The human and its relation to the divine ...

Preface

When the Master, who was always teaching men about their relation to God, said to Kicodemus, " We speak that we do know," the words may have seemed an overstatement. K his auditor had imbibed the scepticism of the later academies which taught that there could be no conviction, — and this thoughtful teacher of the Jews probably knew of the current teaching that every sentence must be introduced with a perhaps, — he may have deemed the declaration naive, as many now view it.

A recent writer, whose book is a healthful combination of theology and common sense, has said of the analytic habit that, " While it tends to accuracy of reasoning, it too often seems to liquefy the mind and incapacitate it for retaining the impress of any conviction except that knowledge is difficult." 1

1 The Rev. P. H. Steenstra, D.D., in " The Being of God as Unity and Trinity." Boston, 1891, page 32.

4 PREFACE.

It is probable that every student of philosophy has felt something of this aptly termed liquefaction of mind, and has found the first effect of his reading to be a sense of uncertainty on all subjects. In some cases this doubt is permanent and causes one regretfully or disdainfully, as the case may be, to leave to the less enlightened the privilege of expressing themselves apodictically. Instructors in philosophy have some responsibility here, especially when they advise students to adopt that system of thought which promotes the easiest life, thus instilling at once agnosticism and epicureanism.

In the following pages I have endeavored to solve, by means within the reach of all, the problems which present themselves to him who seeks to know man and his relation to God, hoping thus to be of some use in resisting the tendency of studious minds to cast oft faith, and in leading them to build on firm foundations houses which shall be both sanctuaries and fortresses.

The word of God is frequently referred to, but undogmatically, and many writers are cited, as will sufficiently appear without giving a list of them. No quotations from Swedenborg have

PREFACE. 5

been made, because I have written in the spirit of his works without consulting them.

This little treatise would not be added to the number of those which already exist in this field of inquiry if one of them were known to cover the ground here gone over. I have made the chapters as brief as possible without leaving them obscure; if, however, the third be found wearisome, its concluding page will be sufficient for the rapid reader's purpose.

Cambridge, Mass.

1*

Introduction

PAGE

Philosophy variously denned ; its change of aim from time to time — "Wisdom and the word oo<j>ia, its origin from tasting, its first duty to ohey the oracle " Know thyself," why essential in knowledge — Purpose of the treatise 11

CHAPTEK I.

SELFHOOD.

Explanation of terms suus,privus, and proprius, their Greek equivalents — Ownership an instinct, grounds of its necessity — Development of the sense of selfhood 17

CHAPTEK II.

THE SELF NOT THE FLESH.

Socrates instructing Alcibiades, the doctrine of the ancients — The self mental and superior to the flesh ... 22

CHAPTEK III.

THE SELF OF CONSCIOUSNESS.

Consciousness defined and its testimony examined — Personal identity treated by Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Scholastics, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Wolflf, Locke, Butler, Keid, Hume, Berkeley, Tucker, Hamilton, Voltaire, Condillac, Edwards, Kant, Fichte, Herbart, Schelling, Hegel, Ancillon, Taylor, Cousin, Kos-

8 CONTENTS.

PAGE

mini, Hickok, Schopenhauer, Ulrici, Lotze, Ferrier, Mansel, J. S. Mill, Gatien-Arnoult, Spencer, Green, Bowen, Hedge, McCosh, Malone, Seth, Olssen, Knight, Momerie, and W. James— Criticism of all and summary view stated 27

CHAPTER IV.

MAN A RECIPIENT.

Meaning stated — Metempsychosis opposed, its position examined in views of Walker, Knight, Schopenhauer, Hume, Emerson, and Hedge, weakness of the theory — Other forms of life recipient, so with man the microcosm unless he be Divine — Testimony of experience — The proprium, each one's form of reception, more than the stream of thought — Each one given a place by this fact — Heredity — Necessity of a general plan of human service, ethical value of this altruistic doctrine contrasted with that of metempsychosis 100

CHAPTER V.

MAN REACTIVE.

Recipiency must be active or passive, passive with Buddhists, Quietism, Spinozism — Active view defended — Not original, but received activity — Illustrated from nature and the body, experience of the race and the individual — Newman's account of the received life . . . 125

CHAPTER VI.

MAN A FREE AGENT.

Freedom defined, determinism criticised in views of Spinoza, Edwards, Hume, Schopenhauer, Spencer, Bain — Affirmative view of "Wundt, its moral value with Kant 134

CONTENTS. 9

PAGE

CHAPTEE VII.

man's inheritance.

Not to be doubted, Kibot's statistics vindicated by reason — Calvinistic dogma of election destructive of freedom and confusing evil with sin — What is transmitted — Scientific rejection of freedom criticised, a true education leads to control of tbe inheritance 151

CHAPTEE VIII.

THE POWERS OF MAN.

How many primary powers, triple divisions of Hamilton and others criticised — Will and understanding treated, confirmation of bodily analogy, will as designer, intellect as guide, their conjunction in act — Downward rather than upward inflow of life, use as the law of right activity — Genesis of evil, Spencer's confusion of evil with good, purification of self from selfishness .... 163

CHAPTEE IX.

THE DIVINE.

Ancient perception of the Divine — Passage to polytheism, in ancient and in Christian history, the effect of degradation — Arguments for the existence of God examined, best of these arguments from man — No original God-consciousness, but the Divine inferable from man's recipiency, reactivity, and freedom — The creative Divine, infinite love, wisdom, and usefulness — The manifestation of God in the Christ the only perfect theistic argument — Spirit of the Christ, doubts considered, gross conceptions of His work criticised, the Divine personality as so shown, agnostic substitutes for Christian faith ex-

10 CONTENTS.

PAGE

amined — The revelation perfect in itself and in its dealing with evil — No limitation of God as so exhibited, Arnold criticised, avoidance of crude anthropomorphism 180

CHAPTEE X.

MAN IMMORTAL.

Not a fact of consciousness, man's knowledge of the Divine plan in his creation, misconceptions reviewed — Man as a spirit co-operative with God, ancient knowledge of immortality, the teaching of the Christ, later return to physical view — Causes of doubt — Inferences as to the future life, death and its effect, the spirit now immortally alive, highest possible aim so afforded 205

CHAPTEE XL

MAN IN CHRISTIANITY.

The self in the teaching of the Christ, its recipient reactivity and freedom, division of man's powers, the design of utility, evil in man, man as image of God, man as microcosm, advent of the Divine in man, immortality, relation of God, spirit, and matter, vital influence, miracles , 217

CHAPTEE XII.

THE KNOWABLB.

Need of rational views, criticism displacing dogmatism — Man may know spirit in himself, also the body and thus matter, also the Christ and thus the Divine — The last explained by friendship — God otherwise unknowable, example of Mozoomdar, mysticism once despised, rational mysticism beneficent — The three knowables in their vital relation a unit 254

INTRODUCTION.

Definitions of philosophy have varied in a marked and significant manner from the beginning to the present day. Men have been wont to define it as the quest of that which at any time they most desired. With Pythagoras it was the aim of those who sought neither glory nor gain, but to observe; with Plato it was a resembling of the Deity, so far as that is possible to man ; with Aristotle it was the science of being; with Bacon it was that part of human learning which referred to the reason; with Hobbes it was the knowledge of effects by their causes; with Leibnitz it was the science of sufficient reasons; with Adam Smith it dealt with the connecting principles of nature ; with Kant it treated of the relations of all knowledge to the necessary ends of human reason; with Fichte it had the absolute ego for its ground; with Schelling it was the science of the absolute; with Hamilton it was the study of facts, laws, and results ; with Hegel it was the thinking of

thinking.; with Morell it determined the fundamental certainty of human knowledge; with Lewes it was the explanation of phenomena; with Schwegler it was reflection; and with Ueberweg and Spencer philosophy is the science of principles.

All these definitions, and many more which might be gathered, for every philosophical writer has given one, are true, and in a sense equally true. They are true if accurately descriptive of the facts as historically represented, for these men were typical men, and their respective definitions of philosophy mark the objects of the best thought of their times. Their rational observations of that which most interested them, each at his own period, constituted their philosophemes.

If philosophy soared aloft towards the beginning and end of all things with Pythagoras, Socrates called it down from the heavens, as Cicero 1 tells us, gave it a place in cities, introduced it into men's homes, and forced it to make inquiry into life and morals. Anon it rose again; and so it has gone on, now dogmatic then sceptical, now transcendental then scientific, all the time an infallible indicator of the progress

1 Tusculan Disputations, Book V., 4.

of the race, a progress which is thereby shown to have been unsteady but intensely interesting, as it was always intensely earnest. There has been more passion in philosophy than its devotees have acknowledged.

Aristotle gave the most enduring definition, because most free from accidents of time and place, when he pointed out that wisdom {ao<pia, sapientia) was spoken of the greatest excellence in the arts, and also of those men who, not excelling in one art, were universally superior in intelligence ; " thus wisdom/' said he, " is the most limited and the most absolute of the sciences ; but, since man is the most noble of all creatures and wisdom relates to that wherein he excels the brutes, therefore wisdom pertains to that which is by nature most worthy of honor, which is intelligence ; wherefore we call Anaxagoras, Thales, and such men wise." 1

It would be a profitable study to trace through the languages the root from which is formed the second half of the word " philosophy," noting its kinship with the Greek <ra>^, which means " sure," " clear," as applied to knowledge, and

1 Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI., chap. vii. 2 with the Latin sapio, sapiens, which means first " to taste," and so to be a keen taster, to be quick in apprehension, to be well informed. The study would lead us to the Anglo-Saxon supan, the German saufen, and the English sip and sup. Apparently, as the child first learns by tasting, putting everything to its mouth, so man has used the word for tasting, of course made from the sound of the lips when taking liquid into the mouth, as the name for all knowledge, and supremely for that which answers the most fundamental questions which from time to time he has been able to frame ; for, as Olympiodorus has reported to us from Aristotle, " we must philosophize ; if we must, we must ; and if we must not, still we must." 1 The non-philosophizing man is brutish. The animal does not question, does not philosophize. It is significant that sipping has become philosophic and has so long been applied to the getting of wisdom. In Solomon's day a good taste made a wise man. The Proverbs said that as honeycomb is sweet to the taste, so is the knowledge of wisdom ; 2 and we read

1 Commentary on Plato's First Alcibiades, Creuzer's edition, p. 144. 2 Proverbs, xxiv. 13.

in the Psalms, " How sweet are thy words unto my taste." l

Philosophy, it would appear, must not lose itself in words, nor mystify the student rather than enlighten him, making him agnostic in a hopeless way ; it must impel him to seek for that which he needs to know in order to rise and to raise others, it must impel him to develop what is best in man, and thereby to make the most of the world, to seek a wisdom which shall be "in him a well of water springing up unto eternal life." 2

The beginning of such wisdom is evidently to heed the oracle, " Know thyself," which, Pliny says, was inscribed in letters of gold on the temple at Delphi by order of Chilo of Sparta, one of the seven sages. Unless some clear idea of What man is in his own essential self be formed, philosophy must wander in the darkness. All other knowledge, if the self be an enigma, is as futile as it is to rule all other things but one's own nature. Unless we know the self we cannot understand the relation which we bear to all else. This is therefore the beginning of philosophy. "The geometer has lines

1 Psalm cxix. 103. a John, iv. 14.

and figures," said Fichte, " the philosopher only himself." l

No point has been more difficult in philosophy, though none was more vital. Some have denied the possibility of knowing the self. " The words inscribed on the temple at Delphi have been oracular in vain," said Ferrier. 2 But this self, this " series of faint manifestations," as Spencer 3 calls it, must be studied, and can be studied if man be more than a brute. Cicero says that the oracle meant "Know thy soul." 4 We shall find out what it meant if we can find out the self. In attempting so to do, we may take encouragement from Thomas a Kempis : 6 " An humble knowledge of thyself is a surer way to God than a deep search after knowledge." And Professor Schurman 6 has lately wisely said, "It is from its notion of the self, the inevitable centre of everybody's world, that every system of philosophy takes its origin and tone."

1 Sonnenklarer Bericht, Lecture 4.

2 Institutes, Prop. vii. 4.

8 First Principles, 4th ed., p. 154. * Tusculan Disputations, I. 22. 6 Imitatione, Bk. I., ch. iii.

« Belief in God, p. 222.

THE HUMAN

AND ITS

RELATION TO THE DIVINE.

Chapter I. Selfhood

The distinction between what is one's own and what is another's, or between what is one's own and what is common property, is everywhere made. The Romans, by their words suus, privus, proprius, clearly indicated ownership and regard to self. It is common to regard privus as expressing the idea of one's own, not another's, which is to put privus in contrast with alienus, and to regard proprius as expressing what is one's own, and not common property, which is to put proprius in contrast with communis. Again, peculiaris may be contrasted with universalis, as expressive of one's own rights not shared by all.

Before the Romans the Greeks had the same b 2* 17 discernment in using oheToq and tdwq in contrast with drjfioffioq and xowdq respectively, and Idiot; was also contrasted with dUdrptoq.

It is impossible to think of the universe as having any sort of law in it without admitting the idea of ownership. Animals know their places of rest, their offspring, and their proper food. The ox knoweth his owner, and the sheep the voice of the shepherd. Were it not so, the beasts would not survive a single winter. Men, however rude, know and insist that others shall recognize their right to the fruits of their hunting and their handiwork. Without this sense of ownership they would be inferior to the brutes. Without this the sense of home could never arise. Without this there could be no sense of responsibility to serve others with what one possessed. Without this there would be no nations. The Greeks going to war with Troy because Menelaus had lost his own Helen illustrate the general sense of property. Amittit merito proprium, qui alienum appetit (" he deservedly loses his own who covets another's"), said Phsedrus, the fabulist, and no one has ever failed to understand him.

This recognition of what is one's own is more than the instinct which leads the dog in an Oriental city to defend the portion of narrow and filthy street which is his district, or which causes the bird to utter plaintive cries when her nest of little ones is threatened. With the animal it is irrational and lacks that full sense of the self which enables a man to define it and discuss it, — that is, to understand his own nature.

The infant is at first possessed only of sensations of pleasure and pain; when at peace he smiles or sleeps, when in pain he cries or writhes ; this is only an instinct with him ; but ere long he learns to distinguish between himself and others, to take an object in his hand and throw it from him, rejoicing in the sense of power, and so he comes to form some idea of the external world. The next step seems to be that of noting the connection between one act and another ; he shakes the rattle and obtains a sound, he cries out and brings the mother to his aid ; it is the sense of causality awaking within him. Finally he learns to distinguish self and self-interest, to make all serve his ends, to know himself as different from others, and to see that he has thoughts and pleasures of his own. As the self thus appears, full humanity is evolved. Before this he was as an animal, he is now an incipient man.

In the development of the race there were no men, properly so called, till consciousness of self arose; when this arose, there was man, and he stood upright, and had dominion over the other animals. As soon as self-consciousness appears, and not till then, there can be self-determination. " One whose action is self-determined is a person," said Mulford in " The Nation," quoting from TJlrici. 1 And Heinroth justly says, "Without consciousness this self would not be I. The brute is a self but no I. I was before I became an I." 2 Everything in nature acts according to laws, is the Kantian idea, man according to consciousness of laws. 3

Not yet to plunge into the great subject of consciousness, I only remark that the most general idea of the self which can be formed is up to this point sufficient. It has always been recognized since philosophy recorded itself, and it is essential to rational humanity. Men philosophize in the degree that they use their own privilege of gaining knowledge, and they cannot

philosophize till they recognize more than sensations of pleasure and pain, more than the externality of other beings and things, more than the causal connection between acts and events, and look upon their own individual natures, in every one a suum, a privum, a proprium. The question, "What is the self? becomes therefore the question, What is one's own solely, and, if he live forever, eternally his own ?

Chapter II. The Self Not The Flesh

One further distinction, which was an approach to the actual self, was made as the Greeks came gradually to see that a line was to be drawn between the man and his body. To the Ionic School the distinction seems to have been unknown. They were natural philosophers. To Thales all things, man included, seemed to arise from water and to return to it. To Anaximander came the somewhat higher view that all essences came forth from the " unlimited, eternal, and undetermined ground of all things," to which again they returned. Anaximenes, however, sought for a more definite principle, and found it in air.

Pythagoras and his disciples distinguished their school not only by a rigid moral discipline, but by conceiving of an internal harmony controlling all developments and establishing their proportions and relations by the law expressed by number. In accepting also the transmigration of the soul the Pythagoreans would seem to have distinguished soul from body, and we know that they did regard the body as a prison, but this idea was one which they had borrowed from the East, and it did not enter with them into the philosophical teaching for which they are famous.

"With the Eleatics there is a distinct recognition of being as separate from its manifestations. Xenophanes declared wisely that being must be one, and therefore he condemned the polytheism of his day. Parmenides went further, and maintained that the one must be fixed and that nothing subject to change could be of it; but he also, when treating of the phenomenal world, found fire, rather than water or air, to be the moving agent. Zeno, as if to reafiirm Parmenides , abiding One, developed with much skill the antinomies of magnitude and movement, in the effort to show that all finite things could be dialectically shown to be full of contradictions, and so unworthy to be regarded in comparison with the infinite and undetermined.

It is here that one is strongly moved to adopt in full the Hegelian idea that philosophy has passed through the same stages in the race as in the individual. It certainly did begin with mere consciousness and natural notions in the Ionics, and did advance to a recognition of being with the Eleatics. We now come certainly to the one who perfectly illustrates Hegel's next step, namely, of becoming (werderi). This is Heraclitus, with his doctrine of the eternal stream of life in opposition to the fixedness of Parmenides. In the union of greater and less, of centre-seeking and centre-fleeing, Heraclitus found unity form ing and reforming itself without end. The special agent of this movement was fire.

Not yet, however, had the distinction between flesh and spirit fully appeared, and certainly the Atomists did not make it, though they evolved being per se more fully, as Hegel points out. Empedocles, with his four elements, must be classed with the Ionics, while Anaxagoras, with his doctrine of the world-forming thought (yods), leads the way to the point which, later, the Sophists reached with their full recognition of the ego, joined in their case with contempt for the external world.

But Socrates, by the length of his demonstration to Alcibiades, implies that the distinction must in his day be taught before it would be acknowledged, —

S. " Do you not converse with me ?" A. "Yes." S. "And I with you?" A. "Yes." "It is Socrates who speaks?" "Yes." "And Alcibiades who listens?" "Yes." "Is it not with language that Socrates speaks?" "Yes." " He who uses a thing and the thing used, are not these different ?" " Yes." " Then, does not a man use his whole body ?" " Yes." " A man is therefore different from his body?" "Yes." " What then is the man ?" " I cannot say." " Does anything use the body but the mind ?" " Nothing." " The mind is therefore the man ?" "The mind alone." 1

This, condensed to one-half its length, was Socrates' lesson. And Plato had no other thought upon this point than his master's. So Aristotle said, " The mind is the man." 2 And Hierocles, the Neo-Platonist, revived Platonism in the words, " Thou art the soul, the body is thine." 3 " We are not bodies," said Cicero, in his first Tusculan Disputation, " nor am I, while saying these things to you, talking to your body." 4 " He who is seen is not the real man,"

1 Plato's First Alcibiades, 129. 2 Nic. Ethics, ix. 8.

3 Aurea Carmina, 26. * I. 22.

b 3 said Macrobius, "but he is the real man by whom that which is seen is ruled." 1 Sir "W. Hamilton concludes a series of such extracts by quoting from Arbuthnot's " Know Thyself," and a few of the lines must not be omitted :

" This frame compacted with transcendent skill, Of moving joints obedient to my will, Nursed from the fruitful glebe, like yonder tree, "Waxes and wastes ; I call it mine, not me. New matter still the mouldering mass sustains, The mansion changed, the tenant still remains ; And from the fleeting stream, repaired by food, Distinct, as is the swimmer from the flood."

This distinction between mind and body recognized, we are brought one step nearer to the actual self, because we are thereby directed to seek for it, not in any part of the body, but in that realm which lies above the bodily, which is not lessened when a part of the body is amputated, and which may and often does endure in strength while the body is going to decay. When we have admitted that it is mental, we have the self in full view.

1 In Somnium Scipionis, ii. 12.

Chapter III. The Self Of Consciousness

The self, which is not bodily and not cognizable by bodily sense, is revealed by that faculty which takes note of the mental operations, and which is well named consciousness. One not only knows and desires, but he knows that he knows and desires. He can contemplate his own mind and its varying states. This knowledge of knowledge is the consciousness. As Hamilton puts the truth, " Knowing that I know is consciousness." 1 And again he says, "Consciousness is to the philosopher what the Bible is to the theologian." 2 " It is like an internal light. It is the knowledge which the thinking subject has of the modifications of its being." 3

The question as to the actual self is therefore the question, What does the consciousness re-

1 Metaphysics, Lecture ix. p. 110.

veal ? This question was easily answered while men dealt with general views, but when they began to employ more and more subtile analyses, they came to differ and even to doubt. Consequently it seems to be necessary to trace the study of consciousness from the ancients down, proving it all and holding fast what is good.

The first doubt which was raised was as to the connection of conscious moments. At any instant one could say, " I am I, I know that I am I;" but could he say in the light of consciousness, " I am the I who was, I am the I who knew, who desired ?" This raised the question of personal identity and made the study of the self turn mainly upon this one point, so that a review must deal largely with this topic, before one can pass to consider others.

Aristotle makes it evident that this question of personal identity had invaded the Lyceum, for he said, " To be of opinion that a thing which is changed is not when it changes, possesses some truth, but is attended with ambiguity. For that which casts away possesses something of that which is cast away. Let it be granted that a thing does not abide according to quantity, yet we know that all things abide as to form.

To admit no essence takes away the necessary subsistence of a thing." x

Here the Stagirite contends that the change which is undergone is not a dissolution, which is not a change, but an extinction, and that in that which is permanent or which endures the change the identity is preserved. If there be nothing which endures, nothing exists except for the instant, and that which only momentarily exists has no subsistence. Every subsisting object, whether animate or inanimate, vindicates its selfidentity. Equally so man.

Plotinus seems to have regarded the query as to identity as already disposed of, for he serenely rhapsodizes in Neo-Platonist fashion : " Often when by an intellectual energy I am roused from the body and converted to myself, and being separated from externals, I retire into the depths of my essence, I then perceive an admirable beauty, and am then vehemently confident that I am of a more excellent condition than that of a life merely animal and terrene." 2

This merely repeats the saying put by Plato into the mouth of Socrates : " He who knows his

1 Metaphysics, iv. 5. 2 Descent of Soul, tome iv. 8. 3* body only, knows that which belongs to him, but does not know himself." 1

In sharp contrast with the rhetoric of Plotinus is the eager declaration of Augustine : " I know that I am myself, that this I know and love. I fear not Academic arguments which say, "What if you err ? KI err, I am. Mine error proves my being. Though I be one that may err, yet in that I know my being I err not." 2 It must be acknowledged, however, that Augustine did not meet all cavil by his passionate appeal to consciousness ; for if his knowledge were but that of the instant, it was not sufficient, and he was not so successful in his reply to the Academy as was Aristotle,

The Schoolmen, as skilfully reported to us by Harper, sought to be more thorough : " Personality is a substantial mode by which a complete intellectual substance is so individually completed in its own right that it is incommunicable to any other." 3 This is an illogical definition, for a " complete intellectual substance" begs the ques-

1 First Alcibiades.

2 City of God, Book XI. cb. xxvi.

3 Metaphysics of the School, Glossary, article Personality.

tion by giving to the simple notion " personality," an attribute " complete," which carries with it all that is to be claimed; and the same objection might be made to the word " individually." But the Schoolmen deserve credit for going somewhat deeply into the subject when they said, "We are supremely conscious that there is something within us which links the past, so far as memory reaches, to the present in such wise as to give us fullest assurance and certainty that each one of us, during the whole of that defined period, remains personally identical with his own self. This consciousness does not forsake us even in our dreams. We never dream that we are not ourselves. ... Consciousness testifies to the existence of a spiritual something which is permanent and which is the origin of thought, will, and imagination. ... I am aware of phenomena that are ever changing; of all these I am conscious ; yet I am equally conscious that the I remains the same through all modifications. The phenomena are not essential to my being, the I is." 1