And our insight appeals not only to our general religious needs. It comes with its truth home to the individual man. It demands that we consider what our individual life is really worth when it is lived in the presence of this Infinite Judge. O man, what is this thy daily life! Thou livest for the applause or in fear of the blame of thy neighbors. An unkind word cuts thee to the quick. A little public favor, or the approving word of a friend, is worth half thy soul to thee. And all the while thou knowest not that One infinitely greater than multitudes of neigh¬ bors is here, not above thee only, nor afar in the heavens, but pervading thy every thought. And that all-pervading Thought judges thee as these neigh¬ bors never can. Myriads of their blunders about thee are as nothing to an atom of this infinite Truth. That rain-drop yonder in the sunshine is not more filled with the light, than are all the most hidden re¬ cesses of thy heart filled with that Infinite Presence. No one of us is more famous than his neighbor; for no one is known save by God, and to him all alike are known. To be sure, to know this is the same as understanding rightly, that thou art in truth* what thou art. All truth is truth because it is known by a conscious Thought: therefore whatsoever thou art, whether it is consciously or unconsciously existent in thee, is known to the all-seeing Universal Conscious¬ ness. But commonplace as this seems to the philos¬ opher, is it not more than a mere commonplace to thee, if thou lovest genuine righteousness? For is it not something to feel that thy life is, all of it, in God and for God? No one else knows thee. Alone thou wanderest in a dead world, save for this Pres¬ ence. These other men, how can they know thee? They love thee or scorn thee or hate thee, but none of them love or scorn or hate thee for what thou art. Whatever they hold of thee, it is an accident. If they knew more of thee, doubtless they would think otherwise of thee. Do they love thee? Then they know thee not well enough, nor do they see thy meanness and thy vileness, thy selfishness and thy jealousy and thy malice. If they saw these, surely they would hate thee. But do they hate thee? Then thou callest them unjust. Doubtless they are so. Some chance word of thine, a careless look or gesture, an accident of fortune, a trifling fault, these they have remembered; and therefore do they hate thee. If they knew better things of thee, perhaps they would love thee.
Thus contradictory is thy life with them. And yet thou must labor that the good may triumph near thee by thy effort. Now in all this work who shall be thy true friend? Whose approval shall encour¬ age thee? Thy neighbor’s? Nay, but it is thy duty always to suspect thy neighbor’s opinion of thee. He is a corrupt judge, or at best an ignorant judge.
He sees not thy heart. He is a respecter of persons. He is too often a bundle of whims. If he also pro¬ fesses to be trying to serve righteousness, it is thy duty to have ready faith in his good intent, if that be possible for thee; but by all means doubt his wisdom about thee, and thine about him. If he praises thee for thy righteousness, listen not willingly to his praise. It will deceive thee. He will most praise thee when thou inwardly art not righteous. If he blames thee for evil, let it warn thee; for if he is not right now, he doubtless soon will be. But take it not too much to heart. He is ignorant of thee. He talks of thee as he might talk of the other side of the moon, unless indeed he talks of thee just as man in general, and not as to thy particular acts. Trust him not in all these things. Realize his needs as thou canst, strive to aid him in being righteous, use him as an instrument for the extension of good¬ ness; but trust not his judgment of thee. Who then is, as the true judge of thy worth, thy only per¬ fect friend?
The Divine Thought. There is the opinion of thee to which thou canst look up. To be sure it is revealed to thee only in thy consciousness of what righteousness is and of what truth is. Nowhere else hast thou a guide that can do more for thee than to help to quicken thy insight. But, then, thy relig¬ ious comfort is to be, not that the moral law is thun¬ dered down from mountain - tops as if some vast town-crier were talking, but that when thou seekest to do right, the Infinite all-seeing One knoy^s and approves thee. If thou lovest righteousness for its own sake, then this will comfort thee. If not, if thou seekest sugar-plums, seek them not in the homo of the Infinite. Go among thy fellow-men and be a successful hypocrite and charlatan, and thou shalt have gaping and wonderment and sugar - plums enough.
Herein then lies the invitation of the Infinite to us, that it is, and that it knows us. No deeper sanetion is there for true righteousness than this knowl¬ edge that one is serving the Eternal. Yet when we say all this, are we simply doing that which we spoke of in the opening chapter of this work? Are we but offering snow to appease the religioua hunger? Is this doctrine too cold, too abstract, too far-off? Cold and abstract and far-off is indeed the proof of it. But that was philosophy. That was not the re¬ ligious aspect of our doctrine, but only the prepara¬ tion for showing the religious aspect of philosophy. Is the doctrine itself, however, once gained, so re¬ mote from the natural religious emotion? What does a man want when he looks to the world for re¬ ligious support? Does he want such applause as blind crowds give men, such flattery as designing people shower upon them, such sympathy as even the cherished but prejudiced love of one’s nearest friends pours out for him? Nay, if he seeks merely this, is he quite unselfishly righteous? Can he not get all that if he wants it, wholly apart from religion? And if he looks for reward, can he not get that also otherwise? But what his true devotion to the moral law ardently desires is not to be alone. Approval for what really deserves approval he needs, approval from one who truly knows hiqa. Well, our doctrine says that he gets it. Just as deep, as full, as rich, as true approval as expresses the full worth of his act, — this he has for all eternity from the Infinite. To feed upon that truth is to eat something better than snow, but as pure as the driven snow. To love that truth is to love God.
We spoke in the former book of the boundless magnitude of human life as it impresses itself upon one who first gains the moral insight. To many this first devotion to human life seems itself enough for a religion. But then one goes beyond this point, and says that human life has, after all, very much that is base and petty in it. Here is not the ideal. “ Would that there were a higher life! To that we would devote ourselves. We will serve humanity, but how can we worship it? ” Such is the thought of many an ardent soul that seeks no personal re¬ wards in serving the good, but that does seek some great Reality that shall surely be worthy of service. To such, our religious insight points out this higher reality. You that have been willing to devote your¬ selves to humanity, here is a Life greater in infinite degree than humanity. And now is it not a help to know that truly to serve humanity is just the same as to serve this Infinite? For whatever had seemed disheartening in the baseness and weakness of man loses its discouraging darkness now that all is trans¬ figured in this Infinite light.
Let us then be encouraged in our work by this great Truth. But let us not spend too much time in merely contemplating this Truth. We, whose lives are to be lived in toil, — it is not good that we should brood over even an infinite Thought. For in our finite minds it will soon become petty, unless we realize it chiefly through our acts. Let us then go about our business. For every man has business and desire, such as they are.
As we turn away then for the time from our con¬ templation, we have one last word yet as to these practical consequences of our view. If the reader follows us at all in our argument, we want him also to follow us into the practical application of it to life. To work for the extension of the moral insight is, we have said, the chief present duty of man in so¬ ciety. All else is preparation for this work, or else is an anticipation of the higher stage when, if we ever grow up to that level, we shall have our further work to do in the light of the insight itself. But this chief present work of ours, this extension of the moral insight, is best furthered by devotion to our individual vocations, coupled with strict loyalty to the relations upon which society is founded. The work thus set before us demands the sacrifice of many ideal emotional experiences to the service of the Highest. Our comfort however in it all must be that the Highest is there above us, forget it as we may. If the reader accepts all this, then with us he has the assurance that, whatever becomes of the old creeds in the present religious crisis, the founda¬ tions of genuinely religious faith are sure.
Whenever we must pause again in our work for religious support, and whenever we are worn out with the jargon of the schools, we can rest once more for a time in this contemplation of the Eternal Truth. Ilic breve plangitur. But not so is it in God’s life. Our problems may be hard, but there all is solved. Our lives may be poor and contempt¬ ible, but there all is wealth and fullness of worth. Our efforts may often prove vain, but there naught exists that is vanity. For the imperfection of the finite is but the fragment of the Infinite Whole where there is no true imperfection. Is it not a Re¬ ligion to feel this? And we shall then turn from such a contemplation once again as we do now, to look with fresher courage at this boundless, tossing sea of human life about us. This is not itself the Divine, but over it all God’s winds are blowing. And to our eyes it is boundless. Let us go down into this great sea and toil, fearing no storm, but seeking to find there treasures that shall be copies, however faint, of that which is Eternal.
Yet some reader, to whom, as to the author, phil¬ osophic questions are directly matters of vocation, may possibly linger. To him are due one or two statements more, to set at rest certain of his doubts about our meaning. Perhaps he will ask the very natural, yet, after all, not very fruitful, question, “ Is the foregoing theory of things Theism or Pan¬ theism? Has it been your purpose to defend the essential portions of the older Theistic doctrines, or to alter them in favor of some newer faith? ” This question expresses a difficulty that some plain people must feel when they read, not merely this book, but also many recent discussions. There are writers who have undertaken to defend Theism, and who have ac¬ tually in all sincerity argued for the necessity of the Universal Thought. The plain people have reason to suspect such of trying to substitute for the “ God of our Fathers” something else, to be called by the same name, and so to be passed off for the same thing. We therefore answer very plainly that we desire to do nothing of the sort. If in the foregoing we have on occasion used the word God, no reader is obliged to suppose that our idea agrees with his idea, for we have fully explained what our idea means. We repeat: As my thought at any time, and however engaged, combines several fragmentary thoughts into the unity of onfe conscious moment, so, we affirm, does the Universal Thought combine the thoughts of all of us into an absolute unity of thought, together with all the objects and all the thoughts about these objects that are, or have been, or will be, or can be, in the Universe. This Uni¬ versal Thought is what we have ventured, for the sake of convenience, to call God. It is not the God of very much of the traditional theology. It is the God of the idealistic tradition from Plato down¬ wards. Our proof for it is wholly different from those baseless figments of the apologetic books, the design - argument, and the general argument from causality. Since Kant, those arguments must be abandoned by all critical philosophers, and we have indicated something of their weakness. They have been aptly compared to mediaeval artillery on a modern battle-field. We accept the comparison. Kant gave to modern philosophy new instruments, and these it is our duty to apply as we can to the old questions that the whole history of thought has been trying to understand. Our special proof for the existence of an Universal Thought has been based, in the foregoing, upon an analysis of the na¬ ture of truth and error as necessary conceptions. W e do not regard the Universal Thought as in any com¬ monly recognized sense a Creator. A creator would be finite, and his existence would have to be learned from experience. The Universal Thought is infinite, and its existence is proved independently of experi¬ ence. kor the rest, we have insisted that expedience furnishes no evidence of single creative powers that are at once unlimited and good. We have however shown how all the Powers that be exist as necessary facts in the Infinite Thought, and how, apart from this thought, nothing is that is. Such is our concep¬ tion. It is no new one in philosophy. W e have tried with no small labor, and after tedious doubting, to make it our own. We have independently given our own reasons for it. And we have asserted that here is an object of infinite religious worth.
And now we must add that we are quite indiffer¬ ent whether anybody calls all this Theism or Pan¬ theism. It differs from the commoner traditional forms of both. Both usually consider God as a Power, and either leave him off on one side to push things occasionally, or to set them going at the out¬ set, or else identify him with his products. The for¬ mer way of conceiving God is never more than halfphilosophic. The latter way is apt to degenerate into wholly poetical rhapsodies. We take neither of these ways. For us Causation is a very subordi¬ nate idea in philosophy. It expresses only one form of the rational unity of things, and that an imper¬ fect form. The world of the Powers is not yet an universe. Thought must be truer than Power, com¬ prehending all the Powers, and much more besides, in its infinite unity. God as Power would be noth¬ ing, or finite. God as Thought can be and is all in all. And if this is philosophy, traditional Theism can do what it wishes to do about the matter.
In short, the present doctrine is the doctrine that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. So far, said St.
\ Augustine, Plato liad gone. So far we have gone. Beyond that, said St. Augustine, the truth was not revealed to human wisdom, but only to humble faith. Beyond that, with the rational consequences that we have been able to draw from it in the foregoing, we are frankly agnostic. If any man knows more about the Powers in the world than science has found out by patient examination of the facts, let him rejoice in his knowledge. W e are not in possession of such knowledge. We believe in the Conservation of the physical forces, in the Law of Evolution as it is at present and for a limited past time found to express the facts of nature, and in the fact of the Dissipation of Energy. All this we believe as the scientifically probable view, and we do so on the authority of cer¬ tain students of physical science, who, having exam¬ ined the facts, seem to agree upon so much as capa¬ ble of popular exposition. We believe in such other results of science as are known to us. But beyond this nothing as to the Powers in the world is clear to us. We know nothing about individual immortal¬ ity, nothing about any endless future progress of our species, nothing about the certainty that what men call from without goodness must empirically triumph just here in this little world about us. All that is dark. We know only that the highest Truth is al¬ ready attained from all eternity in the Infinite Thought, and that in and for that Thought the vic¬ tory that overcometh the world is once for all won.
Whatever happens to our poor selves, we know that the Whole is perfect. And this knowledge gives us peace. W e know that our moral Vindicator liveth, and that in his sight all the good that we do is not labor lost.
Yet the purpose of these chapters is not to give at any point a mere negation, even when we speak of the traditional theology. We do not want to ex¬ aggerate our quarrel with anybody. If thinkers who accept some traditional form of theology find truth or help in our doctrine, we shall be glad. After all, the religious interest wants, not so much this or that view about some man’s special creed, but a foundation for the faith that somehow righteousness is in deepest truth triumphant in the world. If there is no proof, then, as we said in Chapter IX., we must resort to the Postulates. If we can get proof, so much the better.
Thus, however, we have suggested to ourselves an¬ other question. These Postulates of Chapter IX., what has become of them now? Are they wholly lost in our insight? No indeed. They remain just what they were, rational forms of our activity, not perfect in their rationality, but constantly valuable to us in our work. The scientific postulates are not superseded, but rather only strengthened, by the insight into the ultimate rationality of things. They become now the assurance that there must be a ra¬ tional solution to every scientific problem, and that the simplest solution, being the most rational, is the most probable, in case it is actually adequate to all the facts. Just as before, it remains true of us finite beings that our finite external world is at each instant the product of our activity, working with the postulates, upon the material of our sensations. And that activity remains as before the proper object of a moral judgment. Only now we see that the highest form of our activity is likely to be the one most con¬ forming to the truth. What remains true of the scientific postulates, remains true of the religious postulates. They are not superseded. For what they can still do for us is to insist that our idea of the In finite shall not remain a cold, barren abstraction, but that we shall appeal to our experience for evi¬ dence of what is truly highest and best, and that we shall then say: “ The highest conceptions that I get from experience of what goodness and beauty are, the noblest life that I can imagine, the completest blessedness that I can think of, all these things are but faint suggestions of a truth that is infinitely re¬ alized in the Divine, that knows all truth. What¬ ever perfection there is suggested in these things, that He must fully know and experience.” There¬ fore the religious postulates can accompany us every¬ where, making all our experience appear to us as an ever-fresh lesson concerning the mind of God.
The postulates, then, we retain, with the insight. We abandon, however, the use of these postulates to demonstrate further special articles of faith as to supernatural powers or events of any sort. We know of no miracle save the Infinite himself. And so we have no interest in many of the forms of pop¬ ular idealism. To prove that this world is the home of a Spiritual Life, many good people have been and are concerned to prove that certain phenomena which we see about us are in and of themselves direct evi¬ dences of the spiritual nature of things. To such persons a Spirit that is not constantly producing noteworthy effects, and so getting himself into the newspapers, would seem unreal. Therefore, to such persons Religious Idealism depends for its life and warmth upon the vividness and the impressiveness of these phenomenal indications of the action of the great Spirit. Such persons, if they have given up traditional superstitions, still find their delight in dwelling on the mystery of “ vital force,” on the oc¬ currence of all sorts of wonderful things, on the the¬ ories of occult powers, or of ethereal essences. To them one of the best evidences of the spiritual na¬ ture of things is the inability of the biologist to tell us under what conditions life could be produced from dead matter. The mysterious nature of ner¬ vous action, the influence of the mind upon the body, and, above all, the occurrence of certain strange emotional experiences in us, such as the vis¬ ions of mystics, these are to them the main proof that the world is divine and is full of spiritual life. We do not sympathize with this method of idealism.
We respect its good intentions, but we are unwilling to look upon it as rationally significant. For us it makes absolutely no difference in our faith about the ultimate spiritual nature of things, whether the world that we see makes our hair stand on end or not, or whether the biologists ever come to succeed in making living matter or not. That we can make a fire, does not prove the world less divine. Nor would the truth of things be less spiritual, if we could also manufacture not only protoplasm, but whole whales or Shakespeares in our laboratories.
If we could do so, materialism as a philosophical doctrine would remain just as absurd as it now is. Genuine idealism, like the foregoing, is utterly care¬ less whether this or that particular surprising thing appears in the phenomenal world, since it once for all knows that the Whole is divine, an eternal sur¬ prise. It seeks no confirmation from the laborato¬ ries; but only for illustrations of rationality; nor for its own part does it venture to dictate to the special workers in science what they shall find. It is not forced to beg Nature to contain some occult agency, some vague ethereal essence, or some myste¬ rious and wondrous visible being, whose presence shall be a guaranty to the gaping onlooker that there exists an Ideal. All this mendicant idealism our view rejects as unworthy of any clear-headed thinker. It says, “ Look at the facts as they are. Study them as experience gives them. Know them in their naked commonplace reality. But know also that the Ideal Divine Life dwells in them and throughout their whole boundless realm.”
In Plato’s “ Parmenides,” the young Socrates confesses that he sometimes hesitates to say that there is an Idea for everything, even for mud. He is rebuked for this fear that men may laugh at him. He is told that mud also is rational. Even so we must fear nobody’s laughter in such a matter. We must see the Divine everywhere. And therefore we must not be going about faithlessly looking for some¬ thing that shall be wondrous enough to force us to say “ Here is God.”
And now, last of all, as the writer bids farewell to this single lingering fellow-student, he cannot re¬ frain from suggesting to so patient a friend one lit¬ tle thought more concerning the proof that has been given for the doctrine of these later pages of our discussion. “ Possibly it is all false,” the fellowstudent may say. “ This fair picture of a Truth that is also Goodness, may be but another illusion.” Be it so, dear friend, if we have said nothing to con¬ vince thee. Perchance all this our later argument is illusion. Only remember: If it is Error, then, as we have shown thee, it is Error because and only because the Infinite knows it to be such. Apart from that knowledge, our thought would be no error.
At least, then, the Infinite knows what we have at¬ tributed to it. If it rejects our ideal, then doubtless there is something imperfect, not about the Infinite, but about our Ideal. And so at worst we are like a child who has come to the palace of the King on the day of his wedding, bearing roses as a gift to grace the feast. For the child, waiting innocently to see whether the King will not appear and praise the welcome flowers, grows at last weary with watch¬ ing all day and with listening to harsh words outside the palace gate, amid the jostling crowd. And so in the evening it falls fast asleep beneath the great dark walls, unseen and forgotten; and the wither¬ ing roses by and by fall from its lap, and are scat¬ tered by the wind into the dusty highway, there to be trodden under foot and destroyed. Yet all that happens only because there are infinitely fairer treasures within the palace than the ignorant child could bring. The King knows of this, yes, and of ten thousand other proffered gifts of loyal subjects. But he needs them not. Rather are all things from eternity his own.