Outlines of the philosophy of religion

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Introduction i

Chapter I. — The Proofs for the Existence of God . 8 II. — More precise Determinations of the Absolute 35

Introduction

§ 1. If religion were a normal product of the human reason alone, then philosophy would be the sole legitimate organ for determining and interpreting its content.

If, on the contrary, it sprung from revelation, then reason alone would not be able, it is true, to have discovered it ; but after it were in existence, it would still be necessary to show that its content is the adequate fulfilment for those religious needs which -our reason is compelled to cherish, but would not be able of itself to satisfy. Even in this case, therefore, philosophy would have a work to accomplish by way of such authenticating. The assertion that the content of religion is a 'mystery' is not convincing. There can be many facts of religion of such sort that the possibility of their coming to pass may not admit of rational apprehension ; and yet we should not without exception take offence at this. But a ' mystery,' the significance of which were not at least susceptible of definition, would be a mere curiosity devoid of all connection with our religious needs,

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION.

and, on this account, an unworthy object of revelation.

Finally, if religion were a morbid product of the human spirit, philosophy, even in that case, would find occupation. It would have to investigate psychologically and historically the conditions of the origin of this delusion, as well as the conditions of avoiding it in the future.

The principal object of the following reflections is connected with the first point of view above suggested : that is, we seek to ascertain how much of the content of religion may be discovered, proved, or at least confirmed, agreeably to reason. The two other points of view we subordinate to this.

§ 2. It is customary to demand faith in contrast with knowledge as the proper organ for the truths of religion. Such an assertion finds its most exact expression in the intimation that, in fact, even scientific cognition always rests ultimately upon ' faith ' ; that is to say, upon an immediate act of trust in certain absolutely simple and self-evident truths, which are neither in need of any proof, nor capable of it.

An important distinction is overlooked in the above-mentioned view. All such ultimate, self-

THE PROPOSITIONS OF FAITH.

evident propositions, upon which our knowledge is founded, are general judgments, which do not tell us that anything whatever is or takes place, but which only declare what would exist or would have to take place, in case definite conditions occur ; or — more concisely — they all merely express certain general rules, which we are obliged to follow in the combination of the content of our ideas. On the contrary, those propositions upon which the most special interest of religion depends, — for example, that God is, that He has created the world, that the soul survives death, etc., — are all of them declarative judgments, which assert a definite, particular fact. With respect to the before-mentioned general propositions, it may be understood that they are capable of being objects of our immediate insight or evidence ; for they are nothing but expressions of the forms of activity, in which our reason according to its own nature must be exercised. On the other hand, these declarative propositions of faith, which assert a fact with respect to the ordering of the world that is foreign to our own nature, cannot with equal legitimacy be iegarded as a natural or innate endowment of our spirit, but are in some sort the results of culture.

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION.

§ 3. It would be better to have undertaken a comparison of religious truth and scientific cognition different from the foregoing. No cognition consists merely of those general propositions of which we have made mention ; but every cognition originates by means of the application of these propositions to a content which only experience can furnish ; more concisely, it is an elaboration of given perceptions. Now it might be asserted that it is not the external world exclusively which furnishes these necessary data by influence on our senses. Rather is it quite as admissible to think of a divine or supersensible influence upon our interior being, by means of which ' intuitions ' of another species fall to our lot, such as the senses can never supply, and such as constitute just that religious cognition which obtrudes itself upon us with immediate certainty.

It is to be said in reply to the foregoing claim that, although the aforesaid divine influences are willingly conceded, still, according to the analogy of the ' sense-impressions ' which are brought into comparison with them, they can consist immediately in nothing but a certain mode of our affection, or of our experience, or of our feeling. Now, just as a sense-impression, — for example, a color or a tone, — is after all no ' cognition ' whatever ;

ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS TRUTH.

but such a cognition originates only by comparing one impression with others, and by noticing the relations which occur between them, just so would those supersensible impressions consist immediately in mere feelings, moods, or movements of our own mind; but they would still represent in this form no truth of religion. The rather would such a truth, as admits of being expressed in a definite communicable proposition, originate only through the agency of an elaboration in thought of those 'inner experiences' which go back to the 'grounds' of these states of the mind.

§ 4. The only remnant of any useful result from this opposition of science to faith is, therefore, the conviction that the whole of our knowledge certainly does not originate from external experience, which is mediated for us by the senses ; but that there are also inner states which are available as data for the acquisition of truth. The finishing of the structure of religion depends, not exclusively but chiefly, upon these latter data ; and of such inner states there may be distinguished three groups : —

(i) The personal feelings of fear, of absolute dependence on unknown powers, which belong to the most effective, but also to the most crude of the fundamental impulses that urge the mind to

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION.

seek consolation in a non -empirical view of the world.

(2) Then there are the much nobler and just as truly effective aesthetic feelings that yield themselves admiringly to the beautiful which they discover in the world, and by means of it are incited to form a picture of an ideal world. This they do without any egoistic interest in the consolation desired ; but rather with the sure conviction that what is so fair and full of significance cannot be an accidental product of that which is without significance, but must be either the very Principle of the world or closely related to its creative principle.

(3) Finally, there are the ethical feelings, which, without being deducible from ' mere experience,' necessitate the attempt to conceive of a construction of the world in which this fact of the moral obligation of the will to a definite form of action finds an intelligible and rational place.

If now we conceive of the truth of religion as developed from all these data by means of our reflection, then we certainly get at what might be designated as " Religion within the limits of mere reason," but still not at that which has been so called. For, in most attempts of this kind, the great and weighty influence of the aforesaid aes-

CAUSES OF BARREN RATIONALISM.

thetic elements is especially overlooked, and, thereby, a very barren rationalism takes the place of that which the whole reason, acting in all directions, would be able to produce.

Chapter I. The Proofs For The Existence Of God

§ 5. The different attempts of reason to attain to certainty concerning the Supersensible, by starting from all the above-mentioned points of departure, are too manifold for direct statement. As often, however, as science has undertaken to give an account of its profits, it has done this in a doctrine of the " Proofs for the existence of God." Accordingly we also now present these proofs with the design to show how each one of them adopts its own special method for discovering a portion of the supersensible truth ; and with the brief preliminary remark that these proofs naturally cannot, properly speaking, demonstrate the existence of God as necessary, — that is, as dependent on something else, — but that they are all able merely to demonstrate our assumption of this existence as a logically necessary consequence of the given facts of the world.

§ 6. The ontological argument, as ordinarily apprehended, maintains that, while the conception of other beings does not include their existence, the

THE MOST PERFECT BEING.

conception of the most perfect Being of all does include it ; and that this being would in fact contradict its own conception, if the one perfection — to wit, existence itself — did not belong to it.

The logical error of this argument is sufficiently well known. Not merely the conception of the most perfect Being, but indeed that of every living or active being (as, for example, the conception of an animal), includes existence also as necessary to be added in thought for defining it ; and without this all the rest of its predicates {e.g., sensation, motion, propagation, etc.) would be quite unthinkable. But with respect to no one of these conceptions, does it follow from the necessity of adding in thought this mark (of existence), that after this the total content of the conception thus fully thought has validity in the nature of reality also, and that it may not be a merely thinkable combination of our imagination.

But although logically this attempt at proof is quite invalid, it is nevertheless of interest in other respects. For that which induces it to regard existence as a necessary attribute of the total content of the conception of the most perfect Being, is not, as it is in the case of the other conception (that of the animal), the mere circumstance that the rest of the predicates would admit of formal attachment to what is existent only, and not to what is non-existent. This is obviously rather a case where an altogether immediate conviction breaks through into consciousness ; to wit, the conviction that the totality of all that has value — all that is perfect, fair, and good — cannot possibly be homeless in the world or in the realm of actuality, but has the very best claim to be regarded by us as imperishable reality. This assurance, which properly has no need of proof, has sought to formulate itself, after a scholastic fashion, in the above-mentioned awkward argument.

§ 7. The cosmological argument begins in an apprehension of frequent occurrence, yet withal wholly incorrect ; namely, that the existence of each individual Thing and of the world in general is contingent, and therefore presupposes not a contingent but a necessary Being. At this point, the particular conceptions which are wrongly attached to this thought, must be first subjected to a definition.

The ordinary use of language is not at all acquainted with the philosophic significance of the word ' contingent,' according to which it is applicable to every existing thing whose non-existence in general would be thinkable without contradiction, and whose conception or whose nature accordingly offers

IDEA OF THE ' CONTINGENT. I I

no resistance to the cessation of its own existence. Rather does the common usage in the first instance merely contrast the 'contingent' with the designed, and understands by it all those secondary effects which, without being themselves designed, originate from action of ours that is designed. This happens because our actions themselves are for the most part capable of accomplishment only by means of some change in the objects of the external world ; these objects, however, because of those relations independent of ourselves in which they stand to each other, cannot be changed by us without propagating still further in various directions the impressions they have received.

We speak, furthermore, of ' contingent ' events, when we have directed our attention to a general law of nature and when, in its application to a single case, processes occur which do not follow from the law and from the circumstances necessary for its application, but only from the accessory circumstances that are foreign to the law. Even such a 'contingent,' as well as the preceding, is, wherever it occurs, necessary and inevitable, and is constantly conditioned by its own adequate reasons ; only these reasons do not reside in the design nor in the law.

Finally, we also call such facts 'contingent' as are assumed by us not to be predestinated in such a plan of the world's course as we have rightly or wrongly presupposed, but only to originate incidentally through the mechanism of those efficient agencies which are summoned for the accomplishment of that plan.

And with the one just mentioned is connected the still broader use of the word, according to which it becomes a mere determination of value, and designates that whose nature and content seem to deserve existence neither on account of its own value nor by connection with other values ; although it, nevertheless, is in possession of such existence. In this sense, the ' contingent ' is simply the matter of fact, whose being does not permit either of derivation from an effectuating condition, or of justification by its own value.

§ 8. The other conception, namely, that of the 'necessary,' is, in the only meaning of it which is quite clear to us, completely identical with that of the ' conditioned.' That only 'is' necessary, the actuality of which cannot be conceived of as lacking, whenever a definite presupposed condition actually takes place.

But it is very easy to understand whence comes the wish to place in opposition to this " condi-

IDEA OF THE 'NECESSARY. 1 3

tioned necessary " another of a higher sort. For a given c, which must of course exist in case a determinate b exists, is ' necessary ' only in the sense of its being forced. By means of its own nature merely, and without the aid of b, this c would not exist. The ' necessary ' in that higher sense which is sought, would therefore be such an one as is not dependent on anything else for its existence, and consequently is not conditioned.

But it is entirely incorrect to persist in designating such an unconditioned as is sought for, by the predicate 'necessary.' It must rather be called the absolute matter of fact, which exists for the reason merely that it does exist ; which does not need for its existence any extraneous condition ; but which, for precisely this reason, can only be an actual and never a necessary existence.

§ 9. According to the analysis made above, the thoughts of the cosmological argument do not cohere well. From the so-called 'contingent,' — i.e. from that which is conditioned by something else external to it, and in just this respect must be called likewise necessary, — it is certainly possible to ascend to the Unconditioned, whose existence is dependent on nothing else ; but for this very reason such an unconditioned is not 'necessary,'

but merely matter of fact or actual. The desire to find something, which by means of its own nature, made its own existence necessary, is intrinsically beyond the possibility of realization, — as we saw it to be in the case of the ontological argument ; and to this cause was due also the failure of the thought that the Unconditioned which is sought is to be found in a most perfect Being. To that merely actual (not necessary) unconditioned existence, the smallest, meanest, and most insignificant thing has just as good a claim as the most perfect ; and that precisely for the reason that it is an unconditioned existence, and therefore is dependent on no reasons of any kind.

In another direction also the cosmological argument goes farther than its premises permit. It was legitimate to seek an Unconditioned for the Conditioned in the world ; but it is an altogether arbitrary leap to assume that this Unconditioned must be One ; and, furthermore, that it can be conceived of only in the form of a single real Being. It is possible that this assumption may be justified subsequently; but just at this point the other assumption, to which the natural sciences have come through their need of interpreting the world, obviously lies much nearer at hand. We refer to the assumption of a very great multiplicity of uncon-

A SINGLE UNCONDITIONED BEING. 1 5

ditionally existing elements, which are independent of each other, and are only subject to a general sphere of laws in accordance with which the manifold phenomena proceed from their changeable positions with respect to each other.

One more consideration of a logical character must first qualify this view. It is that we get no insight as to how a single unconditioned being, even though it were in existence, would be able to condition anything else, and therefore serve as the desired initial member in the conditioned series of the world's events. A conclusion or a consequence never follows except from the concurrence of two premises, and not from one premise alone. To the one unconditioned Being, therefore, if aught is to result from it, there would always have to be added again other accessory circumstances, which do not emanate from it, but which are just as much unconditioned : the world therefore would not be dependent upon one, but upon many unconditioned begin nings.

§ 10. The teleological argument proposes to make that empirical conformity to an end, which appears in the world, the point of departure for an inference with respect to a single designing and creative reason, as the supreme cause of the world.

l6 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION.

Let us in the first place investigate the conception of that which is ' conformable to an end,' as such. This conception is entirely free from ambiguity only when we take our start from the conscious purposes of our own will, which are fixed upon a determinate result as their end. In that case, what is ' conformable to an end ' is the selection or combination of means, which, by their legitimate action, bring about the realization of the aforesaid end. To call those means themselves ' conformable to an end ' is, properly speaking, not correct. They are themselves merely serviceable : that is to say, their nature is in itself calculated for no determinate end whatever, such as we might set for ourselves ; but it is merely of such sort that a useful application of it to our ends becomes possible for us.

Now that this ' serviceableness ' or ' accidental conformity ' of things in the world to an end, is of very frequent occurrence, proves nothing further. For when once there exist Things with properties of their own and with established methods of action, it is a matter of course that some of our designs (which themselves, in the last analysis, always amount to the same as some alteration in the states of Things) may be accomplished by means of the activity to which other Things lay

IMMANENT CONFORMITY TO END. \J

claim. More than this, however, does not in reality take place. The nature of Things is not so eminently useful, that it would be sufficient for the accomplishment even of all authorized designs ; and it is not so absolutely useful that it might not serve just as well for the frustration of that which is rational, and for the production of that which is unauthorized.

§ 11. In contrast with the aforesaid utility, an "immanent conformity to an end" is spoken of, which appears primarily in the individual organisms that have no other end beyond their own existence, but in each one of which all parts are reciprocally related as end and means. Such conformity to an end is then transferred from these individual organisms to the Universe, as to a "great organism."

Now we are accustomed to assert that these composite forms cannot possibly be mere products of the blind co-operation of many elements, without the unity of one controlling design. Such a conclusion is decidedly false. Even supposing a conscious design to be demonstrably at work, still the realization of its end is always dependent on the fact, that every particle of this end is likewise the inevitable and undesignedly necessary product of the co-operation of the means summoned to aid. The end would not be possible at all if it were impossible in accordance with the laws of the mechanism which these means follow ; and it would not be actual, if it were not also necessary in accordance with these laws, at the very instant when the aforesaid means are applied.

But still further : It is supposed that at least the bringing together of the means themselves, into those positions in which they are of necessity compelled to realize the end, is impossible without a controlling design. But again it may be answered : Even where this design actually exists, it is unable to bring the usable means into those useful positions by its own mere volition ; on the contrary, it is able to accomplish this only by summoning physical agencies and forces of a sort similar to the means themselves. Therefore the state attained at any given instant, when the end is accomplished, must be regarded as the necessary resultant of the co-operation of these forces at the preceding instant ; and instead of an intelligence which might explain the state of the case belonging to this preceding instant, there may always be substituted a combination of other blind elements and forces which were compelled to have precisely the same result.

IMMANENT CONFORMITY TO END.

To state the same thing briefly : The completely automatic blind origin even of the system most conformable to an end, is never impossible ; it is only improbable. And now the question comes, what is meant by this latter expression ?

§ 12. If we take for granted, that an indefinite multitude of different elements act upon one another entirely in accordance with mechanical laws, and that they were aboriginally in reciprocal motions which were not regulated by any design, then there might issue from such conditions innumerable possible consequences. The forms possessed of an immanent conformity to an end would represent only a very insignificant number among these possible consequences ; and therefore they would have very little probability of coming into existence. But to reason back from this to a design proposing an end, would be valid only in case the forms conformable to the end alone appeared in the world ; and in case those other results that are without an end, or in contradiction to an end, were neither present in experience, nor needed to be assumed even as having existed in the past.

Neither of the above-mentioned suppositions corresponds with the facts. In our actual observation there occur innumerable cases of disease and of the failure of rational life-ends; — to say nothing whatever of the very many facts and occurrences which, so far as our discernment extends, are at least without an end, even if they disturb no other end. But with reference to the past we are at liberty to assume, that at first an innumerable multitude of inharmonious forms, intrinsically hostile to any end, actually emerged from the reciprocal impact of blind elements ; that these forms, however, were not able to maintain themselves in the course of nature, as against the constant assaults from without ; that, on the contrary, only those few held out, which had chanced to be the more fortunate ; that then these fortunate ones exerted more and more a determining influence upon the rest ; and that thus gradually it has come to pass, that nature runs its course, not indeed in complete perfection and conformity to an end, but after all to such an extent that there still remain but few disturbances or interferences by which the development and perpetuation of the structures that are conformable to an end, is endangered. In this way, therefore, it would not be unthinkable that an original chaos gradually shaped itself into a nature' that is arranged in conformity to ends.

INTELLIGENT ELEMENTS OF REALITY. 21

§ 13. Moreover, it is not necessary to stop with the altogether meagre assumptions which we have made. If it is once held to be conceivable that a single supreme intelligence may exert an influence upon the reciprocal relations of the elements of the world, then similar intelligence may also be imagined as immediately active in all these individual elements themselves ; and, instead of conceiving them as controlled merely by blindly operative forces, they may be imagined as animated spiritual beings, who strive after certain states and offer resistance to certain other states. In such case there may be imagined the gradual origin of ever more perfect relations, from the reciprocal action of these elements, almost like the reciprocal action of a human society ; and that too without necessarily arriving at the assumption, to which we are here inclined, of a single, supreme, intelligent Being. Our reasoning issues rather in a sort of polytheistic or even pantheistic conception, and that too in quite tolerable agreement with experience.

§ 14. Against what was said above it may still be objected, that the persistence, the power of self-maintenance, and the equipoise of the more fortunate forms, which we previously admitted to have originated in the blind course of nature, are not identical with that conformity to an end, the admiration for which was our point of departure in the teleological argument. The aforesaid mere equipoise, and the permanence that originates from it, might also belong of themselves to altogether purposeless forms ; that is to say, to forms whose entire existence would have absolutely no immediate value and no rational significance. Both these characteristics however we suppose we recognize in those structures conformable to an end, which we are here making our point of departure.

There is a remainder of truth in the above-mentioned view; but the thought does not prove what it was assumed to prove. To wit, so soon as we confine ourselves simply to admiration for an immanent conformity to an end, we are in fact scarcely ever able to demonstrate conclusively that the total result which is produced by it is actually anything of absolute value ; — a value which would have to be apprehended either as being generically its own end, or as being such an end as to admit of our understanding that it could have been devised only by a designing wisdom, and that it only, rather than one of its opposites, was worthy of this wisdom.

We admire, for example, the stability of the planetary system ; we believe that only a Providence has been able to choose from among the innumer-

MEANS AND END IN ORGANISM. 23

able possible arrangements of its masses, precisely that one on which this stability depends. But it may be questioned whether after all this constant repetition of the same occurrences is, as a matter of course, a supreme end ; and whether it may not rather be a tedious arrangement ; so much so that there might conceivably have been innumerable arrangements, that never occur in the actual world, which the one succession of different developments of the heavenly bodies might have established, — something much more manifold, novel, and interesting. In plants, after they once exist, everything harmonizes as means and end. But what is the value of their entire existence ? Ends external to themselves, which they serve, are accomplished by them ; but they might possibly have been accomplished by a shorter method. Their own growth and bloom is in the estimate of our understanding an entirely purposeless fact, in which nothing further actually appears than that equipoise which the ' mechanical course of nature is capable of producing, and from which the conformity to an end here assumed should be quite essentially distinguished.

The above-mentioned consideration may be extended to the world of animals and men : so long as there are still among the latter so many complaints about unrealizable ideals, the thought that much of the beauty we conceive has no existence will continue to nullify the conclusiveness of the teleological argument.

§ 15. If we summarize our thoughts, there remains but one point of a positive character, and this is the conviction that there is in the world at all events a great deal of that which is beautiful and great and excellent, — admiration for which was the point of departure for this teleological argument ; and that it is by no means possible to get rid of this argument by deducing all its examples from the undesigned reciprocal actions of innumerable elements, working in accordance with law. By such deduction we merely change the location of that which has value. We are necessitated then to assert of just that aforesaid original nature of the elements, and of their general laws of action, that they themselves from the very first include within themselves the ground capable of developing that which has value.

But the course of thought given above has utterly failed as an argument for the existence of God. That Intelligence, of which we cannot be wholly rid, admits just as well of being apprehended as a property adhering imraanently to all Things ; or even, if one is pleased to seek it outside of Things,