up natural selection as the determining principle of belief, and then repudiates the great catholic convictions of the race. He shows how the survival of the fittest must bring thought and thing into accord, and then rejects the beliefs which survive. He defines mind as an adjustment of inner relations to outer relations, and forthwith drifts off into nescience. He presents the Unknown Cause as the source of all beliefs, and then rules out most of them as invalid, and, at times, declares them all worthless. And this compound of instinct and reflection, in which each element destroys the other, is mistaken by many for the last profundity in science and philosophy. But this kind of thing is fast passing away, as the insight becomes general that knowledge is one of the chief problems of speculation, and that every theory must be judged by its doctrine of knowledge. When this insight is reached.

VI PREFACE

atheism and all mechanical schemes of the necessitarian type appear as philosophically illiterate and belated.

And as epistemology reveals the suicidal nature of atheistic thought, so metaphysical criticism shows the baselessness of its metaphysics. The crude realism of popular thought, when joined with the notion of mechanical necessity, furnishes excellent soil for an atheistic growth. This realism in its popular form may be regarded as finally set aside, and also the mechanical naturalism based upon it. Philosophy is coming to see the emptiness of all philosophizing on the mechanical and impersonal plane ; so that the choice for both science and philosophy is either a theistic foundation or none. Both the abstractions of mechanical theory and the impersonal categories of philosophical dogmatism are found to cancel themselves when taken apart from living and self-conscious intelligence, in which alone they have either existence or meaning.

Upon the whole the theistic outlook is most encouraging. The atheistic gust of the last generation has about blown over. It was largely a misunderstanding due to the superficial philosophy of the time. But we have analyzed our problems and improved our criticism since then, and now understand ourselves and our problems much better. Science and philosophy, through a wise division of labor or just partition of territory, have come to dwell together in friendship; and conflicts of science and religion, which were at one time a standing order of the day, have almost entirely vanished. The triumphs and panics of that time were alike baseless, and closely

PREFACE vii

resembled scuffles between blind men. The air has cleared. Fundamental problems are seen to remain about what they always were. A better epistemology has shown the suicidal nature of atheistic thought. A better metaphysics is curing the naturalistic obsession. A proper division of labor has secured to science and philosophy their appropriate fields and inalienable rights, while theism more and more appears as the supreme condition of both thought and life.

BORDEN P. BOWNE.

Contents

PAQB

Religion a Fact, 1. Origin of Religion, 2. Theories of Origin Ambiguous, 4. They are never Explanations of the Religious Fact, but Descriptions of its Temporal Development, 5. History of Religion, 10. Rational Basis of Religion, 11. Logical Method, 15. Method of Rigor and Vigor, 16. Practical and Teleological Basis of Belief, 20. Function of Logic, 30. Logic Regulative, not Constitutive, 31. Theism and Atheism alike Hypotheses to be tested by their Positive Adequacy to the Facts, 41.

Chapter I

Kant's Criticism of the Theistic Arguments, 44. The Traditional Classification of the Arguments abandoned and a Starting Point found in the Fact of Interaction, 51. Verbal Explanations of Interaction, 54. Interaction between Independent Things a Contradiction, 56. The Fundamental Reality must be One, 59.

Chapter II

Two Classes of Arguments, Inductive and Speculative, 65. Argument from Order, 67. Theism the only Explanation

ix

X CONTENTS

PAOB

of Order, 70. Source of the Plausibility of the Atheistic Explanation of Order, 70. The Argument from Teleology, 75. Points to be noted in studying the Argument, 77. Atheistic Objections, 89. Mechanical Explanation shown to be Empty, 89. Source of the Illusion, 93. Evolution, 103. Ambiguity of the Doctrine, 104. Evolution as Phenomenal, 107. The " As-If " Objection, 110. The Argument which disproves Mind in Nature disproves Mind also in Man, 114. The Argument from Finite Intelligence, 119. The Argument from Epistemology, 123. Suicidal Character of All Mechanical Doctrines of Knowledge, 124. The Basal Certainties of Knowledge are not Things, but Persons and Experience, 127. Knowledge implies Identity of the Laws of Thought and the Laws of Things, 130. A Knowable World necessarily a Thought World, 134. The Metaphysical Argument, 134. Idealistic Theism the only Solution of the Problems of Thought, 145.

Chapter III

Agnostic Objections, 151. Impersonal Intelligence, 155. Alleged Contradiction in Infinite Intelligence, 160. The Contradiction is Verbal, 163. Psychological Objections, 164. Complete Personality possible only to the Absolute, 167. The Truth in the Objections, 169.

CHAPTER IV The Metaphysical Attributes of the World-ground . 172

Unity, 173. Unity possible only on the Personal Plane, 174. Unchangeability, 177. The Self-identity and Self-equality of Intelligence the only Unchangeable, 179. Om-

CONTENTS xi nipresence, 179. Impossible under the Space Form, 180. Eternity, 181. Relation of the World-ground to Time, 184. Omniscience, 186. Possibility of Foreknowledge, 188. Omnipotence, 190. Relation of God to Truth, 191. The Divine Will and the Divine Existence, 197.

Chapter V

Pantheism, 199. Quantitative Pantheism Untenable, 200. Two Conceptions of the Finite, 203. Spirits created, 206. Untenability of All Forms of Pantheism, 209. Reality of the Finite Spirit, 214. Theistic Conception, 218. Creation Temporal or Eternal ? 220. Present Relation of the World to God, 226. God as Ruler of the World, 230. Man's Relation to Nature, 234. Naturalism and Supernaturalism, 244. God as Immanent and Transcendent, 246.

Chapter VI

Distinction of Metaphysical and Moral Attributes, 249. The Empirical Argument, 250. Argument from the Moral Nature, 251. Argument from History and Social Structure, 254. Logic and Life, 258. Optimism and Pessimism, 263. Both Optimist and Pessimist fall a Prey to Abstractions, 264. Apriori Discussion Futile, 271. Unpermissible Anthropomorphism, 275. Laws of the System Good, 277. Man's Worst Woes of his own Making, 278. Only a Practical Solution Possible, 282. Evil in the Animal World, 285. Ethics and the Absolute, 287. Can the Absolute be Ethical? 287.

xii CONTENTS

Chapter VII Paob

Practical Argument for Theism explained, 291. Atheism and Duties, 294. Atheism and the Moral Judgment, 295. Consistent Atheism cannot defend itself against Ethical Skepticism, 298. Dependence of Ethics on our General Theory of the Universe and Life, 299. Atheism and the Moral Ideal, 302. Atheism and Moral Inspiration, 304. Position of the Religious Nature in Modern Atheism, 312.

Introduction

Man is religious. However it came about, and whether we like it or not, man is religious. A descriptive inventory of our human life and tendencies that omitted religion would be lamentably imperfect. A history of humanity that overlooked its religious tendencies and activities would miss one of its most significant manifestations. The most irreligious statesman would admit that religion must be reckoned with as a fact, however baseless or pathological he might deem it. The most unbelieving historian must recognize, with whatever vexation, the tremendous part religion has played. And from the economical and financial standpoint, the religious budget appears as one of the great items in our total expense. For good or ill, the earth is full of religion ; and life and thought, art and literature, are moulded by it. As our earth moves under the influence of forces lying beyond itself, so our human life is moving under the influence of ideas that have their roots in the invisible. There are powers, we think, beyond seeing and hearing, on whom we depend, to whom we owe various duties, and who take note of our life and conduct ; and our relation to these powers is the deepest and highest and most solemn element in our existence. Religion may be a mistake, an illusion, a superstition, but as an historical fact it is undeniable; and no exorcism has yet been found potent enough permanently to exorcise the evil spirit. The fact being thus indisputable, three questions arise. These concern respectively the source of religion, the history of religion, and the rational foundation or warrant of religion.

To the question concerning the source of religion various answers have been given. Some have been content to view rehgion as a device of state, and priestcraft; but this view has long been obsolete. The impossibility of long imposing purely adventitious and fictitious ideas upon the mind by external authority makes it necessary to look for the source of religion within the mind itself. Such source was found at a very early date in fear. Man, being timid and helpless, feigns gods partly to help himself and partly as projections of his fears. This view, which finds full expression by Lucretius, has been extended by Hume, who traces religious ideas to the personifying tendency of the mind. Man projects his own life into all his objects, and thus surrounds himself with a world of invisible beings. Others have held that the idea of an invisible world first got afloat through dreams, trances, fits, etc., and once afloat, it took possession of the human mind in general, with the exception always of a few choice spirits of rare insight ; and from this unseemly origin the whole system of religious thought has been developed.

Suggestions of this kind are numberless and unedif3dng. In the first place, the alleged facts are open to doubt. For a good while the anthropologists regarded some animistic or ghostly origin of religion as finally established ; but further and deeper acquaintance with the religious phenomena and beliefs of the lower races has seriously shaken this confidence. Relatively high and pure conceptions are found cropping out among uncivilized peoples, and often antedating their more earthly and sensuous aberrations. Popular anthropology has been very superficial and unsympathetic in its study of religious phenomena. A good deal of the work has been done under the influence of a speculative theory, or in the conviction that religion is a delusion or a disease. In the former case the facts have been selected that support the theory. In the latter, mechanical collections have been made of stories of religious and subreligious crudities and horrors ; and these have often been put forth as the true essence and original of religion. As Mr. Lang says, " Anthropology has mainly kept her eyes fixed on . . . the lusts, the mummeries, conjurings, and frauds of priesthoods, while relatively, or altogether, neglecting what is honest and of good report." ^ Such methods are not likely to lead to impartial investigation, or to any deep insight into the facts. These need a finer sympathy with humanity and a deeper sense of historical reality. The faith that finds a sufficient account of the great religious developments of the civilized nations in the dreams and

1 " Making of Religion," p. !^ /^$ fancies of savages is certainly beyond anything in Israel.

But however this may be, the historical problem is seen to be not so simple as has been supposed; and no single and compendious formula seems possible. Moreover, apart from any question as to the facts, our popular anthropological accounts of the source of religion generally suffer from a thoroughgoing ambiguity. It is not clear whether they are offered as explanations of religious phenomena, or only as descriptions of the order of their historical appearance, — two things widely different.

As explanations these accounts are failures. They are mainly an extension of the sensational philosophy into the realm of religion. As that philosophy seeks to reduce the rational factors of intellect to sensation, and ethical elements to non-ethical, so also it seeks to reduce the religious nature to something non-religious. But in all of these attempts it succeeds only by tacitly begging the question. If we take a mind whose full nature is expressed in a certain quality A, it will be forever impossible to develop anything but A out of it. Or if we assume a mind which by its nature is limited to a certain plane A, again it will be impossible to transcend the A with which we start. In order to move at all the A must be more than A ; it must have some implicit potentiality in it which is the real ground of the movement. Thus a being whose nature is exhausted in sense objects can never transcend them. Everything must be to him what it seems. The stick must be a stick, not a fetish. The sun and moon must be lighted disks, not gods. To get such a being beyond the sense object to a religious object we must endow him with more than the A of sensation, or the B of animal fear. The cattle have both ; but only some very hopeful evolutionists have discovered any traces of religion among them ; and if it should turn out that these traces are not misleading, it would not prove that simple sensations can become religious ideas, but that the animal mind is more and better than we have been accustomed to think.

When thought is clear, these accounts of the origin and source of religion can never be more than descriptions of the order of religious ideas in their temporal development. They simply recite the crude conceptions with which men began in religion and describe the long, slow process by which they passed from those raw beginnings to the more adequate conceptions of to-day. In such description all that the critic cares to insist on is that the facts shall have been as reported, and that no fashionable speculation or preconceived theory shall be allowed to improvise history. The fact in rehgion is the same as in science and social order. Men began with very crude notions, and by long experience and much reflection, and through a deal of error, only slowly found their way. The fact has equal theoretical significance in each case. There is no simple something, religion or science or government, of which the first forms were the essential reality, and which then developed themselves, yet in such a way as never to get beyond their primitive form. This notion, which underlies much of what the anthropologists have said about the origin of religion, is full-blown illusion. This fancy would make the essence of chemistry alchemy, or the essence of astronomy astrology, just as certainly as it makes the essence of religion animism. The concrete, historical fact in all these cases is men trying to find their way, and gradually exchanging low and inadequate conceptions for higher and more adequate ones, as life unfolds, and experience accumulates, and reflective thought deepens and clarifies itself.

There is nothing in such a development at which thought should take offense; least of all is there anything in it which degrades the later conceptions by identifying them in essence with earlier and cruder ones. This is the na'ive misunderstanding of a blind sensationalism which has lost itself in verbal identities. Wherever there is real development, the meaning of the earlier is revealed only in the later. The true nature and potentialities of the acorn are seen only in the oak. The true nature of mind is seen only in its mature manifestation. If we would see what the mind is in respect to its cognitive powers, we must study the highest unfoldings of thought. In like manner, if we would know what the mind is in respect to religion, we must study the highest religious manifestations of humanity. This, which is plain upon inspection, is overlooked by the popular anthropologist, who can see nothing in religion but fetishes, and totems, etc., to the total neglect of the great religious leaders and teachers of the race. This is as shortsighted as it would be to find a complete account of science in a collection of stories about the crude notions of the earliest men, while entirely ignoring the masters and marvels of a later day. Anthropology, we said, is open to criticism for its imperfect induction of facts ; it is equally open to criticism on account of its failure to master its own logic. The logic would bid us look to the future for the highest and truest expression of things ; but the speculator, under the influence of certain illusions of uncritical thought, gropes among the raw beginnings of things for their true and essential nature.

It may be, then, that early religious conceptions were molded by dreams, trances, and various mysterious phenomena ; but we must note two facts. First, these things are by no means the sum of religious phenomena; this sum includes the whole religious life of humanity. Secondly, we cannot get from these dreams, etc., to anything religious without positing a religious factor in human nature itself ; just as we cannot get from the fancies of childhood to the clearer thought of maturity without positing a rational nature of which the fancies were only the first manifestation, and not the final expression. A developing being can never be defined by its present ; account must also be taken of all which it is to become ; and these potentialities must be founded in the nature of the being.

Another view of the origin of religious ideas is that they are the product of reflective thought. This view is disproved by experience. Man was religious before he became a philosopher. Speculative thought has had the function of criticising and clarifying religious ideas, but never of originating them ; and often they have been much more confidently held without its aid than with it. On this account many h^ve viewed speculative thought in its religious efforts as a kind of inverted Jacob's ladder.

On the other hand, it has been suggested that religious ideas are innate. This could only mean that the human mind is such as to develop religious sentiments and ideas under the stimulus of our total experience. But experience shows such difference of religious thought that the contents of this religious intuition could hardly be more than a vague sense of an invisible and supernatural existence. Besides, the phrase, innate ideas, has so many misleading suggestions that we had better avoid it.

In the same line it has been held that the soul has a special organ or faculty for the reception of religious truth ', and the state of this faculty has even been made a ground for important theological distinctions. Sometimes it has been called faith, sometimes feeling, and sometimes the " God-consciousness." But psychology long ago discovered that nothing is explained by reference to a faculty, since the faculty itself is always and only an abstraction from the facts for whose explanation it is invoked or invented. The faculty that explains language is the language faculty ; the faculty that explains vision is the visual faculty. We do not get the language or the vision from the faculty, but we affirm the faculty because of the language or the vision ; and the affirmation at bottom consists in saying that we must be able to speak or see because we do speak or see. There is probably no question more utterly arid and barren than the search for the faculty from which religion springs. Fortunately, the question is fast becoming antiquated.

The conclusion as to the source of religion is this : no external action can develop into anything fn empty mind, which has no law, nature, or direction. This would be to act upon the void. Psychology also shows that nothing can be imported into the mind from without in any case. All external things and influences of whatever sort only furnish the occasion for a manifestation of the soul's own nature. Hence it is hopeless to look for the source of religious ideas in external experience alone. We must assume that religion is founded in human nature as one of its essential needs and constitutional tendencies. At the same time it must be said that the religious impulse or instinct alone is not self-sufficient and does not move unerringly to its goal. Unless under the guidance of intellect and conscience, religion may take on grotesque or terrible forms. It always reflects the stage of mental and moral development reached by the individual or the community, and varies with it. It is a function of the entire man.

The stimulus to religious unfolding is no simple or single thing, but is as manifold as life itself. Schleiermacher found it in the sense of dependence. This is without doubt a potent factor in awakening men to a sense of religious need. It is easy to conceive a worldly life so comfortable and undisturbed that nothing more would be desired. An ancient writer, speaking of persons living such a life, said, " Because they have no changes therefore they fear not God " ; and Mr. Lowell has spoken of persons ^^who have had the idea of God fattened out of them." But this is only one factor of many. The needs of the intellect, the demands and forebodings of conscience, the cravings of the afections, the impulses of the aesthetic nature, and the ideals of the will, — all enter into the problem, apart from words of revelation, or any direct influence of God on the soul.

History of Religion

So much on the origm of rehgion. Similar considerations apply to its history. It is referred to because there is a fancy that the truth of religion can be tested by studying its development, either in the individual or in the history of the race. But a little reflection shows that the psychological and temporal emergence of an idea is not to be confounded with its philosophical worth and validity. When the latter question is up, the former is quite irrelevant, unless it be shown that philosophical value is compatible with only one form of psychological genesis and history. This showing has never been made. Meanwhile the rational worth of religion can be determined only by considering its contents and the reasons which may be offered for it.

After this confusion of genesis and history with rational worth and validity has been warded off, no inquirer can have any interest in rejecting anything that sober investigation may reveal concerning the early forms of religious thought and practice. One's only interest is in having the history as it was, and not as some current speculation has decided it must have been. The attempt to stigmatize later conceptions because of the crudities of earlier ones is due to those verbal identifications into which untrained and superficial thought is sure to fall. The illusion vanishes when we remember that the objective fact is not lower ideas evolving higher ideas, but living men thinking and gradually adjusting and enlarging their ideas as experience broadens and thought grows clear.

RATIONAL BASIS OF RELIGION H

In one sense only does the history of religion have any bearing on the question of its truth. When we study the entire religious movement of humanity, noting not only the crude forms in which it began, but also the higher forms to which it grew, we may get a deeper sense of the universality and ineradicability of the religious element, and also a valuable hint of the direction in which its normal development lies. Such a historical fact would be a revelation of the nature of things, and would have the significance of any great cosmic manifestation and product. Such a fact would also be an argument. It would constitute a weighty presumption in favor of the objective truth of religion. To set it aside as sheer illusion would be an act of skeptical violence that would go far toward shattering reason itself.

Rational Basis op Religion

But our present concern is with neither the source nor the genesis and history of religion, but rather with its rational foundation, and more particularly with the rational foundation of the theistic idea, which is the central and basal element of religion. We set aside, therefore, all inquiry into the origin and development of religious ideas, and inquire rather whether they have any rational warrant, now that they are here. And we do this with all the more confidence because, on any theory of knowledge, our cognitive and critical insight is more trustworthy in its mature and developed forms, than in its crude and elementary stages. If experience be the source of knowledge, the longer and broader the experience, the more certain its indications. If evolution and natural selection are developing faculty and insight, then our present faculties must be more trustworthy than those of previous generations. As no one would think of trusting the insight of the child against that of the man, so no one should think of going back to the childhood of the race for a standard of truth. As Bacon said, we are the true ancients ; that is, we have the longest experience, and we have been longest exposed to the drill of natural selection whose sifting action is supposed to bring about the survival of the fittest, in thought as well as elsewhere. It is plain that we have to use such faculties as we have in any case ; and now it is clear in logic that we may confidently begin with our present faculties and attainments, and seek to determine their rational value, without much concerning ourselves as to what our earliest human or sub-hiunan ancestors may have thought on religious matters. They were badly astray on most things ; and there is no good reason for making them authorities in religion. By continual trial and rejection men have slowly emerged from primitive confusion and error respecting material things, and we ought not to be surprised to find the same order in spiritual things.

And as every one can see the absurdity of making / primitive scientific conceptions the standard of scientific truth, so we may hope that gradually we may attain to the insight that primitive religious conceptions have no better right to be the standard of religious truth. In both cases there is a human interest in knowing the history of the ideas, but their truth is to be determined in another way.