Chapter III. Fundamental Principles.

Chapter III. Fundamental Principles.The fundamental convictions of naturalism, its general tendencies, and the points of view which determine its outlook, are primarily related to that order of facts which forms the subject of the natural sciences, to“Nature.”It is only secondarily that it attempts to penetrate with the methods of the natural sciences into the region of the conscious, of the mind, into the domain that underlies the mental sciences, including history and the æsthetic, political, and religious sciences, and to show that, in this region as in the other, natural law and the same principles of interpretation obtain, that here, too, the“materialistic conception of history holds true, and that there is no autonomy of mind.”The interests of religion here go hand in hand with those of the mental sciences, in so far as these claim to be distinct and independent. For the question is altogether one of the reality, pre-eminence, and independence of the spiritual as opposed to the“natural.”Occasionally it has been thought that the whole problem of the relations between religion and naturalism was concentrated on this point, and the study of nature has[pg 035]been left to naturalism as if it were indifferent or even hopeless, thus leaving a free field for theories of all kinds, the materialistic included. It is only in regard to the Darwinian theory of evolution and the mechanical theory of the origin and nature of life, and particularly in regard to the relatively unimportant question of“spontaneous generation”that a livelier interest is usually awakened. But these isolated theories are only a part of the“reduction,”which is characteristic of naturalism, and they can only be rightly estimated and understood in connection with it. We shall turn our attention to them only after we have carefully considered what is fundamental and essential. But the idea that religion may calmly neglect the study of nature as long as naturalism leaves breathing-room for the freedom and independence of mind is quite erroneous. If religion is true, nature must be of God, and it must bear tokens which allow us to interpret it as of God. And such signs are to be found. What we shall have to say in regard to them may be summed up in the following propositions:—1. Even the world, which has been brought under the reign of scientific laws, is a mystery; it has beenformulated, but notexplained.2. The world governed by law is still dependent, conditioned, and“contingent.”3. The conception of Nature as obedient to law is not excluded but rather demanded by belief in God.4, 5. We cannot comprehend the true nature and[pg 036]depth of things, and the world which we do comprehend is not the true Reality of things; it is only its appearance. In feeling and intuition this appearance points beyond itself to the true nature of things.6. Ideas and purposes, and with them Providence and the control of things, can neither be established by the natural sciences nor disputed by them.7. The causal interpretation demanded by natural science fits in with an explanation according to purpose, and the latter presupposes the former.How the Religious and the Naturalistic Outlooks Conflict.Religion comes into contact with naturalism and demands to be reconciled with it, not merely at its periphery, but at its very core, namely, with its characteristic ideal of a mathematical-mechanical interpretation of the whole world. This ideal seems to be most nearly, if not indeed completely, attained in reference to the inter-relations of the great masses, in the realm of astronomy, with the calculable, inviolable, and entirely comprehensible conditions which govern the purely mechanical correlations of the heavenly bodies. To bring the same clearness and intelligibility, the same inevitableness and calculability into the world in general, and into the whole realm of nature down to the mysterious law determining the development of the daintiest insect's wing, and the stirrings of the grey matter in the[pg 037]cortex of the brain which reveal themselves to us as sensation, desire, and thought, this has always been the aim and secret faith of the naturalistic mode of thought. It is thus aiming at a Cosmos of all Being and Becoming, which can be explained from itself, and comprehended in itself alone, supported by its own complete and all-sufficing causality and uniformity, resting in itself, shut up within itself, complete in itself—a God sufficient unto himself and resting in himself.We do not need to probe very deeply to find out how strongly religion resists this attempt, and we easily discover what is the disturbing element which awakens hostile feeling. It is of three kinds, and depends on three characteristic aims and requirements of religion, which are closely associated with one another, yet distinct from one another, though it is not always easy to represent them in their true proportions and relative values. The first of these interests seems to be“teleology,”the search after guiding ideas and purposes, after plan and directive control in the whole machinery, that sets itself in sharp opposition to a mere inquiry into proximate causes. Little or nothing is gained by knowing how everything came about or must have come about; all interest lies in the fact that everything has come about in such a way that it reveals intention, wisdom, providence, and eternal meaning, realising itself in details and in the whole. This has always been rightly regarded as the true concern and interest of every religious conception of the world. But it has[pg 038]been sometimes forgotten that this is by no means the only, or even the primary interest that religion has in world-lore. We call it its highest and ultimate interest, but we find, on careful study, that two others are associated with and precede it.For before all belief in Providence and in the divine meaning of the world, indeed before faith at all, religion is primarily feeling—a deep, humble consciousness of the entire dependence and conditionality of our existence, and of all things. The belief we have spoken of is, in relation to this feeling, merely a form—as yet not in itself religious. It is not only the question“Have the world and existence a meaning, and are phenomena governed by ideas and purposes?”that brings religion and its antagonists into contact; there is a prior and deeper question. Is there scope for this true inwardness of all religion, the power to comprehend itself and all the world in humility in the light of that which is not of the world, but is above world and existence? But this is seriously affected by that doctrine which attempts to regard the Cosmos as self-governing and self-sufficing, needing nothing, and failing in nothing. It is this and not Darwinism or the descent from a Simian stock that primarily troubles the religious spirit. It is more specially sensitive to the strange and antagonistic tendency of naturalism shown even in that marvellous and terrifying mathematical-mechanical system of the great heavenly bodies, in this clock of the universe which, in obedience to clear and[pg 039]inviolable laws, carries on its soundless play from everlasting to everlasting, needing no pendulum and no pedestal, without any stoppage and without room for dependence on anything outside of itself, apparently entirely godless, but absolutely reason and God enough for itself. It shrinks in terror from the thought that the same autonomy and self-regulation may be brought down from the stage of immensity into the play of everyday life and events.But we must penetrate still deeper. Schleiermacher has directed our attention anew to the fact that the most profound element in religion is that deep-lying consciousness of all creatures,“I that am dust and ashes,”that humble feeling of the absolute dependence of every being in the world on One that is above all the world. But religion does not fully express itself even in this; there is yet another note that sounds still deeper and is the keynote of the triad.“Let a man examine himself.”Is it not the case that we ourselves, in as far as the delight in knowledge and the enthusiasm for solving riddles have taken hold of us, rejoice in every new piece of elucidation and interpretation that science succeeds in making, that we are in the fullest sympathy with the impulse to understand everything and bring reason and clearness into it, and that we give hearty adherence to the leading ideas which guide the investigations of natural science? Yet on the other hand, in as far as we are religious, do we not sometimes feel a sudden inward recoil from this almost profane eagerness[pg 040]to penetrate into the mystery of things, this desire to have everything intelligible, clear, rational and transparent? This feeling which stirs in us has always existed in all religious minds and will only die with them. And we need not hesitate to say so plainly. For this is the most real characteristic of religion; it seeks depth in things, reaches out towards what is concealed, uncomprehended, and mysterious. It is more than humility; it is piety. And piety is experience of mystery.It is at this point that religion comes most violently into antagonism with the meaning and mood of naturalism. Here they first conflict in earnest. And it is here above all that scientific investigation and its materialistic complement seem to take away freedom and truth, air and light from religion. For science is seeking especially this: Deeper penetration into and illumination of the world. It presses with macroscope and microscope into its most outlying regions and most hidden corners, into its abysses and fastnesses. It explains away the old idea of two worlds, one on this side and one on that, and rejects heavenly things with the notice“No Room”of which D. Fr. Strauss speaks. It aims at discovering the mathematical world-formulæ, if not indeed one great general formula which embraces, defines unequivocally, and rationalises all the processes of and in infinity, from the movements of Sirius to those of the cilia of the infusorian in the drop of water, and which not only crowds“heaven”out of the world,[pg 041]but strips away from things the fringe of the mysterious and incommensurable which seemed to surround them.Mystery : Dependence : Purpose.There is then a threefold religious interest, and there are three corresponding points of contact between the religious and the naturalistic interpretations of the world, where, as it appears, they are necessarily antagonistic to one another. Arranging them in their proper order we find, first, the interest, never to be relinquished, of experiencing and acknowledging the world and existence to be a mystery, and regarding all that is known and manifested in things merely as the thin crust which separates us from the uncomprehended and inexpressible. Secondly, there is the desire on the part of religion to bring ourselves and all creatures into the“feeling of absolute dependence,”and, as the belief in creation does, to subordinate ourselves and them to the Eternal Power that is not of the world, but is above the world. Finally, there is the interest in a teleological interpretation of the world as opposed to the purely causal interpretation of natural science; that is to say, an interpretation of the world according to eternal God-willed purposes, governing ideas, a plan and aim. In all three respects, it is important to religion that it should be able to maintain its validity and freedom as contrasted with naturalism.But while religion must inquire of itself into the[pg 042]reality of things, with special regard to its own needs, there are two possibilities which may serve to make peace between it and natural science. It may, for instance, be possible that the mathematical-mechanical interpretation of things, even if it be sufficient within its own domain, does not take away from nature the characters which religion seeks and requires in it, namely, purpose, dependence and mystery. Or it may be that nature itself does not correspond at all to this ideal of mathematical explicability, that this ideal may be well enough as a guide for investigation, but that it is not a fundamental clue really applying to nature as a whole and in its essence. It may be that nature as a whole cannot be scientifically summed up without straining the mechanical categories. And this suggests another possibility, namely, that the naturalistic method of interpretation cannot be applied throughout the whole territory of nature, that it embraces certain aspects but not others, and, finally, that it is distinctly interrupted and held in abeyance at particular points by the incommensurable which breaks forth spontaneously out of the depths of phenomena, revealing a depth which is not to be explained away.All these possibilities occur. And though they need not necessarily be regarded as the key to our order of discussion, in what follows we shall often meet them singly or together.[pg 043]The Mystery of Existence Remains Unexplained.1. Let us begin with the problem of the mystery of all existence, and see whether it remains unaffected, or whether it disappears in face of naturalistic interpretation, with its discovery and formulation of law and order, with its methods of measuring and computing. More primary even than faith and heartfelt trust in everlasting wisdom and purposeful Providence there is piety; there is devout sense of awe before the marvellous and mysterious, before the depth and the hidden nature of all things and all being, before unspeakable mysteries over which we hover, and abysmal depths over which we are borne. In a world which had not these, and could not be first felt in this way, religion could not live at all. It could not sail on its too shallow waters, or breathe its too thin air. It is indeed a fact that what alone we can fitly speak of and love as religion—the sense of mystery and the gentle shuddering of piety before the depth of phenomena and their everlasting divine abysses,—has its true place and kingdom in the world of mind and history, with its experiences, riddles, and depths. But mystery is to be found in the world of nature as well. It is only to a very superficial study that it could appear as though nature were, or ever could become, plain and obvious, as if the veil of Isis which shrouds its depths from all investigation could ever be torn away. From this point of view it would make no[pg 044]difference even though the attempt to range the whole realm of nature under the sway of inviolable laws were to be immediately successful. This is expressed in the first of our main propositions (p.35).In order to realise this it is necessary to reflect for a little on the relation of“explanation”and“description”to one another, and on what is meant by“establishing laws”and“understanding”in general. The aim of all investigation is to understand the world. To understand it obviously means something more than merely to know it. It is not enough for us to know things, that is, to know what, how many, and what different kinds of things there are. On the contrary, we want to understand them, to know how they came to be as they are, and why they are precisely as they are. The first step towards this understanding is merely to know, that is, we must rightly apprehend and disentangle the things and processes of the world, grouping them, and describing them adequately and exhaustively.But what I have merely described I have not yet understood; I am only preparing to try to understand it. It stands before me enveloped in all its mystery, and I must now begin to attempt to solve it, for describing is not explaining; it is only challenging explanation. The next step is to discover and formulate the laws. For when man sifts out things and processes and follows them out into their changes and stages he discovers the iron regularity of sequences, the strictly defined lines and paths, the inviolable order and connection[pg 045]in things and occurrences, and he formulates these into laws, ascribing to them the idea of necessity which he finds in himself. In so doing he makes distinct progress, for he can now go beyond what is actually seen, he can draw inferences with certainty as to effects and work back to causes. And thus order, breadth of view, and uniformity are brought into his acquaintance with facts, and his science begins. For science does not merely mean acquaintance with phenomena in their contingent or isolated occurrence, manifold and varied as that may be; it is the discovery and establishment of the laws and general modes of occurrence. Without this we might collect curiosities, but we should not have science. And to discover this network of uniformities throughout all phenomena, in the movements of the heavenly bodies and in the living substance of the cell alike, is the primary aim of all investigation. We are still far away from this goal, and it is more than questionable whether we shall ever reach it.But if the goal should ever be reached, if, in other words, we should ever be able to say with certainty what must result if occurrencesaandbare given, or whataandbmust have been whencoccurs, would explanation then have taken the place of description? Or would understanding have replaced mystery? Obviously not at all. It has indeed often been supposed that this would be the case. People have imagined they have understood, when they have seen that[pg 046]“that is always so, and that it always happens in this particular way.”But this is a naïve idea. The region of the described has merely become larger, and the riddle has become more complex. For now we have before us not only the things themselves, but the more marvellous laws which“govern”them. But laws are not forces or impelling causes. They do not cause anything to happen, and they do not explain anything. And as in the case of things so in that of laws, we want to know how they are, whence they come, and why they are as they are and not quite different. The fact that we have described them simply excites still more strongly the desire to explain them. To explain is to be able to answer the question“Why?”Natural science is very well aware of this. It calls its previous descriptions“merely historical,”and it desires to supplement these with ætiology, causal explanation, a deeper interpretation, that in its turn will make laws superfluous, because it will penetrate so deeply into the nature of things that it will see precisely why these, and not other laws of variation, of development, of becoming, hold sway. This is just the meaning of the“reductions”of which we have already spoken. For instance, in regard to crystal formation,“explanation”will have replaced description only when, instead of demonstrating the forms and laws according to which a particular crystal always and necessarily arises out of a particular solution, we are able to show why, from a particular mixture and because[pg 047]of certain co-operating molecular forces, and of other more primary, more remote, but also intelligible conditions, these forms and processes of crystallisation should always and of necessity occur. If this explanation were possible, the“law”would also be explained, and would therefore become superfluous. From this and similar examples we can learn at what point“explanation”begins to replace description, namely, when processes resolve themselves into simpler processes from the concurrence of which they arise. This is exactly what natural science desires to bring about, and what naturalism hopes ultimately to succeed in, thereby solving the riddle of existence.But this kind of reduction to simpler terms only becomes“explanation”when these simpler terms are themselves clear and intelligible and not merely simple; that is to say, when we can immediately see why the simpler process occurs, and by what means it is brought about, when the question as to the“why”is no longer necessary, because, on becoming aware of the process, we immediately and directly perceive that it is a matter of course, indisputable, and requiring no proof. If this is not the case, the reduction to simpler terms has been misleading. We have only replaced one unintelligibility by another, one description by another, and so simply pushed back the whole problem. Naturalism supposes that by this gradual pushing back the task will at least become more and more simple, until at last a point is reached where the riddle will solve[pg 048]itself, because description becomes equivalent to explanation. This final stage is supposed to be found in the forces of attraction and repulsion, with which the smallest similar particles of matter are equipped. Out of the endlessly varied correlations of these there arise all higher forms of energy and all the combinations which make up more complex phenomena.But in reality this does not help us at all. For now we are definitely brought face to face with the quite unanswerable question, How, from all this homogeneity and unity of the ultimate particles and forces, can we account for the beginnings of the diversity which is so marked a characteristic of this world? Whence came the causes of the syntheses to higher unities, the reasons for the combination into higher resultants of energy?But even apart from that, it is quite obvious that we have not yet reached the ultimate point. For can“attraction,”influence at a distance,vis a fronte, be considered as a fact which is in itself clear? Is it not rather the most puzzling fundamental riddle we can be called upon to explain? Assuredly. And therefore the attempt is made to penetrate still deeper to the ultimate point, the last possible reduction to simpler terms, by referring all actual“forces”and reducing all movement, and therewith all“action,”to terms of attraction and repulsion, which are free from anything mysterious, whose mode of working can be unambiguously and plainly set forth in the law of the parallelogram of forces. Law? Set forth? Therefore still[pg 049]only description? Certainly only description, not explanation in the least. Even assuming that it is true, instead of a mere Utopia, that all the secrets and riddles of nature can be traced back to matter moved by attraction and repulsion according to the simplest laws of these, they would still only be summed up into a great general riddle, which is only the more colossal because it is able to embrace all others within itself. For attraction and repulsion, the transference of motion, and the combination of motion according to the law of the parallelogram of forces—all this is merely description of processes whose inner causes we do not understand, which appear simple, and are so, but are nevertheless not self-evident or to be taken as a matter of course; they are not in themselves intelligible, but form an absolute“world-riddle.”From the very root of things there gazes at us the same Sphinx which we had apparently driven from the foreground.But furthermore, this reduction to simpler terms is an impossible and never-ending task. There is fresh confusion at every step. In reducing to simpler terms, it is often forgotten that the principle of combination is not inherent in the more simple, and cannot be“reduced.”Or else there is an ignoring of the fact that a transition has been made, not from resultants to components, but to quite a different kind of phenomena. Innumerable as are the possible reductions to simpler terms, and mistaken as it would be to remain prematurely at the level of description, it cannot be denied[pg 050]that the fundamental facts of the world are pure facts which must simply be accepted where they occur, indisputable, inexplicable, impenetrable, the“whence”and the“how”of their existence quite uncomprehended. And this is especially true of every new and peculiar expression of what we call energy and energies. Gravitation cannot be reduced to terms of attraction and repulsion, nor action at a distance to action at close quarters; it might, indeed, be shown that repulsion in its turn presupposes attraction before it can become possible; the“energies”of ponderable matter cannot be reduced to the“ether”and its processes of motion, nor the complex play of the chemical affinities to the attraction of masses in general or to gravity. And thus the series ascends throughout the spheres of nature up to the mysterious directive energies in the crystal, and to the underivable phenomena of movement in the living substance, perhaps even to the functions of will-power. All these can be discovered, but not really understood. They can be described, but not explained. And we are absolutely ignorant as to why they should have emerged from the depth of nature, what that depth really is, or what still remains hidden in her mysterious lap. Neither what nature reveals to us nor what it conceals from us is in any true sense“comprehended,”and we flatter ourselves that we understand her secrets when we have only become accustomed to them. If we try to break the power of this accustomedness and to[pg 051]consider the actual relations of things there dawns in us a feeling already awakened by direct impressions and experience; the feeling of the mysterious and enigmatical, of the abyssmal depths beneath, and of what lies far above our comprehension, alike in regard to our own existence and every other. The world is at no point self-explanatory, but at all points marvellous. Its laws are only formulated riddles.Evolution and New Beginnings.All this throws an important light upon two subjects which are relevant in this connection, but which cannot here be exhaustively dealt with,—evolution and new beginnings. Let us consider, for instance, the marvellous range and diversity of the characteristic chemical properties and interrelations of substances. Each one of them, contrasted with the preceding lower forms and stages of“energy,”contrasted with mere attraction, repulsion, gravitation, is something absolutely new, a new interpolation (of course not in regard to time but to grade), a phenomenon which cannot be“explained”by what has gone before. It simply occurs, and we find it in its own time and place. We may call this new emergence“evolution,”and we may use this term in connection with every new stage higher than those preceding it. But it is not evolution in a crude and quantitative sense, according to which the“more highly evolved”is nothing more than an[pg 052]addition and combination of what was already there; it is evolution in the old sense of the word, according to which the more developed is a higher analogue of the less developed, but is in its own way as independent, as much a new beginning as each of the antecedent stages, and therefore in the strict sense neither derivable from them nor reducible to them.It must be noted that in this sense evolution and new beginnings are already present at a very early stage in nature and are part of its essence. We must bear this in mind if we are rightly to understand the subtler processes in nature which we find emerging at a higher level. It is illusory to suppose that it is a“natural”assumption to“derive”the living from lower processes in nature. The non-living and the inorganic are also underivable as to their individual stages, and the leap from the inorganic to the organic is simply much greater than that from attraction in general to chemical affinity. As a matter of fact, the first occurrence—undoubtedly controlled and conditioned by internal necessity—of crystallisation, or of life, or of sensation has just the same marvellousness as everything individual and everything new in any ascending series in nature. In short, every new beginning has the same marvel.Perhaps this consideration goes still deeper, throwing light upon or suggesting the proper basis for a study of the domain of mind and of history. It is immediately obvious that there, at any rate, we enter into a[pg 053]region of phenomena which cannot be derived from anything antecedent, or reduced to anything lower. It must be one of the chief tasks of naturalism to explain away these facts, and to maintain the sway of“evolution,”not in our sense but in its own, that is“to explain”everything new and individual from that which precedes it. But the assertion that this can be done is here doubly false. For, in the first place, it cannot be proved that methods of study which are relatively valid for natural phenomena are applicable also to those of the mind. And in the second place we must admit that even in nature—apart from mind—we have to do with new beginnings which are underivable from their antecedents.All being is inscrutable mystery as a whole, and from its very foundations upwards through each successively higher stage of its evolution, in an increasing degree, until it reaches a climax in the incomprehensibility of individuality. It is a mystery that does not force itself into nature as supernatural or miraculous, but is fundamentally implicit in it, a mystery that in its unfolding assuredly follows the strictest law, the most inviolable rules, whether in the chemical affinities a higher grade of energies reveals itself, or whether—unquestionably also in obedience to everlasting law—the physical and chemical conditions admit of the occurrence of life, or whether in his own time and place a genius arises.1[pg 054]The Dependence of the Order of Nature.(2 and 3). The“dependence”of all things is the second requirement of religion, without which it is altogether inconceivable. We avoid the words“creation”and“being created,”because they involve anthropomorphic and altogether insufficient modes of representation. But throughout we have in mind, as suggested by Schleiermacher's[pg 055]expression already quoted, what all religion means when it declares nature and the world to becreatures. The inalienable content of this idea is that deep and assured feeling that our nature and all nature does not rest in its own strength and self-sufficiency, that there must be more secure reasons for nature which are absolutely outside of it, and that it is dependent upon, and conditioned through and through by something above itself, independent, and unconditioned.“I believe that God has created me together with all creatures.”(Luther.)This faith seemed easier in earlier times, when men's eyes were not yet opened to see the deep-lying connectedness of all phenomena, the inexorableness of causal sequences, when it was believed that, in the apparently numerous interruptions of the causal sequences, the frailty and dependence of this world and its need for heavenly aid could be directly observed, when, therefore, it was not difficult to believe that the world was“nothing”and perishable, that it had been called forth out of nothing, and that in its transient nature it carried for ever the traces of this origin. But to-day it is not so easy to believe in this dependence, for nature seems to show itself, in its inviolable laws and unbroken sequences, as entirely sufficient unto itself, so that for every phenomenon a sufficient cause is to be found within nature, that is, in the sum of the antecedent states and conditions which, according to inevitable laws, must result in and produce what follows.[pg 056]We have already noted that this is most obviously discernible in the world of the great masses, the heavenly bodies which pursue their courses from everlasting to everlasting, mutually conditioning themselves and betraying no need for or dependence upon anything outside of themselves. Everything, even the smallest movement, is here determined strictly by the dependence of each upon all and of all upon each. There is no variation, no change of position for which an entirely satisfactory cause cannot be found in the system as a whole, which works like an immense machine. Nothing indicates dependence upon anything external. And as it is to-day so it was yesterday, and a million years ago, and innumerable millions of years ago. It seems quite gratuitous to suppose that something which does not occur to-day was necessary at an earlier period, and that everything has not been from all eternity just as it is now.We saw that naturalism is attempting to extend this character of independence and self-sufficiency from the astronomical world to the world as a whole. Shall we attempt, then, to oppose it in this ambition, but surrender the realm of the heavenly bodies as already conquered? By no means. For religion cannot exclude the solar system from the dependence of all being upon God. And this very example is the most conspicuous one, the one in regard to which the whole problem can be most definitely formulated.Astronomy teaches us that all cosmic processes are[pg 057]governed by a marvellous far-reaching uniformity of law, which unites in strictest harmony the nearest and the most remote. Has this fact any bearing upon the problem of the dependence of the world? No. It surely cannot be that a world without order could be brought under the religious point of view more readily than one governed by law! Let us suppose for a moment that we had to do with a world without strict nexus and definite order of sequence, without law and without order, full of capricious phenomena, unregulated associations, an inconstant play of causes. Such a world would be to us unintelligible, strange, absurd. But it would not necessarily be more“dependent,”more“conditioned”than any other. Had I no other reasons for looking beyond the world, and for regarding it as dependent on something outside of itself, the absence of law and order would assuredly furnish me with none. For, assuming that it is possible at all to conceive of a world and its contents as independent, and as containing its own sufficient cause within itself, it would be quite as easily thought of as a confused lawless play of chances as a well-ordered Cosmos. Perhaps more easily; for it goes without saying that such a conglomeration of promiscuous chances could not possibly be thought of as a world of God. Order and strict obedience to law, far from being excluded, are required by faith in God, are indeed a direct and inevitable preliminary to thinking of the world as dependent upon God. Thus we may state the paradox, that only a[pg 058]Cosmos which, by its strict obedience to law, gives us the impression of being sufficient unto itself, can be conceived of as actually dependent upon God, as His creation. If any man desires to stop short at the consideration of the apparent self-sufficiency of the Cosmos and its obedience to law, and refuses to recognise any reasons outside of the world for this, we should hardly be able, according to our own proposition, to require him to go farther. For we maintained that God could not be read out of nature, that the idea of God could never have been gained in the first instance from a study of nature and the world. The problem always before us is rather, whether, having gained the idea from other sources, we can include the world within it. Our present question is whether the world, as it is, and just because it is as it is, can be conceived of as dependent upon God. And this question can only be answered in the affirmative, and in the sense of Schiller's oft-quoted lines:The great CreatorWe see not—He conceals himself withinHis own eternal laws. The sceptic seesTheir operation, but beholds not Him,“Wherefore a God!”he cries,“the world itselfSuffices for itself!”and Christian prayerNe'er praised him more, than does this blasphemy.God's world could not possibly be a conglomeration of chances; it must be orderly, and the fact that it is so proves its dependence.But while we thus hold fast to our canon, we shall[pg 059]find that the assertion of the world's dependence receives indirect corroboration even in regard to the astronomical realm, from certain signs which it exhibits, from certain suggestions which are implied in it. We must not wholly overlook two facts which, to say the least, are difficult to fit in with the idea of the independence and self-sufficiency of the world; these are, on the one hand, the difficulties involved in the idea of an eternal machine, and on the other the difficult fact of“entropy.”We have already compared the world to a mighty clock, or a machine which, as a whole, represents what can never be found in one of its parts, aperpetuum mobile. Let us however leave aside the idea of aperpetuum mobile, and dwell rather on the comparison with a machine. It seems obvious that in order to be a machine there must be a closed solidarity in the system. But how could a machine have come into existence and become functional if it is driven by wheels, which are driven by wheels, which are again driven by wheels ... and so on unceasingly? It would not be a machine. The idea falls to pieces in our hands. Yet our world is supposed to be just such an infinitely continuous“system.”How does it begin to depend upon and be sufficient unto itself? But further. It is a clock, we are told, which ever winds itself up anew, which, without fatigue and in ceaseless repetition, adjusts the universal cycles of becoming, and disappearing, and becoming again. It seems a corroboration of the old Heraclitian and Stoic conception, that the eternal primitive fire brings forth[pg 060]all things out of itself, and takes them back into itself to bring them forth anew. Even to-day the conception is probably general that, out of the original states of the world-matter, circling fiery nebulæ form themselves and throw off their rings, that the breaking up of these rings gives rise to planets which circle in solar systems for many æons through space, till, finally, their energy lessened by friction with the ether, they plunge into their suns again, that the increased heat restores the original state and the whole play begins anew.All this was well enough in the days of naïvely vitalistic ideas of the world as having a life and soul. But not in these days of mechanics, the strict calculation of the amount of energy used, and the mechanical theory of heat. The world-clock cannot wind itself up. It, too, owes its activity to the transformation of potential energy into kinetic energy. And, since movement and work take place within it, there is in the clock as a whole just as in every one of its parts, a mighty process of relaxation of an originally tense spring, there is dissipation and transformation of the stored potential energy into work and ultimately into heat. And with every revolution of the earth and its moon the world is moving slowly but inexorably towards a final stage of complete relaxation of her powers of tension, a state in which all energy will be transformed into heat, in which there will be no different states but only the most uniform distribution, in which also all[pg 061]life and all movement will cease and the world-clock itself will come to a standstill.How does this fit in with the idea of independence and self-sufficiency? How could the world-clock ever wind itself up again to the original state of tension which was simply there as if shot from a pistol“in the beginning”? Where is the everlasting impressive uniformity and constancy of the world? How does it happen that the world-clock has not long ago come to a standstill? For even if the original sum of potential energy is postulated as infinite, the eternity that lies behind us is also infinite. And so one infinity swallows another. And innumerable questions of a similar kind are continually presenting themselves.The“Contingency”of the World.But we need not dwell in the meantime on these and the many other difficulties and riddles presented by our cosmological hypothesis. However these may be solved, a general consideration will remain—namely, that whether the world is governed by law or not, whether it is sufficient unto itself or not, thereisa world full of the most diverse phenomena, and therearelaws. Whence then have both these come? Is it a matter of course, is it quite obvious that they should exist at all, and that they should be exactly as they are? We do not here appeal without further ceremony to the saying“everything must have a cause, therefore the world also.”It[pg 062]is not absolutely correct. For instance, if the world were so constituted that it would be impossible for it not to exist, that the necessity for its existence and the inconceivability of its non-existence were at once explicit and obvious, then there would be no sense in inquiring after a cause. In regard to a“necessary”thing, if there were any such, we cannot ask,“Why, and from what cause does this exist?”If it was necessary, that implies that to think of it as not existing would be ridiculous, and logically or metaphysically impossible. Unfortunately there are no“necessary”things, so that we cannot illustrate the case by examples. But there are at least necessary truths as distinguished from contingent truths. And thus some light may be brought into the matter for the inexpert. For instance, a necessary truth is contained in the sentence,“Everything is equal to itself,”or,“The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.”We cannot even conceive of the contrary. Therefore these axioms have no reasons, and can neither be deduced nor proved. Every question as to their reasons is quite meaningless. As examples of a“contingent”truth we may take“It rains to-day,”or“The earth revolves round the sun.”For neither one nor the other of these is necessarily so. It is so as a matter of fact, but under other circumstances it might have been otherwise. The contrary can be conceived of and represented, and has in itself an equal degree of possibility. Therefore such a fact requires to[pg 063]be and is capable of being reasoned out. I can and must ask,“How does it happen that it rains to-day? What are the reasons for it?”But as we must seek for sufficient reasons for“contingent”truths, that is, for those of which the contrary was equally possible, so assuredly we must seek for sufficient causes for“contingent”phenomena and events, those which can be thought of as not existing, or as existing in a different form. For these we must find causes and actual reasons. Otherwise they have no foundation. The element of“contingency”must be done away with; they must be shown to result from sufficient causes. That is to say nothing less than that they must be traced back to some necessity. For it is one of the curious fundamental convictions of our reason, and one in which all scientific investigation has its ultimate roots, that what is“contingent”is only apparently so, and in reality is in some way or other based on necessity. Therefore reason seeks causes for everything.The search for causes involves showing that a thing was necessary. And this must obviously apply to the world as a whole. If it were quite obvious that the world and its existence as it is were necessary, that is, that it would be contrary to reason to think of the world, and its phenomena, and their obedience to law as non-existent, or as different from what they are, all inquiry would be at an end. This would betheultimate necessity in which all the apparent contingency of isolated phenomena and existences was firmly based.[pg 064]But this is far from being the case. That anything exists, and that the world exists, is for us absolutely the greatest“contingency”of all, and in regard to it we can and must continually ask,“Why does anything exist at all, and why should it not rather be non-existent?”Indeed, all our quest for sufficient causes here reaches its climax. In more detail: that these celestial systems and bodies, the ether, attraction and gravitation should exist, and that everything should be governed by definite laws, all literally“as if shot from a pistol,”there must undoubtedly be some sufficient reason, certain as it is that we shall never discover it. It is true, as some one has said, that we live not only in a very fortuitous world, but in an incredibly improbable one. And this is not affected by the fact that the world is completely governed by law. Law only confirms it. The fact that all details may be clearly and mathematically calculated in no way prevents them from being fundamentally contingent. For they are only so calculable on the basis of the given fundamental characters of the world. And that is precisely the problem:“Why do these characters exist and not quite different ones, and why should any exist at all?”If any one should say:“Well, we must just content ourselves with recognising the essentially‘contingent’nature of existence, for we shall never be able to get beyond that,”he would be right in regard to the second statement. To get beyond that and to see what it is—eternal[pg 065]and in itself necessary—that lies at the basis of this world of“contingency”is indeed impossible. But he would be wrong as to the first part of the assertion. For no onewill“content himself.”For that all chance is only apparently chance, and is ultimately based in necessity, is a deeply-rooted and fundamental conviction of our reason, one which directs all scientific investigation, and which cannot be ignored. It demands ceaselessly something necessary as the permanent basis of contingent existence. And this fact is and remains the truth involved in the“cosmological proofs of the existence of God”of former days. It was certainly erroneous to suppose that“God”could be proved. For it is a long way from that“idea of necessity”to religious experience of God. And it was erroneous, too, to suppose that anything could be really“proved.”What is necessary can never really be proved from what is contingent. But the recognition of the contingent nature of the world is a stimulus that stirs up within our reason the idea of the necessary, and it is a fact that reason finds rest only in this idea.The Real World.(4.) What was stated separately in our first and second propositions, and has hitherto been discussed, now unites and culminates in the fourth. For if we note the vital expressions of religion wherever it occurs, we find above all one thing as its most characteristic sign,[pg 066]indeed as its very essence, in all places and all times, often only as a scarce uttered wish or longing, but often breaking forth with impetuous might. This one thing is the impulse and desire to get beyond time and space, and beyond the oppressive narrowness and crampingness of the world surrounding us, the desire to see into the depth and“other side”of things and of existence. For it is the very essence of religion to distinguish this world from, and contrast it as insufficient with the real world which is sufficient, to regard this world which we see and know and possess as only an image, as only transiently real, in contrast with the real world of true being which is believed in. Religion has clothed this essential feature in a hundred mythologies and eschatologies, and one has always given place to another, the more sublimed to the more robust. But the fundamental feature itself cannot disappear.In apologetics and dogmatics the interest in this matter is often concentrated more or less exclusively upon the question of“immortality.”Wrongly so, however, for this quest after the real world is not a final chapter in religion, it is religion itself. And in the religious sense the question of immortality is only justifiable and significant when it is a part of the general religious conviction that this world is not the truly essential world, and that the true nature of things, and of our own being, is deeper than we can comprehend, and lies beyond this side of things, beyond[pg 067]time and space. To the religious mind it cannot be of great importance whether existence is to be continued for a little at least beyond this life. In what way would such a wish be religious? But the inward conviction that“all that is transitory is only a parable,”that all here is only a veil and a curtain, and the desire to get beyond semblance to truth, beyond insufficiency to sufficiency, concentrate themselves especially in the assertion of the eternity of our true being.It is with this characteristic of religion that the spirit and method of naturalism contrast so sharply. Naturalism points out with special satisfaction that this depth of things, this home of the soul is nowhere discoverable. The great discoveries of Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton have done away with the possibility of that. No empyrean, no corner of the world remains available. Even the attempted flight to sun, moon, or stars does not help. It is true that the newly discovered world is without end, but, beyond a doubt, in its outermost and innermost depths it is a world of space and time. Even in the stellar abysses“everything is just the same as with us.”All this is doubtless correct, and it is very wholesome for religion. For it prompts religion no longer to seek its treasure, the true nature of things, and its everlasting home in time and space, as the mythologies and eschatologies have sought them repeatedly. It throws religion back on the fundamental insight and on the convictions which it had attained long before[pg 068]philosophy and criticism of knowledge had arrived at similar views: namely, that time and space, and this world of time and space, do not comprise the whole of existence, nor existence as it really is, but are only a manifestation of it to our finite and limited knowledge. Before the days of modern astronomy, and without its help, religion knew that God was not confined to“heaven,”or anywhere in space, and that time as it is for us was not for Him. Even in the terms“eternity”and“infinity”it shows an anticipatory knowledge of a being and reality above time and space. These ideas were not gained from a contemplation of nature, but before it and from independent sources.But though it is by no means the task of apologetics to build up these ideas directly from a study of things, it is of no little importance to inquire whether religion possesses in these convictions only postulates of faith, for which it must laboriously and forcibly make a place in the face of knowledge, or whether a thorough and self-critical knowledge does not rather confirm them, and show us, within the world of knowledge itself, unmistakable signs that it cannot be the true, full reality, but points to something beyond itself.To study this question thoroughly would involve setting forth a special theory of knowledge and existence. This cannot be attempted here. But Kant's great doctrine of the“Antinomy of Reason”has for all time broken up for us the narrowness of the naturalistic way of thinking. Every one who has felt cramped by[pg 069]the narrow limits in which reality was confined by a purely mundane outlook must have experienced the liberating influence of the Kantian Antinomy if he has thought over it carefully. The thick curtain which separates being from appearance seems to be torn away, or at any rate to reveal itself as a curtain. Kant shows that, if we were to take this world as it lies before us for the true reality, we should land in inextricable contradictions. These contradictions show that the true world itself cannot coincide with our thought and comprehension, for in being itself there can be no contradictions. Otherwise it would not exist. The ancient problems of philosophy, from the time of the Eleatic school onwards, find here their adequate formulation. Kant's disciple, Fries, has carried the matter further, and has attempted to develop what for Kant still remained a sort of embarrassment of reason to more precise pronouncements as to the relation of true being to its manifestation,The Antimony of Our Conception of Time.A few examples may serve to make the point clear. The first of the antinomies is also the most impressive. It brings before us the insufficiency of our conceptions of time, and shows the impossibility of transferring, from the world as it appears to us, to real Being any mode of conceiving time which we possess. The difficulty is, whether we are to think of our world as having had a beginning or not. The naïve outlook[pg 070]will at once assume without further ado a beginning of all things. Everything must have had a beginning, though that may have been a very long time ago. But on more careful reflection it is found impossible to imagine this, and then the assumption that things had no beginning is made with as little scruple. Let us suppose that the beginning of things was six thousand, or, what is quite as easy, six thousand billion years ago. We are at once led to ask what there was the year before or many years before, and what there was before that again, and so on until we face the infinite and beginningless. Thus we find that we have never really thought of a beginning of things, and never could think of it, but that our thinking always carries us into the infinite. Time, at any rate, we have thought of as infinite. We may then amuse ourselves by trying to conceive of endless time as empty, but we shall hardly be able to give any reason for arriving at that idea. If time goes back to infinity, it seems difficult to see why it should not always have been filled, instead of only being so filled from some arbitrary point. And in any case the very fact of the existence of time makes the problem of beginning or not beginning insoluble. For such reasons Aristotle asserted that the world had no beginning, and rejected the contrary idea as childish.But the idea of no beginning is also childish or rather impossible, and in reality inconceivable. For if it be assumed that the world and time have never had[pg 071]a beginning, there stretches back from the time at which I now find myself a past eternity. It must have passed completely as a whole, for otherwise this particular point in time could never have been arrived at. So that I must think of an infinity which nevertheless comes to an end. I cannot do this. It would be like wooden iron.The matter sounds simple but is nevertheless difficult in its consequences. It confronts us at once with the fact, confirmed by the theory of knowledge, that time as we know it is an absolutely necessary and fundamental form of our conceptions and knowledge, but is likewise the veil over what is concealed, and cannot be carried over in the same form into the true nature of things. As the limits and contradictions in the time-conception reveal themselves to us, there wakes in us the idea which we accept as the analogue of time in true being, an idea of existence under the form of“eternity,”which, since we are tied down to temporal concepts, cannot be expressed or even thought of with any content.2The Antimony of the Conditioned and the Unconditioned.The antinomy of the conditioned and the unconditioned leads us along similar lines. Every individual finite thing or event is dependent on its causes and[pg 072]conditions, which precede it or co-exist in inter-relation with it. It is conditioned, and is only possible through its conditions. But that implies that it can only occur or be granted when all its conditions are first given in complete synthesis. If any one of them failed, it would not have come about. But every one of its conditioning circumstances is in its turn conditioned by innumerable others, and every one of these again by others, and so on into the infinite, backwards and on all sides, so that here again something without end and incapable of end must have come to an end, and must be thought of as having an end, before any event whatever can really come to pass. But this again is a sheer impossibility for our thinking: we require and must demand something completed, because now is really now, and something happens now, and yet in the world as it appears to us we are always forced to face what cannot have an end.The Antimony of Our Conception of Space.To bring our examples to a conclusion, we find the same sort of antinomy in regard to space, and the world as it is extended in space. Here, too, it becomes apparent that space as we imagine it, and as we carry it with us as a concept for arranging our sense-impressions, cannot correspond to the true reality. As in regard to time, so also in regard to space, we can never after any distance however enormous come to a halt and say,“Here is the end of space.”Whether we think of the diameter[pg 073]of the earth's orbit or the distance to Sirius, and multiply them by a million we always ask,“What lies behind?”and so extend space into the infinite. And as a matter of course we people it also without end with heavenly bodies, stars, nebulae, Milky Ways and the like. For here again there can be no obvious reason why space in our neighbourhood should be filled, while space at a greater distance should be thought of as empty. Therefore we actually think of star beyond star, and, as far as we can reckon, stars beyond that without end. For space extends not merely so far, but always farther. And the number of the stars is not so many, but always one more. This sounds quite obvious, but it has exactly the same impossibility as we found in our“past infinity.”For although we are carried by our conceptions into the infinite, and to what never could have an end, it is impossible to assume the same of reality.It is remarkable and quite characteristic that the whole difficulty and its peculiar nature become much more intelligible to us through the familiar images and expressions of religion. There we readily admit that we cannot comprehend the number of the stars and stellar spaces, because for us they never reach an end, there being always one more; but that in the eyes of God all is embraced in His universality, in a“perfect synthesis,”and that to Him Being is never and in no point“always one more.”God does not count.Without the help of religious expressions we say: Being itself is always itself and never implies any more;[pg 074]for if there were“always one more”it would not be Being. It can only exist“as a perfect synthesis,”which does not mean an endless number, which nevertheless somewhere comes to an end—again wooden iron—but something above all reckoning and beyond all number, as it is beyond space and time. And that which we are able to weigh and measure and number is therefore not reality itself, but only its inadequate manifestation to our limited capacity for understanding.But enough of this. The puzzles in the doctrines of the simple and the complex, of the causeless and the caused, into which this world of ours forces us, should teach us further to recognise it for what it is—insufficient and pointing beyond itself,—to its own transcendent depths. So, too, the problems that arise when we penetrate farther and farther into the ever more and more minute, and the indefiniteness of our thought-horizons in general should have the same effect.Intuitions of Reality.(5.) There are other evidences of this depth and hidden nature of things, towards which an examination of our knowledge points. For“in feeling and intuition appearance points beyond itself to real being.”So ran our fifth proposition. This subject indeed is delicate, and can only be treated of in the hearing of willing ears. But all apologetic counts upon willing ears; it is not conversion of doubters that is aimed at, it is religion which seeks to reassure itself. Our proposition[pg 075]does not speak of dreams but of facts, which are not the less facts because they are more subtle than others. What we are speaking of are the deep impressions, which cannot properly be made commensurable at all, which may spring up directly out of an inward experience, an apprehension of nature, the world and history, in the depths of the spirit. They call forth in us an“anamnesis,”a“reminiscence”in Plato's sense, awakening within us moods and intuitions in which something of the essence and meaning of being is directly experienced, although it remains in the form of feeling, and cannot easily, if at all, find expression in definable ideas or clear statements. Fries, in his book,“Wissen, Glaube, und Ahnung,”unhappily too much forgotten, takes account of this fact, for he places this region of spiritual experience beside the certainties of faith and knowledge, and regards these as“animated”by it. He has in mind especially the impressions of the beautiful and the sublime which far transcend our knowledge of nature, and to which knowledge and its concepts can never do adequate justice, facts though they undoubtedly are. In them we experience directly, in intuitive feeling, that the reality is greater than our power of understanding, and we feel something of its true nature and meaning. The utterances of Schleiermacher3in regard to religion follow the same lines. For this is precisely what he means when he insists[pg 076]that the universe must be experienced in intuition and feeling as well as in knowing and doing. He is less incisive in his expressions than Fries, but wider in ideas. He includes in this domain of“intuitive feeling”not only the aesthetic experiences of the beautiful and sublime, but takes the much more general and comprehensive view, that the receptive mind may gather from the finite impressions of the infinite, and may through its experiences of time gain some conception of the eternal. And he rightly emphasises, that such intuition has its true place in the sphere of mind and in face of the events of history, rather than in the outer court of nature. He, too, lays stress on the fact that doctrinal statements and ideas cannot be formulated out of such subtle material.The experience of which we are speaking may be most directly and impressively gained from the great, the powerful, the sublime in nature. It may be gained from the contemplation of nature's harmonies and beauties, but also of her overflowing abundance and her enigmatical dæmonic strength, from the purposeful intelligibility as well as the terrifying and bewildering enigmas of nature's operations, from all the manifold ways in which the mind is affected and startled, from all the suggestive but indefinable sensations which may be roused in us by the activity of nature, and which rise through a long scale to intoxicated self-forgetfulness and wordless ecstasy before her beauty, and her half-revealed, half-concealed mystery. If any or all of these be stirred up[pg 077]in a mind which is otherwise godless or undevout, it remains an indefinite, vacillating feeling, bringing with it nothing else. But in the religious mind it immediately unites with what is akin to it or of similar nature, and becomes worship. No dogmas or arguments for disputatious reasoning can be drawn from it. It can hardly even be expressed, except, perhaps, in music. And if it be expressed it tends easily to become fantastic or romantic pomposity, as is shown even by certain parts of the writings of Schleiermacher himself.The Recognition of Purpose.(6.) We must now turn to the question of“teleology.”Only now, not because it is a subordinate matter, for it is in reality the main one, but because it is the culminating point, not the starting point, of our argument. If the world be from God and of God, it and all that it contains must be for some definite purpose and for special ends. It must be swayed by eternal ideas, and must be subject to divine providence and guidance. But naturalism, and even, it appears, natural science, declares: Neither purposes nor ideas are of necessity to be assumed in nature. They do not occur either in the details or in the whole. The whole is an absolutely closed continuity of causes, a causal but blind machinery, in regard to which we cannot ask, What is meant to be produced by this? but only, What causes have produced what exists? This opposition goes deep and raises difficulties. And in all vindication or defence[pg 078]of religion it ought rightly to be kept in the foreground of attention, although the points we have already insisted on have been wrongly overlooked. The opposition concentrates itself to-day almost entirely around two theories of naturalism, which do not, indeed, set forth the whole case, but which are certainly typical examples, so that, if we analyse them, we shall have arrived at an orientation of the fundamental points at issue. The two doctrines are Darwinism and the mechanical theory of life, and it is to these that we must now turn our attention. And since the best elucidation and criticism of both theories is to be found in their own history, and in the present state of opinion within their own school, we shall have to combine our study of their fundamental principles with that of their history.We can here set forth, however, only the chief point of view, the gist of the matter, which will continue to exist and hold good however the analysis of details may turn out. For the kernel of the question may be discussed independently, without involving the particular interests of zoology or biology, though we shall constantly come across particular and concrete cases of the main problem in our more detailed study.The struggle against, and the aversion to ideas and purposes on the part of the nature-interpreters is not in itself directed against religion. It does not arise from any antagonism of natural science to the religious conception of the world, but is primarily an antagonism of[pg 079]one school of science to another, the modern against the mediæval-Aristotelian. The latter, again, was not in itself a religious world-outlook, it was simply an attempt at an interpretation of the processes of nature, and especially of evolution, which might be quite neutral towards religion, or might be purely naturalistic. It was the theory of Entelechies andformæ substaniales. In order to explain how a thing had come to be, it taught that the idea of the finished thing, the“form,”was implicit in it from the very beginning, and determined the course of its development. This“form,”the end aimed at in development, was“potentially,”“ideally,”or“virtually”implicit in the thing from the beginning, was thecausa finalis, the ultimate cause which determined the development. Modern natural science objects to this theory that it offers no explanation, but merely gives a name to what has to be explained. The aim of science, it tells us, is to elucidate the play of causes which brought about a particular result. The hypotheticalcausa finalisit regards as a mereasylum ignorantiæ, and as the problem itself not as its solution. For instance, if we inquire into the present form and aspect of the earth, nothing is advanced by stating that the“form,”the primitive model of the evolving earth was implicit in it from the beginning, and that it gradually determined the phases and transition-stages of its evolution, until the ultimate state, the end aimed at, was attained. The task of science is, through geology, geognosy,[pg 080]mineralogy, geodesy, physical geography, meteorology, and other sciences to discover the physical, chemical, and mechanical causes of the earth's evolution and their laws, and from the co-operation of these to interpret everything in detail and as a whole.Whether modern natural science is right in this or not, whether or not it has neglected an element of truth in the old theory of Entelechies which it cannot dispense with, especially in regard to living organisms, it is beyond dispute that, from the most general point of view, and in particular with reference to teleology, religion does not need to concern itself in the least about this opposition.“Purposes,”“ideas,”“guidance”in the religious sense, are quite unaffected by the manner in which the result is realised; everything depends upon the special and particular value of what has been attained or realised. If a concatenation of causes and stages of development lead to results in which we suddenly discern a special and particular value, then, and not till then, have we a reason and criterion for our assumption that it is not simply a result of a play of chances, but that it has been brought about by purposeful thought, by higher intervention and guidance of things. Certainly not before then. Thus we can only speak of purposes, aims, guidance, and creation in so far as we have within us the capacity for feeling and recognising the value, meaning and significance of things. But natural science itself cannot estimate these. It can or will only[pg 081]examine how everything has come about, but whether this result has a higher value than another, or has a lower, or none at all, it can neither assert nor deny. That lies quite outside of its province.Let us try to make this clear by taking at once the highest example—man and his origin. Let it be assumed that natural science could discover all the causes and factors which, operating for many thousands of years, have produced man and human existence. Even if these causes and factors had actually been pure“ideas,”formæ substantialesand the like, that would in no way determine whether the whole process was really subject to a divine idea of purpose or not. If we had not gained, from a different source, an insight into the supreme and incomparable worth of human existence, spiritual, rational, and free, with its capacity for morality, religion, art and science, we should be compelled to regard man, along with every other natural result, as the insignificant product of a blind play of nature. But, on the other hand, if we have once felt and recognised this value of human existence, its highest dignity, the knowledge that man has been produced through a play of highly complex natural processes, fulfilling themselves in absolute obedience to law, in no way prevents our regarding him as a“purpose,”as the realisation of a divine idea, in accordance with which nature in its orderliness was planned. In fact, this consideration leads us to discover and admire eternal plan and divine guidance in nature.[pg 082]For it does not rest with natural science either to discover or to deny“purpose”in the religious sense in nature; it belongs to quite a different order of experience, an entirely inward one. Just in proportion as I become aware of, and acknowledge in the domain of my inward experience and through my capacity of estimating values, the worth of the spiritual and moral life of man, so, with the confidence of this peculiar mode of conviction, I subordinate the concatenations of events and causes on which the possibility and the occurrence of the spiritual and moral life depend, to an eternal teleology, and see the order of the world that leads to this illuminated by everlasting meaning and by providence.Teleological and Scientific Interpretations are Alike Necessary.(7.) Thus religion confidently subjects the world to a teleological interpretation. And to a teleological study in this sense the strictly causal interpretations of natural science are not hostile, but indispensable. For how do things stand? Natural science endeavours by persistent labour to comprehend the whole of the facts occurring in our world, up to the existence of man, as the final outcome and result of an age-long process of evolution, attempts also to follow this process ever higher up the ladder of strictly causal and strictly law-governed sequences, and finally to connect it with the primary and simplest fundamental facts of existence, beyond which it cannot go, and which must simply be[pg 083]accepted as“given.”If these results of this causally interpreted evolution reveal themselves to our inward power of valuation as full of meaning and value, indeed of the deepest and most incomparable value, the causal mode of explanation is in no way affected, but its results are all at once placed in a new light and reveal a peculiarity which was previously not discoverable, yet which is their highest import. They become a strictly united system ofmeans. And purposefulness as a potentiality is thus carried back to the very foundation and“beginning,”to the fundamental conditions and primary factors of the cosmos itself. The strict nexus of conditions and causes is thus nothing more than the“endeavour after end and aim,”the carrying through and realisation of the eternal purpose, which was implicit potentially in the fundamental nature of things. The absolute obedience to law, and the inexorableness of chains of sequence are, instead of being fatal to this position, indispensable to it. When there is a purpose in view, it is only where the system of means is perfect, unbroken, and absolute, that the purpose can be realised, and therefore that intention can be inferred. In the inexplicable datum of the fundamental factors of the world's existence, in the strict nexus of causes, in the unfailing occurrence of the results which are determined by both these, and which reveal themselves to us as of value and purpose, teleology and providence are directly realised. The only assumptions are, that it is possible to judge the results[pg 084]according to their value, and that both the original nature of the world and the system of its causal sequences—that is, the world as we know it—can be conceived of in accordance with the ideas of dependence and conditionedness. Both assumptions are not only possible, but necessary.In thinking out this most general consideration, we find the real and fundamental answer to the question as to the validity and freedom of the religious conception of the world with regard to teleology in nature. And if it be held fast and associated with the insight into the autonomy of the spiritual and its underivability from the natural, we are freed at once from all the petty strife with the naturalistic doctrines of evolution, descent, and struggle for existence. We shall nevertheless be obliged to discuss these to some extent, because it is not a matter of indifference whether the detailed study of natural evolution fits in more or less easily with the conception of purpose whose validity we have demonstrated in general. If that proves to be the case, it will be an important factor in apologetics. The conclusion which we have already arrived at on abstract grounds will then be corroborated and emphasised in the concrete.[pg 085]

Chapter III. Fundamental Principles.The fundamental convictions of naturalism, its general tendencies, and the points of view which determine its outlook, are primarily related to that order of facts which forms the subject of the natural sciences, to“Nature.”It is only secondarily that it attempts to penetrate with the methods of the natural sciences into the region of the conscious, of the mind, into the domain that underlies the mental sciences, including history and the æsthetic, political, and religious sciences, and to show that, in this region as in the other, natural law and the same principles of interpretation obtain, that here, too, the“materialistic conception of history holds true, and that there is no autonomy of mind.”The interests of religion here go hand in hand with those of the mental sciences, in so far as these claim to be distinct and independent. For the question is altogether one of the reality, pre-eminence, and independence of the spiritual as opposed to the“natural.”Occasionally it has been thought that the whole problem of the relations between religion and naturalism was concentrated on this point, and the study of nature has[pg 035]been left to naturalism as if it were indifferent or even hopeless, thus leaving a free field for theories of all kinds, the materialistic included. It is only in regard to the Darwinian theory of evolution and the mechanical theory of the origin and nature of life, and particularly in regard to the relatively unimportant question of“spontaneous generation”that a livelier interest is usually awakened. But these isolated theories are only a part of the“reduction,”which is characteristic of naturalism, and they can only be rightly estimated and understood in connection with it. We shall turn our attention to them only after we have carefully considered what is fundamental and essential. But the idea that religion may calmly neglect the study of nature as long as naturalism leaves breathing-room for the freedom and independence of mind is quite erroneous. If religion is true, nature must be of God, and it must bear tokens which allow us to interpret it as of God. And such signs are to be found. What we shall have to say in regard to them may be summed up in the following propositions:—1. Even the world, which has been brought under the reign of scientific laws, is a mystery; it has beenformulated, but notexplained.2. The world governed by law is still dependent, conditioned, and“contingent.”3. The conception of Nature as obedient to law is not excluded but rather demanded by belief in God.4, 5. We cannot comprehend the true nature and[pg 036]depth of things, and the world which we do comprehend is not the true Reality of things; it is only its appearance. In feeling and intuition this appearance points beyond itself to the true nature of things.6. Ideas and purposes, and with them Providence and the control of things, can neither be established by the natural sciences nor disputed by them.7. The causal interpretation demanded by natural science fits in with an explanation according to purpose, and the latter presupposes the former.How the Religious and the Naturalistic Outlooks Conflict.Religion comes into contact with naturalism and demands to be reconciled with it, not merely at its periphery, but at its very core, namely, with its characteristic ideal of a mathematical-mechanical interpretation of the whole world. This ideal seems to be most nearly, if not indeed completely, attained in reference to the inter-relations of the great masses, in the realm of astronomy, with the calculable, inviolable, and entirely comprehensible conditions which govern the purely mechanical correlations of the heavenly bodies. To bring the same clearness and intelligibility, the same inevitableness and calculability into the world in general, and into the whole realm of nature down to the mysterious law determining the development of the daintiest insect's wing, and the stirrings of the grey matter in the[pg 037]cortex of the brain which reveal themselves to us as sensation, desire, and thought, this has always been the aim and secret faith of the naturalistic mode of thought. It is thus aiming at a Cosmos of all Being and Becoming, which can be explained from itself, and comprehended in itself alone, supported by its own complete and all-sufficing causality and uniformity, resting in itself, shut up within itself, complete in itself—a God sufficient unto himself and resting in himself.We do not need to probe very deeply to find out how strongly religion resists this attempt, and we easily discover what is the disturbing element which awakens hostile feeling. It is of three kinds, and depends on three characteristic aims and requirements of religion, which are closely associated with one another, yet distinct from one another, though it is not always easy to represent them in their true proportions and relative values. The first of these interests seems to be“teleology,”the search after guiding ideas and purposes, after plan and directive control in the whole machinery, that sets itself in sharp opposition to a mere inquiry into proximate causes. Little or nothing is gained by knowing how everything came about or must have come about; all interest lies in the fact that everything has come about in such a way that it reveals intention, wisdom, providence, and eternal meaning, realising itself in details and in the whole. This has always been rightly regarded as the true concern and interest of every religious conception of the world. But it has[pg 038]been sometimes forgotten that this is by no means the only, or even the primary interest that religion has in world-lore. We call it its highest and ultimate interest, but we find, on careful study, that two others are associated with and precede it.For before all belief in Providence and in the divine meaning of the world, indeed before faith at all, religion is primarily feeling—a deep, humble consciousness of the entire dependence and conditionality of our existence, and of all things. The belief we have spoken of is, in relation to this feeling, merely a form—as yet not in itself religious. It is not only the question“Have the world and existence a meaning, and are phenomena governed by ideas and purposes?”that brings religion and its antagonists into contact; there is a prior and deeper question. Is there scope for this true inwardness of all religion, the power to comprehend itself and all the world in humility in the light of that which is not of the world, but is above world and existence? But this is seriously affected by that doctrine which attempts to regard the Cosmos as self-governing and self-sufficing, needing nothing, and failing in nothing. It is this and not Darwinism or the descent from a Simian stock that primarily troubles the religious spirit. It is more specially sensitive to the strange and antagonistic tendency of naturalism shown even in that marvellous and terrifying mathematical-mechanical system of the great heavenly bodies, in this clock of the universe which, in obedience to clear and[pg 039]inviolable laws, carries on its soundless play from everlasting to everlasting, needing no pendulum and no pedestal, without any stoppage and without room for dependence on anything outside of itself, apparently entirely godless, but absolutely reason and God enough for itself. It shrinks in terror from the thought that the same autonomy and self-regulation may be brought down from the stage of immensity into the play of everyday life and events.But we must penetrate still deeper. Schleiermacher has directed our attention anew to the fact that the most profound element in religion is that deep-lying consciousness of all creatures,“I that am dust and ashes,”that humble feeling of the absolute dependence of every being in the world on One that is above all the world. But religion does not fully express itself even in this; there is yet another note that sounds still deeper and is the keynote of the triad.“Let a man examine himself.”Is it not the case that we ourselves, in as far as the delight in knowledge and the enthusiasm for solving riddles have taken hold of us, rejoice in every new piece of elucidation and interpretation that science succeeds in making, that we are in the fullest sympathy with the impulse to understand everything and bring reason and clearness into it, and that we give hearty adherence to the leading ideas which guide the investigations of natural science? Yet on the other hand, in as far as we are religious, do we not sometimes feel a sudden inward recoil from this almost profane eagerness[pg 040]to penetrate into the mystery of things, this desire to have everything intelligible, clear, rational and transparent? This feeling which stirs in us has always existed in all religious minds and will only die with them. And we need not hesitate to say so plainly. For this is the most real characteristic of religion; it seeks depth in things, reaches out towards what is concealed, uncomprehended, and mysterious. It is more than humility; it is piety. And piety is experience of mystery.It is at this point that religion comes most violently into antagonism with the meaning and mood of naturalism. Here they first conflict in earnest. And it is here above all that scientific investigation and its materialistic complement seem to take away freedom and truth, air and light from religion. For science is seeking especially this: Deeper penetration into and illumination of the world. It presses with macroscope and microscope into its most outlying regions and most hidden corners, into its abysses and fastnesses. It explains away the old idea of two worlds, one on this side and one on that, and rejects heavenly things with the notice“No Room”of which D. Fr. Strauss speaks. It aims at discovering the mathematical world-formulæ, if not indeed one great general formula which embraces, defines unequivocally, and rationalises all the processes of and in infinity, from the movements of Sirius to those of the cilia of the infusorian in the drop of water, and which not only crowds“heaven”out of the world,[pg 041]but strips away from things the fringe of the mysterious and incommensurable which seemed to surround them.Mystery : Dependence : Purpose.There is then a threefold religious interest, and there are three corresponding points of contact between the religious and the naturalistic interpretations of the world, where, as it appears, they are necessarily antagonistic to one another. Arranging them in their proper order we find, first, the interest, never to be relinquished, of experiencing and acknowledging the world and existence to be a mystery, and regarding all that is known and manifested in things merely as the thin crust which separates us from the uncomprehended and inexpressible. Secondly, there is the desire on the part of religion to bring ourselves and all creatures into the“feeling of absolute dependence,”and, as the belief in creation does, to subordinate ourselves and them to the Eternal Power that is not of the world, but is above the world. Finally, there is the interest in a teleological interpretation of the world as opposed to the purely causal interpretation of natural science; that is to say, an interpretation of the world according to eternal God-willed purposes, governing ideas, a plan and aim. In all three respects, it is important to religion that it should be able to maintain its validity and freedom as contrasted with naturalism.But while religion must inquire of itself into the[pg 042]reality of things, with special regard to its own needs, there are two possibilities which may serve to make peace between it and natural science. It may, for instance, be possible that the mathematical-mechanical interpretation of things, even if it be sufficient within its own domain, does not take away from nature the characters which religion seeks and requires in it, namely, purpose, dependence and mystery. Or it may be that nature itself does not correspond at all to this ideal of mathematical explicability, that this ideal may be well enough as a guide for investigation, but that it is not a fundamental clue really applying to nature as a whole and in its essence. It may be that nature as a whole cannot be scientifically summed up without straining the mechanical categories. And this suggests another possibility, namely, that the naturalistic method of interpretation cannot be applied throughout the whole territory of nature, that it embraces certain aspects but not others, and, finally, that it is distinctly interrupted and held in abeyance at particular points by the incommensurable which breaks forth spontaneously out of the depths of phenomena, revealing a depth which is not to be explained away.All these possibilities occur. And though they need not necessarily be regarded as the key to our order of discussion, in what follows we shall often meet them singly or together.[pg 043]The Mystery of Existence Remains Unexplained.1. Let us begin with the problem of the mystery of all existence, and see whether it remains unaffected, or whether it disappears in face of naturalistic interpretation, with its discovery and formulation of law and order, with its methods of measuring and computing. More primary even than faith and heartfelt trust in everlasting wisdom and purposeful Providence there is piety; there is devout sense of awe before the marvellous and mysterious, before the depth and the hidden nature of all things and all being, before unspeakable mysteries over which we hover, and abysmal depths over which we are borne. In a world which had not these, and could not be first felt in this way, religion could not live at all. It could not sail on its too shallow waters, or breathe its too thin air. It is indeed a fact that what alone we can fitly speak of and love as religion—the sense of mystery and the gentle shuddering of piety before the depth of phenomena and their everlasting divine abysses,—has its true place and kingdom in the world of mind and history, with its experiences, riddles, and depths. But mystery is to be found in the world of nature as well. It is only to a very superficial study that it could appear as though nature were, or ever could become, plain and obvious, as if the veil of Isis which shrouds its depths from all investigation could ever be torn away. From this point of view it would make no[pg 044]difference even though the attempt to range the whole realm of nature under the sway of inviolable laws were to be immediately successful. This is expressed in the first of our main propositions (p.35).In order to realise this it is necessary to reflect for a little on the relation of“explanation”and“description”to one another, and on what is meant by“establishing laws”and“understanding”in general. The aim of all investigation is to understand the world. To understand it obviously means something more than merely to know it. It is not enough for us to know things, that is, to know what, how many, and what different kinds of things there are. On the contrary, we want to understand them, to know how they came to be as they are, and why they are precisely as they are. The first step towards this understanding is merely to know, that is, we must rightly apprehend and disentangle the things and processes of the world, grouping them, and describing them adequately and exhaustively.But what I have merely described I have not yet understood; I am only preparing to try to understand it. It stands before me enveloped in all its mystery, and I must now begin to attempt to solve it, for describing is not explaining; it is only challenging explanation. The next step is to discover and formulate the laws. For when man sifts out things and processes and follows them out into their changes and stages he discovers the iron regularity of sequences, the strictly defined lines and paths, the inviolable order and connection[pg 045]in things and occurrences, and he formulates these into laws, ascribing to them the idea of necessity which he finds in himself. In so doing he makes distinct progress, for he can now go beyond what is actually seen, he can draw inferences with certainty as to effects and work back to causes. And thus order, breadth of view, and uniformity are brought into his acquaintance with facts, and his science begins. For science does not merely mean acquaintance with phenomena in their contingent or isolated occurrence, manifold and varied as that may be; it is the discovery and establishment of the laws and general modes of occurrence. Without this we might collect curiosities, but we should not have science. And to discover this network of uniformities throughout all phenomena, in the movements of the heavenly bodies and in the living substance of the cell alike, is the primary aim of all investigation. We are still far away from this goal, and it is more than questionable whether we shall ever reach it.But if the goal should ever be reached, if, in other words, we should ever be able to say with certainty what must result if occurrencesaandbare given, or whataandbmust have been whencoccurs, would explanation then have taken the place of description? Or would understanding have replaced mystery? Obviously not at all. It has indeed often been supposed that this would be the case. People have imagined they have understood, when they have seen that[pg 046]“that is always so, and that it always happens in this particular way.”But this is a naïve idea. The region of the described has merely become larger, and the riddle has become more complex. For now we have before us not only the things themselves, but the more marvellous laws which“govern”them. But laws are not forces or impelling causes. They do not cause anything to happen, and they do not explain anything. And as in the case of things so in that of laws, we want to know how they are, whence they come, and why they are as they are and not quite different. The fact that we have described them simply excites still more strongly the desire to explain them. To explain is to be able to answer the question“Why?”Natural science is very well aware of this. It calls its previous descriptions“merely historical,”and it desires to supplement these with ætiology, causal explanation, a deeper interpretation, that in its turn will make laws superfluous, because it will penetrate so deeply into the nature of things that it will see precisely why these, and not other laws of variation, of development, of becoming, hold sway. This is just the meaning of the“reductions”of which we have already spoken. For instance, in regard to crystal formation,“explanation”will have replaced description only when, instead of demonstrating the forms and laws according to which a particular crystal always and necessarily arises out of a particular solution, we are able to show why, from a particular mixture and because[pg 047]of certain co-operating molecular forces, and of other more primary, more remote, but also intelligible conditions, these forms and processes of crystallisation should always and of necessity occur. If this explanation were possible, the“law”would also be explained, and would therefore become superfluous. From this and similar examples we can learn at what point“explanation”begins to replace description, namely, when processes resolve themselves into simpler processes from the concurrence of which they arise. This is exactly what natural science desires to bring about, and what naturalism hopes ultimately to succeed in, thereby solving the riddle of existence.But this kind of reduction to simpler terms only becomes“explanation”when these simpler terms are themselves clear and intelligible and not merely simple; that is to say, when we can immediately see why the simpler process occurs, and by what means it is brought about, when the question as to the“why”is no longer necessary, because, on becoming aware of the process, we immediately and directly perceive that it is a matter of course, indisputable, and requiring no proof. If this is not the case, the reduction to simpler terms has been misleading. We have only replaced one unintelligibility by another, one description by another, and so simply pushed back the whole problem. Naturalism supposes that by this gradual pushing back the task will at least become more and more simple, until at last a point is reached where the riddle will solve[pg 048]itself, because description becomes equivalent to explanation. This final stage is supposed to be found in the forces of attraction and repulsion, with which the smallest similar particles of matter are equipped. Out of the endlessly varied correlations of these there arise all higher forms of energy and all the combinations which make up more complex phenomena.But in reality this does not help us at all. For now we are definitely brought face to face with the quite unanswerable question, How, from all this homogeneity and unity of the ultimate particles and forces, can we account for the beginnings of the diversity which is so marked a characteristic of this world? Whence came the causes of the syntheses to higher unities, the reasons for the combination into higher resultants of energy?But even apart from that, it is quite obvious that we have not yet reached the ultimate point. For can“attraction,”influence at a distance,vis a fronte, be considered as a fact which is in itself clear? Is it not rather the most puzzling fundamental riddle we can be called upon to explain? Assuredly. And therefore the attempt is made to penetrate still deeper to the ultimate point, the last possible reduction to simpler terms, by referring all actual“forces”and reducing all movement, and therewith all“action,”to terms of attraction and repulsion, which are free from anything mysterious, whose mode of working can be unambiguously and plainly set forth in the law of the parallelogram of forces. Law? Set forth? Therefore still[pg 049]only description? Certainly only description, not explanation in the least. Even assuming that it is true, instead of a mere Utopia, that all the secrets and riddles of nature can be traced back to matter moved by attraction and repulsion according to the simplest laws of these, they would still only be summed up into a great general riddle, which is only the more colossal because it is able to embrace all others within itself. For attraction and repulsion, the transference of motion, and the combination of motion according to the law of the parallelogram of forces—all this is merely description of processes whose inner causes we do not understand, which appear simple, and are so, but are nevertheless not self-evident or to be taken as a matter of course; they are not in themselves intelligible, but form an absolute“world-riddle.”From the very root of things there gazes at us the same Sphinx which we had apparently driven from the foreground.But furthermore, this reduction to simpler terms is an impossible and never-ending task. There is fresh confusion at every step. In reducing to simpler terms, it is often forgotten that the principle of combination is not inherent in the more simple, and cannot be“reduced.”Or else there is an ignoring of the fact that a transition has been made, not from resultants to components, but to quite a different kind of phenomena. Innumerable as are the possible reductions to simpler terms, and mistaken as it would be to remain prematurely at the level of description, it cannot be denied[pg 050]that the fundamental facts of the world are pure facts which must simply be accepted where they occur, indisputable, inexplicable, impenetrable, the“whence”and the“how”of their existence quite uncomprehended. And this is especially true of every new and peculiar expression of what we call energy and energies. Gravitation cannot be reduced to terms of attraction and repulsion, nor action at a distance to action at close quarters; it might, indeed, be shown that repulsion in its turn presupposes attraction before it can become possible; the“energies”of ponderable matter cannot be reduced to the“ether”and its processes of motion, nor the complex play of the chemical affinities to the attraction of masses in general or to gravity. And thus the series ascends throughout the spheres of nature up to the mysterious directive energies in the crystal, and to the underivable phenomena of movement in the living substance, perhaps even to the functions of will-power. All these can be discovered, but not really understood. They can be described, but not explained. And we are absolutely ignorant as to why they should have emerged from the depth of nature, what that depth really is, or what still remains hidden in her mysterious lap. Neither what nature reveals to us nor what it conceals from us is in any true sense“comprehended,”and we flatter ourselves that we understand her secrets when we have only become accustomed to them. If we try to break the power of this accustomedness and to[pg 051]consider the actual relations of things there dawns in us a feeling already awakened by direct impressions and experience; the feeling of the mysterious and enigmatical, of the abyssmal depths beneath, and of what lies far above our comprehension, alike in regard to our own existence and every other. The world is at no point self-explanatory, but at all points marvellous. Its laws are only formulated riddles.Evolution and New Beginnings.All this throws an important light upon two subjects which are relevant in this connection, but which cannot here be exhaustively dealt with,—evolution and new beginnings. Let us consider, for instance, the marvellous range and diversity of the characteristic chemical properties and interrelations of substances. Each one of them, contrasted with the preceding lower forms and stages of“energy,”contrasted with mere attraction, repulsion, gravitation, is something absolutely new, a new interpolation (of course not in regard to time but to grade), a phenomenon which cannot be“explained”by what has gone before. It simply occurs, and we find it in its own time and place. We may call this new emergence“evolution,”and we may use this term in connection with every new stage higher than those preceding it. But it is not evolution in a crude and quantitative sense, according to which the“more highly evolved”is nothing more than an[pg 052]addition and combination of what was already there; it is evolution in the old sense of the word, according to which the more developed is a higher analogue of the less developed, but is in its own way as independent, as much a new beginning as each of the antecedent stages, and therefore in the strict sense neither derivable from them nor reducible to them.It must be noted that in this sense evolution and new beginnings are already present at a very early stage in nature and are part of its essence. We must bear this in mind if we are rightly to understand the subtler processes in nature which we find emerging at a higher level. It is illusory to suppose that it is a“natural”assumption to“derive”the living from lower processes in nature. The non-living and the inorganic are also underivable as to their individual stages, and the leap from the inorganic to the organic is simply much greater than that from attraction in general to chemical affinity. As a matter of fact, the first occurrence—undoubtedly controlled and conditioned by internal necessity—of crystallisation, or of life, or of sensation has just the same marvellousness as everything individual and everything new in any ascending series in nature. In short, every new beginning has the same marvel.Perhaps this consideration goes still deeper, throwing light upon or suggesting the proper basis for a study of the domain of mind and of history. It is immediately obvious that there, at any rate, we enter into a[pg 053]region of phenomena which cannot be derived from anything antecedent, or reduced to anything lower. It must be one of the chief tasks of naturalism to explain away these facts, and to maintain the sway of“evolution,”not in our sense but in its own, that is“to explain”everything new and individual from that which precedes it. But the assertion that this can be done is here doubly false. For, in the first place, it cannot be proved that methods of study which are relatively valid for natural phenomena are applicable also to those of the mind. And in the second place we must admit that even in nature—apart from mind—we have to do with new beginnings which are underivable from their antecedents.All being is inscrutable mystery as a whole, and from its very foundations upwards through each successively higher stage of its evolution, in an increasing degree, until it reaches a climax in the incomprehensibility of individuality. It is a mystery that does not force itself into nature as supernatural or miraculous, but is fundamentally implicit in it, a mystery that in its unfolding assuredly follows the strictest law, the most inviolable rules, whether in the chemical affinities a higher grade of energies reveals itself, or whether—unquestionably also in obedience to everlasting law—the physical and chemical conditions admit of the occurrence of life, or whether in his own time and place a genius arises.1[pg 054]The Dependence of the Order of Nature.(2 and 3). The“dependence”of all things is the second requirement of religion, without which it is altogether inconceivable. We avoid the words“creation”and“being created,”because they involve anthropomorphic and altogether insufficient modes of representation. But throughout we have in mind, as suggested by Schleiermacher's[pg 055]expression already quoted, what all religion means when it declares nature and the world to becreatures. The inalienable content of this idea is that deep and assured feeling that our nature and all nature does not rest in its own strength and self-sufficiency, that there must be more secure reasons for nature which are absolutely outside of it, and that it is dependent upon, and conditioned through and through by something above itself, independent, and unconditioned.“I believe that God has created me together with all creatures.”(Luther.)This faith seemed easier in earlier times, when men's eyes were not yet opened to see the deep-lying connectedness of all phenomena, the inexorableness of causal sequences, when it was believed that, in the apparently numerous interruptions of the causal sequences, the frailty and dependence of this world and its need for heavenly aid could be directly observed, when, therefore, it was not difficult to believe that the world was“nothing”and perishable, that it had been called forth out of nothing, and that in its transient nature it carried for ever the traces of this origin. But to-day it is not so easy to believe in this dependence, for nature seems to show itself, in its inviolable laws and unbroken sequences, as entirely sufficient unto itself, so that for every phenomenon a sufficient cause is to be found within nature, that is, in the sum of the antecedent states and conditions which, according to inevitable laws, must result in and produce what follows.[pg 056]We have already noted that this is most obviously discernible in the world of the great masses, the heavenly bodies which pursue their courses from everlasting to everlasting, mutually conditioning themselves and betraying no need for or dependence upon anything outside of themselves. Everything, even the smallest movement, is here determined strictly by the dependence of each upon all and of all upon each. There is no variation, no change of position for which an entirely satisfactory cause cannot be found in the system as a whole, which works like an immense machine. Nothing indicates dependence upon anything external. And as it is to-day so it was yesterday, and a million years ago, and innumerable millions of years ago. It seems quite gratuitous to suppose that something which does not occur to-day was necessary at an earlier period, and that everything has not been from all eternity just as it is now.We saw that naturalism is attempting to extend this character of independence and self-sufficiency from the astronomical world to the world as a whole. Shall we attempt, then, to oppose it in this ambition, but surrender the realm of the heavenly bodies as already conquered? By no means. For religion cannot exclude the solar system from the dependence of all being upon God. And this very example is the most conspicuous one, the one in regard to which the whole problem can be most definitely formulated.Astronomy teaches us that all cosmic processes are[pg 057]governed by a marvellous far-reaching uniformity of law, which unites in strictest harmony the nearest and the most remote. Has this fact any bearing upon the problem of the dependence of the world? No. It surely cannot be that a world without order could be brought under the religious point of view more readily than one governed by law! Let us suppose for a moment that we had to do with a world without strict nexus and definite order of sequence, without law and without order, full of capricious phenomena, unregulated associations, an inconstant play of causes. Such a world would be to us unintelligible, strange, absurd. But it would not necessarily be more“dependent,”more“conditioned”than any other. Had I no other reasons for looking beyond the world, and for regarding it as dependent on something outside of itself, the absence of law and order would assuredly furnish me with none. For, assuming that it is possible at all to conceive of a world and its contents as independent, and as containing its own sufficient cause within itself, it would be quite as easily thought of as a confused lawless play of chances as a well-ordered Cosmos. Perhaps more easily; for it goes without saying that such a conglomeration of promiscuous chances could not possibly be thought of as a world of God. Order and strict obedience to law, far from being excluded, are required by faith in God, are indeed a direct and inevitable preliminary to thinking of the world as dependent upon God. Thus we may state the paradox, that only a[pg 058]Cosmos which, by its strict obedience to law, gives us the impression of being sufficient unto itself, can be conceived of as actually dependent upon God, as His creation. If any man desires to stop short at the consideration of the apparent self-sufficiency of the Cosmos and its obedience to law, and refuses to recognise any reasons outside of the world for this, we should hardly be able, according to our own proposition, to require him to go farther. For we maintained that God could not be read out of nature, that the idea of God could never have been gained in the first instance from a study of nature and the world. The problem always before us is rather, whether, having gained the idea from other sources, we can include the world within it. Our present question is whether the world, as it is, and just because it is as it is, can be conceived of as dependent upon God. And this question can only be answered in the affirmative, and in the sense of Schiller's oft-quoted lines:The great CreatorWe see not—He conceals himself withinHis own eternal laws. The sceptic seesTheir operation, but beholds not Him,“Wherefore a God!”he cries,“the world itselfSuffices for itself!”and Christian prayerNe'er praised him more, than does this blasphemy.God's world could not possibly be a conglomeration of chances; it must be orderly, and the fact that it is so proves its dependence.But while we thus hold fast to our canon, we shall[pg 059]find that the assertion of the world's dependence receives indirect corroboration even in regard to the astronomical realm, from certain signs which it exhibits, from certain suggestions which are implied in it. We must not wholly overlook two facts which, to say the least, are difficult to fit in with the idea of the independence and self-sufficiency of the world; these are, on the one hand, the difficulties involved in the idea of an eternal machine, and on the other the difficult fact of“entropy.”We have already compared the world to a mighty clock, or a machine which, as a whole, represents what can never be found in one of its parts, aperpetuum mobile. Let us however leave aside the idea of aperpetuum mobile, and dwell rather on the comparison with a machine. It seems obvious that in order to be a machine there must be a closed solidarity in the system. But how could a machine have come into existence and become functional if it is driven by wheels, which are driven by wheels, which are again driven by wheels ... and so on unceasingly? It would not be a machine. The idea falls to pieces in our hands. Yet our world is supposed to be just such an infinitely continuous“system.”How does it begin to depend upon and be sufficient unto itself? But further. It is a clock, we are told, which ever winds itself up anew, which, without fatigue and in ceaseless repetition, adjusts the universal cycles of becoming, and disappearing, and becoming again. It seems a corroboration of the old Heraclitian and Stoic conception, that the eternal primitive fire brings forth[pg 060]all things out of itself, and takes them back into itself to bring them forth anew. Even to-day the conception is probably general that, out of the original states of the world-matter, circling fiery nebulæ form themselves and throw off their rings, that the breaking up of these rings gives rise to planets which circle in solar systems for many æons through space, till, finally, their energy lessened by friction with the ether, they plunge into their suns again, that the increased heat restores the original state and the whole play begins anew.All this was well enough in the days of naïvely vitalistic ideas of the world as having a life and soul. But not in these days of mechanics, the strict calculation of the amount of energy used, and the mechanical theory of heat. The world-clock cannot wind itself up. It, too, owes its activity to the transformation of potential energy into kinetic energy. And, since movement and work take place within it, there is in the clock as a whole just as in every one of its parts, a mighty process of relaxation of an originally tense spring, there is dissipation and transformation of the stored potential energy into work and ultimately into heat. And with every revolution of the earth and its moon the world is moving slowly but inexorably towards a final stage of complete relaxation of her powers of tension, a state in which all energy will be transformed into heat, in which there will be no different states but only the most uniform distribution, in which also all[pg 061]life and all movement will cease and the world-clock itself will come to a standstill.How does this fit in with the idea of independence and self-sufficiency? How could the world-clock ever wind itself up again to the original state of tension which was simply there as if shot from a pistol“in the beginning”? Where is the everlasting impressive uniformity and constancy of the world? How does it happen that the world-clock has not long ago come to a standstill? For even if the original sum of potential energy is postulated as infinite, the eternity that lies behind us is also infinite. And so one infinity swallows another. And innumerable questions of a similar kind are continually presenting themselves.The“Contingency”of the World.But we need not dwell in the meantime on these and the many other difficulties and riddles presented by our cosmological hypothesis. However these may be solved, a general consideration will remain—namely, that whether the world is governed by law or not, whether it is sufficient unto itself or not, thereisa world full of the most diverse phenomena, and therearelaws. Whence then have both these come? Is it a matter of course, is it quite obvious that they should exist at all, and that they should be exactly as they are? We do not here appeal without further ceremony to the saying“everything must have a cause, therefore the world also.”It[pg 062]is not absolutely correct. For instance, if the world were so constituted that it would be impossible for it not to exist, that the necessity for its existence and the inconceivability of its non-existence were at once explicit and obvious, then there would be no sense in inquiring after a cause. In regard to a“necessary”thing, if there were any such, we cannot ask,“Why, and from what cause does this exist?”If it was necessary, that implies that to think of it as not existing would be ridiculous, and logically or metaphysically impossible. Unfortunately there are no“necessary”things, so that we cannot illustrate the case by examples. But there are at least necessary truths as distinguished from contingent truths. And thus some light may be brought into the matter for the inexpert. For instance, a necessary truth is contained in the sentence,“Everything is equal to itself,”or,“The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.”We cannot even conceive of the contrary. Therefore these axioms have no reasons, and can neither be deduced nor proved. Every question as to their reasons is quite meaningless. As examples of a“contingent”truth we may take“It rains to-day,”or“The earth revolves round the sun.”For neither one nor the other of these is necessarily so. It is so as a matter of fact, but under other circumstances it might have been otherwise. The contrary can be conceived of and represented, and has in itself an equal degree of possibility. Therefore such a fact requires to[pg 063]be and is capable of being reasoned out. I can and must ask,“How does it happen that it rains to-day? What are the reasons for it?”But as we must seek for sufficient reasons for“contingent”truths, that is, for those of which the contrary was equally possible, so assuredly we must seek for sufficient causes for“contingent”phenomena and events, those which can be thought of as not existing, or as existing in a different form. For these we must find causes and actual reasons. Otherwise they have no foundation. The element of“contingency”must be done away with; they must be shown to result from sufficient causes. That is to say nothing less than that they must be traced back to some necessity. For it is one of the curious fundamental convictions of our reason, and one in which all scientific investigation has its ultimate roots, that what is“contingent”is only apparently so, and in reality is in some way or other based on necessity. Therefore reason seeks causes for everything.The search for causes involves showing that a thing was necessary. And this must obviously apply to the world as a whole. If it were quite obvious that the world and its existence as it is were necessary, that is, that it would be contrary to reason to think of the world, and its phenomena, and their obedience to law as non-existent, or as different from what they are, all inquiry would be at an end. This would betheultimate necessity in which all the apparent contingency of isolated phenomena and existences was firmly based.[pg 064]But this is far from being the case. That anything exists, and that the world exists, is for us absolutely the greatest“contingency”of all, and in regard to it we can and must continually ask,“Why does anything exist at all, and why should it not rather be non-existent?”Indeed, all our quest for sufficient causes here reaches its climax. In more detail: that these celestial systems and bodies, the ether, attraction and gravitation should exist, and that everything should be governed by definite laws, all literally“as if shot from a pistol,”there must undoubtedly be some sufficient reason, certain as it is that we shall never discover it. It is true, as some one has said, that we live not only in a very fortuitous world, but in an incredibly improbable one. And this is not affected by the fact that the world is completely governed by law. Law only confirms it. The fact that all details may be clearly and mathematically calculated in no way prevents them from being fundamentally contingent. For they are only so calculable on the basis of the given fundamental characters of the world. And that is precisely the problem:“Why do these characters exist and not quite different ones, and why should any exist at all?”If any one should say:“Well, we must just content ourselves with recognising the essentially‘contingent’nature of existence, for we shall never be able to get beyond that,”he would be right in regard to the second statement. To get beyond that and to see what it is—eternal[pg 065]and in itself necessary—that lies at the basis of this world of“contingency”is indeed impossible. But he would be wrong as to the first part of the assertion. For no onewill“content himself.”For that all chance is only apparently chance, and is ultimately based in necessity, is a deeply-rooted and fundamental conviction of our reason, one which directs all scientific investigation, and which cannot be ignored. It demands ceaselessly something necessary as the permanent basis of contingent existence. And this fact is and remains the truth involved in the“cosmological proofs of the existence of God”of former days. It was certainly erroneous to suppose that“God”could be proved. For it is a long way from that“idea of necessity”to religious experience of God. And it was erroneous, too, to suppose that anything could be really“proved.”What is necessary can never really be proved from what is contingent. But the recognition of the contingent nature of the world is a stimulus that stirs up within our reason the idea of the necessary, and it is a fact that reason finds rest only in this idea.The Real World.(4.) What was stated separately in our first and second propositions, and has hitherto been discussed, now unites and culminates in the fourth. For if we note the vital expressions of religion wherever it occurs, we find above all one thing as its most characteristic sign,[pg 066]indeed as its very essence, in all places and all times, often only as a scarce uttered wish or longing, but often breaking forth with impetuous might. This one thing is the impulse and desire to get beyond time and space, and beyond the oppressive narrowness and crampingness of the world surrounding us, the desire to see into the depth and“other side”of things and of existence. For it is the very essence of religion to distinguish this world from, and contrast it as insufficient with the real world which is sufficient, to regard this world which we see and know and possess as only an image, as only transiently real, in contrast with the real world of true being which is believed in. Religion has clothed this essential feature in a hundred mythologies and eschatologies, and one has always given place to another, the more sublimed to the more robust. But the fundamental feature itself cannot disappear.In apologetics and dogmatics the interest in this matter is often concentrated more or less exclusively upon the question of“immortality.”Wrongly so, however, for this quest after the real world is not a final chapter in religion, it is religion itself. And in the religious sense the question of immortality is only justifiable and significant when it is a part of the general religious conviction that this world is not the truly essential world, and that the true nature of things, and of our own being, is deeper than we can comprehend, and lies beyond this side of things, beyond[pg 067]time and space. To the religious mind it cannot be of great importance whether existence is to be continued for a little at least beyond this life. In what way would such a wish be religious? But the inward conviction that“all that is transitory is only a parable,”that all here is only a veil and a curtain, and the desire to get beyond semblance to truth, beyond insufficiency to sufficiency, concentrate themselves especially in the assertion of the eternity of our true being.It is with this characteristic of religion that the spirit and method of naturalism contrast so sharply. Naturalism points out with special satisfaction that this depth of things, this home of the soul is nowhere discoverable. The great discoveries of Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton have done away with the possibility of that. No empyrean, no corner of the world remains available. Even the attempted flight to sun, moon, or stars does not help. It is true that the newly discovered world is without end, but, beyond a doubt, in its outermost and innermost depths it is a world of space and time. Even in the stellar abysses“everything is just the same as with us.”All this is doubtless correct, and it is very wholesome for religion. For it prompts religion no longer to seek its treasure, the true nature of things, and its everlasting home in time and space, as the mythologies and eschatologies have sought them repeatedly. It throws religion back on the fundamental insight and on the convictions which it had attained long before[pg 068]philosophy and criticism of knowledge had arrived at similar views: namely, that time and space, and this world of time and space, do not comprise the whole of existence, nor existence as it really is, but are only a manifestation of it to our finite and limited knowledge. Before the days of modern astronomy, and without its help, religion knew that God was not confined to“heaven,”or anywhere in space, and that time as it is for us was not for Him. Even in the terms“eternity”and“infinity”it shows an anticipatory knowledge of a being and reality above time and space. These ideas were not gained from a contemplation of nature, but before it and from independent sources.But though it is by no means the task of apologetics to build up these ideas directly from a study of things, it is of no little importance to inquire whether religion possesses in these convictions only postulates of faith, for which it must laboriously and forcibly make a place in the face of knowledge, or whether a thorough and self-critical knowledge does not rather confirm them, and show us, within the world of knowledge itself, unmistakable signs that it cannot be the true, full reality, but points to something beyond itself.To study this question thoroughly would involve setting forth a special theory of knowledge and existence. This cannot be attempted here. But Kant's great doctrine of the“Antinomy of Reason”has for all time broken up for us the narrowness of the naturalistic way of thinking. Every one who has felt cramped by[pg 069]the narrow limits in which reality was confined by a purely mundane outlook must have experienced the liberating influence of the Kantian Antinomy if he has thought over it carefully. The thick curtain which separates being from appearance seems to be torn away, or at any rate to reveal itself as a curtain. Kant shows that, if we were to take this world as it lies before us for the true reality, we should land in inextricable contradictions. These contradictions show that the true world itself cannot coincide with our thought and comprehension, for in being itself there can be no contradictions. Otherwise it would not exist. The ancient problems of philosophy, from the time of the Eleatic school onwards, find here their adequate formulation. Kant's disciple, Fries, has carried the matter further, and has attempted to develop what for Kant still remained a sort of embarrassment of reason to more precise pronouncements as to the relation of true being to its manifestation,The Antimony of Our Conception of Time.A few examples may serve to make the point clear. The first of the antinomies is also the most impressive. It brings before us the insufficiency of our conceptions of time, and shows the impossibility of transferring, from the world as it appears to us, to real Being any mode of conceiving time which we possess. The difficulty is, whether we are to think of our world as having had a beginning or not. The naïve outlook[pg 070]will at once assume without further ado a beginning of all things. Everything must have had a beginning, though that may have been a very long time ago. But on more careful reflection it is found impossible to imagine this, and then the assumption that things had no beginning is made with as little scruple. Let us suppose that the beginning of things was six thousand, or, what is quite as easy, six thousand billion years ago. We are at once led to ask what there was the year before or many years before, and what there was before that again, and so on until we face the infinite and beginningless. Thus we find that we have never really thought of a beginning of things, and never could think of it, but that our thinking always carries us into the infinite. Time, at any rate, we have thought of as infinite. We may then amuse ourselves by trying to conceive of endless time as empty, but we shall hardly be able to give any reason for arriving at that idea. If time goes back to infinity, it seems difficult to see why it should not always have been filled, instead of only being so filled from some arbitrary point. And in any case the very fact of the existence of time makes the problem of beginning or not beginning insoluble. For such reasons Aristotle asserted that the world had no beginning, and rejected the contrary idea as childish.But the idea of no beginning is also childish or rather impossible, and in reality inconceivable. For if it be assumed that the world and time have never had[pg 071]a beginning, there stretches back from the time at which I now find myself a past eternity. It must have passed completely as a whole, for otherwise this particular point in time could never have been arrived at. So that I must think of an infinity which nevertheless comes to an end. I cannot do this. It would be like wooden iron.The matter sounds simple but is nevertheless difficult in its consequences. It confronts us at once with the fact, confirmed by the theory of knowledge, that time as we know it is an absolutely necessary and fundamental form of our conceptions and knowledge, but is likewise the veil over what is concealed, and cannot be carried over in the same form into the true nature of things. As the limits and contradictions in the time-conception reveal themselves to us, there wakes in us the idea which we accept as the analogue of time in true being, an idea of existence under the form of“eternity,”which, since we are tied down to temporal concepts, cannot be expressed or even thought of with any content.2The Antimony of the Conditioned and the Unconditioned.The antinomy of the conditioned and the unconditioned leads us along similar lines. Every individual finite thing or event is dependent on its causes and[pg 072]conditions, which precede it or co-exist in inter-relation with it. It is conditioned, and is only possible through its conditions. But that implies that it can only occur or be granted when all its conditions are first given in complete synthesis. If any one of them failed, it would not have come about. But every one of its conditioning circumstances is in its turn conditioned by innumerable others, and every one of these again by others, and so on into the infinite, backwards and on all sides, so that here again something without end and incapable of end must have come to an end, and must be thought of as having an end, before any event whatever can really come to pass. But this again is a sheer impossibility for our thinking: we require and must demand something completed, because now is really now, and something happens now, and yet in the world as it appears to us we are always forced to face what cannot have an end.The Antimony of Our Conception of Space.To bring our examples to a conclusion, we find the same sort of antinomy in regard to space, and the world as it is extended in space. Here, too, it becomes apparent that space as we imagine it, and as we carry it with us as a concept for arranging our sense-impressions, cannot correspond to the true reality. As in regard to time, so also in regard to space, we can never after any distance however enormous come to a halt and say,“Here is the end of space.”Whether we think of the diameter[pg 073]of the earth's orbit or the distance to Sirius, and multiply them by a million we always ask,“What lies behind?”and so extend space into the infinite. And as a matter of course we people it also without end with heavenly bodies, stars, nebulae, Milky Ways and the like. For here again there can be no obvious reason why space in our neighbourhood should be filled, while space at a greater distance should be thought of as empty. Therefore we actually think of star beyond star, and, as far as we can reckon, stars beyond that without end. For space extends not merely so far, but always farther. And the number of the stars is not so many, but always one more. This sounds quite obvious, but it has exactly the same impossibility as we found in our“past infinity.”For although we are carried by our conceptions into the infinite, and to what never could have an end, it is impossible to assume the same of reality.It is remarkable and quite characteristic that the whole difficulty and its peculiar nature become much more intelligible to us through the familiar images and expressions of religion. There we readily admit that we cannot comprehend the number of the stars and stellar spaces, because for us they never reach an end, there being always one more; but that in the eyes of God all is embraced in His universality, in a“perfect synthesis,”and that to Him Being is never and in no point“always one more.”God does not count.Without the help of religious expressions we say: Being itself is always itself and never implies any more;[pg 074]for if there were“always one more”it would not be Being. It can only exist“as a perfect synthesis,”which does not mean an endless number, which nevertheless somewhere comes to an end—again wooden iron—but something above all reckoning and beyond all number, as it is beyond space and time. And that which we are able to weigh and measure and number is therefore not reality itself, but only its inadequate manifestation to our limited capacity for understanding.But enough of this. The puzzles in the doctrines of the simple and the complex, of the causeless and the caused, into which this world of ours forces us, should teach us further to recognise it for what it is—insufficient and pointing beyond itself,—to its own transcendent depths. So, too, the problems that arise when we penetrate farther and farther into the ever more and more minute, and the indefiniteness of our thought-horizons in general should have the same effect.Intuitions of Reality.(5.) There are other evidences of this depth and hidden nature of things, towards which an examination of our knowledge points. For“in feeling and intuition appearance points beyond itself to real being.”So ran our fifth proposition. This subject indeed is delicate, and can only be treated of in the hearing of willing ears. But all apologetic counts upon willing ears; it is not conversion of doubters that is aimed at, it is religion which seeks to reassure itself. Our proposition[pg 075]does not speak of dreams but of facts, which are not the less facts because they are more subtle than others. What we are speaking of are the deep impressions, which cannot properly be made commensurable at all, which may spring up directly out of an inward experience, an apprehension of nature, the world and history, in the depths of the spirit. They call forth in us an“anamnesis,”a“reminiscence”in Plato's sense, awakening within us moods and intuitions in which something of the essence and meaning of being is directly experienced, although it remains in the form of feeling, and cannot easily, if at all, find expression in definable ideas or clear statements. Fries, in his book,“Wissen, Glaube, und Ahnung,”unhappily too much forgotten, takes account of this fact, for he places this region of spiritual experience beside the certainties of faith and knowledge, and regards these as“animated”by it. He has in mind especially the impressions of the beautiful and the sublime which far transcend our knowledge of nature, and to which knowledge and its concepts can never do adequate justice, facts though they undoubtedly are. In them we experience directly, in intuitive feeling, that the reality is greater than our power of understanding, and we feel something of its true nature and meaning. The utterances of Schleiermacher3in regard to religion follow the same lines. For this is precisely what he means when he insists[pg 076]that the universe must be experienced in intuition and feeling as well as in knowing and doing. He is less incisive in his expressions than Fries, but wider in ideas. He includes in this domain of“intuitive feeling”not only the aesthetic experiences of the beautiful and sublime, but takes the much more general and comprehensive view, that the receptive mind may gather from the finite impressions of the infinite, and may through its experiences of time gain some conception of the eternal. And he rightly emphasises, that such intuition has its true place in the sphere of mind and in face of the events of history, rather than in the outer court of nature. He, too, lays stress on the fact that doctrinal statements and ideas cannot be formulated out of such subtle material.The experience of which we are speaking may be most directly and impressively gained from the great, the powerful, the sublime in nature. It may be gained from the contemplation of nature's harmonies and beauties, but also of her overflowing abundance and her enigmatical dæmonic strength, from the purposeful intelligibility as well as the terrifying and bewildering enigmas of nature's operations, from all the manifold ways in which the mind is affected and startled, from all the suggestive but indefinable sensations which may be roused in us by the activity of nature, and which rise through a long scale to intoxicated self-forgetfulness and wordless ecstasy before her beauty, and her half-revealed, half-concealed mystery. If any or all of these be stirred up[pg 077]in a mind which is otherwise godless or undevout, it remains an indefinite, vacillating feeling, bringing with it nothing else. But in the religious mind it immediately unites with what is akin to it or of similar nature, and becomes worship. No dogmas or arguments for disputatious reasoning can be drawn from it. It can hardly even be expressed, except, perhaps, in music. And if it be expressed it tends easily to become fantastic or romantic pomposity, as is shown even by certain parts of the writings of Schleiermacher himself.The Recognition of Purpose.(6.) We must now turn to the question of“teleology.”Only now, not because it is a subordinate matter, for it is in reality the main one, but because it is the culminating point, not the starting point, of our argument. If the world be from God and of God, it and all that it contains must be for some definite purpose and for special ends. It must be swayed by eternal ideas, and must be subject to divine providence and guidance. But naturalism, and even, it appears, natural science, declares: Neither purposes nor ideas are of necessity to be assumed in nature. They do not occur either in the details or in the whole. The whole is an absolutely closed continuity of causes, a causal but blind machinery, in regard to which we cannot ask, What is meant to be produced by this? but only, What causes have produced what exists? This opposition goes deep and raises difficulties. And in all vindication or defence[pg 078]of religion it ought rightly to be kept in the foreground of attention, although the points we have already insisted on have been wrongly overlooked. The opposition concentrates itself to-day almost entirely around two theories of naturalism, which do not, indeed, set forth the whole case, but which are certainly typical examples, so that, if we analyse them, we shall have arrived at an orientation of the fundamental points at issue. The two doctrines are Darwinism and the mechanical theory of life, and it is to these that we must now turn our attention. And since the best elucidation and criticism of both theories is to be found in their own history, and in the present state of opinion within their own school, we shall have to combine our study of their fundamental principles with that of their history.We can here set forth, however, only the chief point of view, the gist of the matter, which will continue to exist and hold good however the analysis of details may turn out. For the kernel of the question may be discussed independently, without involving the particular interests of zoology or biology, though we shall constantly come across particular and concrete cases of the main problem in our more detailed study.The struggle against, and the aversion to ideas and purposes on the part of the nature-interpreters is not in itself directed against religion. It does not arise from any antagonism of natural science to the religious conception of the world, but is primarily an antagonism of[pg 079]one school of science to another, the modern against the mediæval-Aristotelian. The latter, again, was not in itself a religious world-outlook, it was simply an attempt at an interpretation of the processes of nature, and especially of evolution, which might be quite neutral towards religion, or might be purely naturalistic. It was the theory of Entelechies andformæ substaniales. In order to explain how a thing had come to be, it taught that the idea of the finished thing, the“form,”was implicit in it from the very beginning, and determined the course of its development. This“form,”the end aimed at in development, was“potentially,”“ideally,”or“virtually”implicit in the thing from the beginning, was thecausa finalis, the ultimate cause which determined the development. Modern natural science objects to this theory that it offers no explanation, but merely gives a name to what has to be explained. The aim of science, it tells us, is to elucidate the play of causes which brought about a particular result. The hypotheticalcausa finalisit regards as a mereasylum ignorantiæ, and as the problem itself not as its solution. For instance, if we inquire into the present form and aspect of the earth, nothing is advanced by stating that the“form,”the primitive model of the evolving earth was implicit in it from the beginning, and that it gradually determined the phases and transition-stages of its evolution, until the ultimate state, the end aimed at, was attained. The task of science is, through geology, geognosy,[pg 080]mineralogy, geodesy, physical geography, meteorology, and other sciences to discover the physical, chemical, and mechanical causes of the earth's evolution and their laws, and from the co-operation of these to interpret everything in detail and as a whole.Whether modern natural science is right in this or not, whether or not it has neglected an element of truth in the old theory of Entelechies which it cannot dispense with, especially in regard to living organisms, it is beyond dispute that, from the most general point of view, and in particular with reference to teleology, religion does not need to concern itself in the least about this opposition.“Purposes,”“ideas,”“guidance”in the religious sense, are quite unaffected by the manner in which the result is realised; everything depends upon the special and particular value of what has been attained or realised. If a concatenation of causes and stages of development lead to results in which we suddenly discern a special and particular value, then, and not till then, have we a reason and criterion for our assumption that it is not simply a result of a play of chances, but that it has been brought about by purposeful thought, by higher intervention and guidance of things. Certainly not before then. Thus we can only speak of purposes, aims, guidance, and creation in so far as we have within us the capacity for feeling and recognising the value, meaning and significance of things. But natural science itself cannot estimate these. It can or will only[pg 081]examine how everything has come about, but whether this result has a higher value than another, or has a lower, or none at all, it can neither assert nor deny. That lies quite outside of its province.Let us try to make this clear by taking at once the highest example—man and his origin. Let it be assumed that natural science could discover all the causes and factors which, operating for many thousands of years, have produced man and human existence. Even if these causes and factors had actually been pure“ideas,”formæ substantialesand the like, that would in no way determine whether the whole process was really subject to a divine idea of purpose or not. If we had not gained, from a different source, an insight into the supreme and incomparable worth of human existence, spiritual, rational, and free, with its capacity for morality, religion, art and science, we should be compelled to regard man, along with every other natural result, as the insignificant product of a blind play of nature. But, on the other hand, if we have once felt and recognised this value of human existence, its highest dignity, the knowledge that man has been produced through a play of highly complex natural processes, fulfilling themselves in absolute obedience to law, in no way prevents our regarding him as a“purpose,”as the realisation of a divine idea, in accordance with which nature in its orderliness was planned. In fact, this consideration leads us to discover and admire eternal plan and divine guidance in nature.[pg 082]For it does not rest with natural science either to discover or to deny“purpose”in the religious sense in nature; it belongs to quite a different order of experience, an entirely inward one. Just in proportion as I become aware of, and acknowledge in the domain of my inward experience and through my capacity of estimating values, the worth of the spiritual and moral life of man, so, with the confidence of this peculiar mode of conviction, I subordinate the concatenations of events and causes on which the possibility and the occurrence of the spiritual and moral life depend, to an eternal teleology, and see the order of the world that leads to this illuminated by everlasting meaning and by providence.Teleological and Scientific Interpretations are Alike Necessary.(7.) Thus religion confidently subjects the world to a teleological interpretation. And to a teleological study in this sense the strictly causal interpretations of natural science are not hostile, but indispensable. For how do things stand? Natural science endeavours by persistent labour to comprehend the whole of the facts occurring in our world, up to the existence of man, as the final outcome and result of an age-long process of evolution, attempts also to follow this process ever higher up the ladder of strictly causal and strictly law-governed sequences, and finally to connect it with the primary and simplest fundamental facts of existence, beyond which it cannot go, and which must simply be[pg 083]accepted as“given.”If these results of this causally interpreted evolution reveal themselves to our inward power of valuation as full of meaning and value, indeed of the deepest and most incomparable value, the causal mode of explanation is in no way affected, but its results are all at once placed in a new light and reveal a peculiarity which was previously not discoverable, yet which is their highest import. They become a strictly united system ofmeans. And purposefulness as a potentiality is thus carried back to the very foundation and“beginning,”to the fundamental conditions and primary factors of the cosmos itself. The strict nexus of conditions and causes is thus nothing more than the“endeavour after end and aim,”the carrying through and realisation of the eternal purpose, which was implicit potentially in the fundamental nature of things. The absolute obedience to law, and the inexorableness of chains of sequence are, instead of being fatal to this position, indispensable to it. When there is a purpose in view, it is only where the system of means is perfect, unbroken, and absolute, that the purpose can be realised, and therefore that intention can be inferred. In the inexplicable datum of the fundamental factors of the world's existence, in the strict nexus of causes, in the unfailing occurrence of the results which are determined by both these, and which reveal themselves to us as of value and purpose, teleology and providence are directly realised. The only assumptions are, that it is possible to judge the results[pg 084]according to their value, and that both the original nature of the world and the system of its causal sequences—that is, the world as we know it—can be conceived of in accordance with the ideas of dependence and conditionedness. Both assumptions are not only possible, but necessary.In thinking out this most general consideration, we find the real and fundamental answer to the question as to the validity and freedom of the religious conception of the world with regard to teleology in nature. And if it be held fast and associated with the insight into the autonomy of the spiritual and its underivability from the natural, we are freed at once from all the petty strife with the naturalistic doctrines of evolution, descent, and struggle for existence. We shall nevertheless be obliged to discuss these to some extent, because it is not a matter of indifference whether the detailed study of natural evolution fits in more or less easily with the conception of purpose whose validity we have demonstrated in general. If that proves to be the case, it will be an important factor in apologetics. The conclusion which we have already arrived at on abstract grounds will then be corroborated and emphasised in the concrete.[pg 085]

Chapter III. Fundamental Principles.The fundamental convictions of naturalism, its general tendencies, and the points of view which determine its outlook, are primarily related to that order of facts which forms the subject of the natural sciences, to“Nature.”It is only secondarily that it attempts to penetrate with the methods of the natural sciences into the region of the conscious, of the mind, into the domain that underlies the mental sciences, including history and the æsthetic, political, and religious sciences, and to show that, in this region as in the other, natural law and the same principles of interpretation obtain, that here, too, the“materialistic conception of history holds true, and that there is no autonomy of mind.”The interests of religion here go hand in hand with those of the mental sciences, in so far as these claim to be distinct and independent. For the question is altogether one of the reality, pre-eminence, and independence of the spiritual as opposed to the“natural.”Occasionally it has been thought that the whole problem of the relations between religion and naturalism was concentrated on this point, and the study of nature has[pg 035]been left to naturalism as if it were indifferent or even hopeless, thus leaving a free field for theories of all kinds, the materialistic included. It is only in regard to the Darwinian theory of evolution and the mechanical theory of the origin and nature of life, and particularly in regard to the relatively unimportant question of“spontaneous generation”that a livelier interest is usually awakened. But these isolated theories are only a part of the“reduction,”which is characteristic of naturalism, and they can only be rightly estimated and understood in connection with it. We shall turn our attention to them only after we have carefully considered what is fundamental and essential. But the idea that religion may calmly neglect the study of nature as long as naturalism leaves breathing-room for the freedom and independence of mind is quite erroneous. If religion is true, nature must be of God, and it must bear tokens which allow us to interpret it as of God. And such signs are to be found. What we shall have to say in regard to them may be summed up in the following propositions:—1. Even the world, which has been brought under the reign of scientific laws, is a mystery; it has beenformulated, but notexplained.2. The world governed by law is still dependent, conditioned, and“contingent.”3. The conception of Nature as obedient to law is not excluded but rather demanded by belief in God.4, 5. We cannot comprehend the true nature and[pg 036]depth of things, and the world which we do comprehend is not the true Reality of things; it is only its appearance. In feeling and intuition this appearance points beyond itself to the true nature of things.6. Ideas and purposes, and with them Providence and the control of things, can neither be established by the natural sciences nor disputed by them.7. The causal interpretation demanded by natural science fits in with an explanation according to purpose, and the latter presupposes the former.How the Religious and the Naturalistic Outlooks Conflict.Religion comes into contact with naturalism and demands to be reconciled with it, not merely at its periphery, but at its very core, namely, with its characteristic ideal of a mathematical-mechanical interpretation of the whole world. This ideal seems to be most nearly, if not indeed completely, attained in reference to the inter-relations of the great masses, in the realm of astronomy, with the calculable, inviolable, and entirely comprehensible conditions which govern the purely mechanical correlations of the heavenly bodies. To bring the same clearness and intelligibility, the same inevitableness and calculability into the world in general, and into the whole realm of nature down to the mysterious law determining the development of the daintiest insect's wing, and the stirrings of the grey matter in the[pg 037]cortex of the brain which reveal themselves to us as sensation, desire, and thought, this has always been the aim and secret faith of the naturalistic mode of thought. It is thus aiming at a Cosmos of all Being and Becoming, which can be explained from itself, and comprehended in itself alone, supported by its own complete and all-sufficing causality and uniformity, resting in itself, shut up within itself, complete in itself—a God sufficient unto himself and resting in himself.We do not need to probe very deeply to find out how strongly religion resists this attempt, and we easily discover what is the disturbing element which awakens hostile feeling. It is of three kinds, and depends on three characteristic aims and requirements of religion, which are closely associated with one another, yet distinct from one another, though it is not always easy to represent them in their true proportions and relative values. The first of these interests seems to be“teleology,”the search after guiding ideas and purposes, after plan and directive control in the whole machinery, that sets itself in sharp opposition to a mere inquiry into proximate causes. Little or nothing is gained by knowing how everything came about or must have come about; all interest lies in the fact that everything has come about in such a way that it reveals intention, wisdom, providence, and eternal meaning, realising itself in details and in the whole. This has always been rightly regarded as the true concern and interest of every religious conception of the world. But it has[pg 038]been sometimes forgotten that this is by no means the only, or even the primary interest that religion has in world-lore. We call it its highest and ultimate interest, but we find, on careful study, that two others are associated with and precede it.For before all belief in Providence and in the divine meaning of the world, indeed before faith at all, religion is primarily feeling—a deep, humble consciousness of the entire dependence and conditionality of our existence, and of all things. The belief we have spoken of is, in relation to this feeling, merely a form—as yet not in itself religious. It is not only the question“Have the world and existence a meaning, and are phenomena governed by ideas and purposes?”that brings religion and its antagonists into contact; there is a prior and deeper question. Is there scope for this true inwardness of all religion, the power to comprehend itself and all the world in humility in the light of that which is not of the world, but is above world and existence? But this is seriously affected by that doctrine which attempts to regard the Cosmos as self-governing and self-sufficing, needing nothing, and failing in nothing. It is this and not Darwinism or the descent from a Simian stock that primarily troubles the religious spirit. It is more specially sensitive to the strange and antagonistic tendency of naturalism shown even in that marvellous and terrifying mathematical-mechanical system of the great heavenly bodies, in this clock of the universe which, in obedience to clear and[pg 039]inviolable laws, carries on its soundless play from everlasting to everlasting, needing no pendulum and no pedestal, without any stoppage and without room for dependence on anything outside of itself, apparently entirely godless, but absolutely reason and God enough for itself. It shrinks in terror from the thought that the same autonomy and self-regulation may be brought down from the stage of immensity into the play of everyday life and events.But we must penetrate still deeper. Schleiermacher has directed our attention anew to the fact that the most profound element in religion is that deep-lying consciousness of all creatures,“I that am dust and ashes,”that humble feeling of the absolute dependence of every being in the world on One that is above all the world. But religion does not fully express itself even in this; there is yet another note that sounds still deeper and is the keynote of the triad.“Let a man examine himself.”Is it not the case that we ourselves, in as far as the delight in knowledge and the enthusiasm for solving riddles have taken hold of us, rejoice in every new piece of elucidation and interpretation that science succeeds in making, that we are in the fullest sympathy with the impulse to understand everything and bring reason and clearness into it, and that we give hearty adherence to the leading ideas which guide the investigations of natural science? Yet on the other hand, in as far as we are religious, do we not sometimes feel a sudden inward recoil from this almost profane eagerness[pg 040]to penetrate into the mystery of things, this desire to have everything intelligible, clear, rational and transparent? This feeling which stirs in us has always existed in all religious minds and will only die with them. And we need not hesitate to say so plainly. For this is the most real characteristic of religion; it seeks depth in things, reaches out towards what is concealed, uncomprehended, and mysterious. It is more than humility; it is piety. And piety is experience of mystery.It is at this point that religion comes most violently into antagonism with the meaning and mood of naturalism. Here they first conflict in earnest. And it is here above all that scientific investigation and its materialistic complement seem to take away freedom and truth, air and light from religion. For science is seeking especially this: Deeper penetration into and illumination of the world. It presses with macroscope and microscope into its most outlying regions and most hidden corners, into its abysses and fastnesses. It explains away the old idea of two worlds, one on this side and one on that, and rejects heavenly things with the notice“No Room”of which D. Fr. Strauss speaks. It aims at discovering the mathematical world-formulæ, if not indeed one great general formula which embraces, defines unequivocally, and rationalises all the processes of and in infinity, from the movements of Sirius to those of the cilia of the infusorian in the drop of water, and which not only crowds“heaven”out of the world,[pg 041]but strips away from things the fringe of the mysterious and incommensurable which seemed to surround them.Mystery : Dependence : Purpose.There is then a threefold religious interest, and there are three corresponding points of contact between the religious and the naturalistic interpretations of the world, where, as it appears, they are necessarily antagonistic to one another. Arranging them in their proper order we find, first, the interest, never to be relinquished, of experiencing and acknowledging the world and existence to be a mystery, and regarding all that is known and manifested in things merely as the thin crust which separates us from the uncomprehended and inexpressible. Secondly, there is the desire on the part of religion to bring ourselves and all creatures into the“feeling of absolute dependence,”and, as the belief in creation does, to subordinate ourselves and them to the Eternal Power that is not of the world, but is above the world. Finally, there is the interest in a teleological interpretation of the world as opposed to the purely causal interpretation of natural science; that is to say, an interpretation of the world according to eternal God-willed purposes, governing ideas, a plan and aim. In all three respects, it is important to religion that it should be able to maintain its validity and freedom as contrasted with naturalism.But while religion must inquire of itself into the[pg 042]reality of things, with special regard to its own needs, there are two possibilities which may serve to make peace between it and natural science. It may, for instance, be possible that the mathematical-mechanical interpretation of things, even if it be sufficient within its own domain, does not take away from nature the characters which religion seeks and requires in it, namely, purpose, dependence and mystery. Or it may be that nature itself does not correspond at all to this ideal of mathematical explicability, that this ideal may be well enough as a guide for investigation, but that it is not a fundamental clue really applying to nature as a whole and in its essence. It may be that nature as a whole cannot be scientifically summed up without straining the mechanical categories. And this suggests another possibility, namely, that the naturalistic method of interpretation cannot be applied throughout the whole territory of nature, that it embraces certain aspects but not others, and, finally, that it is distinctly interrupted and held in abeyance at particular points by the incommensurable which breaks forth spontaneously out of the depths of phenomena, revealing a depth which is not to be explained away.All these possibilities occur. And though they need not necessarily be regarded as the key to our order of discussion, in what follows we shall often meet them singly or together.[pg 043]The Mystery of Existence Remains Unexplained.1. Let us begin with the problem of the mystery of all existence, and see whether it remains unaffected, or whether it disappears in face of naturalistic interpretation, with its discovery and formulation of law and order, with its methods of measuring and computing. More primary even than faith and heartfelt trust in everlasting wisdom and purposeful Providence there is piety; there is devout sense of awe before the marvellous and mysterious, before the depth and the hidden nature of all things and all being, before unspeakable mysteries over which we hover, and abysmal depths over which we are borne. In a world which had not these, and could not be first felt in this way, religion could not live at all. It could not sail on its too shallow waters, or breathe its too thin air. It is indeed a fact that what alone we can fitly speak of and love as religion—the sense of mystery and the gentle shuddering of piety before the depth of phenomena and their everlasting divine abysses,—has its true place and kingdom in the world of mind and history, with its experiences, riddles, and depths. But mystery is to be found in the world of nature as well. It is only to a very superficial study that it could appear as though nature were, or ever could become, plain and obvious, as if the veil of Isis which shrouds its depths from all investigation could ever be torn away. From this point of view it would make no[pg 044]difference even though the attempt to range the whole realm of nature under the sway of inviolable laws were to be immediately successful. This is expressed in the first of our main propositions (p.35).In order to realise this it is necessary to reflect for a little on the relation of“explanation”and“description”to one another, and on what is meant by“establishing laws”and“understanding”in general. The aim of all investigation is to understand the world. To understand it obviously means something more than merely to know it. It is not enough for us to know things, that is, to know what, how many, and what different kinds of things there are. On the contrary, we want to understand them, to know how they came to be as they are, and why they are precisely as they are. The first step towards this understanding is merely to know, that is, we must rightly apprehend and disentangle the things and processes of the world, grouping them, and describing them adequately and exhaustively.But what I have merely described I have not yet understood; I am only preparing to try to understand it. It stands before me enveloped in all its mystery, and I must now begin to attempt to solve it, for describing is not explaining; it is only challenging explanation. The next step is to discover and formulate the laws. For when man sifts out things and processes and follows them out into their changes and stages he discovers the iron regularity of sequences, the strictly defined lines and paths, the inviolable order and connection[pg 045]in things and occurrences, and he formulates these into laws, ascribing to them the idea of necessity which he finds in himself. In so doing he makes distinct progress, for he can now go beyond what is actually seen, he can draw inferences with certainty as to effects and work back to causes. And thus order, breadth of view, and uniformity are brought into his acquaintance with facts, and his science begins. For science does not merely mean acquaintance with phenomena in their contingent or isolated occurrence, manifold and varied as that may be; it is the discovery and establishment of the laws and general modes of occurrence. Without this we might collect curiosities, but we should not have science. And to discover this network of uniformities throughout all phenomena, in the movements of the heavenly bodies and in the living substance of the cell alike, is the primary aim of all investigation. We are still far away from this goal, and it is more than questionable whether we shall ever reach it.But if the goal should ever be reached, if, in other words, we should ever be able to say with certainty what must result if occurrencesaandbare given, or whataandbmust have been whencoccurs, would explanation then have taken the place of description? Or would understanding have replaced mystery? Obviously not at all. It has indeed often been supposed that this would be the case. People have imagined they have understood, when they have seen that[pg 046]“that is always so, and that it always happens in this particular way.”But this is a naïve idea. The region of the described has merely become larger, and the riddle has become more complex. For now we have before us not only the things themselves, but the more marvellous laws which“govern”them. But laws are not forces or impelling causes. They do not cause anything to happen, and they do not explain anything. And as in the case of things so in that of laws, we want to know how they are, whence they come, and why they are as they are and not quite different. The fact that we have described them simply excites still more strongly the desire to explain them. To explain is to be able to answer the question“Why?”Natural science is very well aware of this. It calls its previous descriptions“merely historical,”and it desires to supplement these with ætiology, causal explanation, a deeper interpretation, that in its turn will make laws superfluous, because it will penetrate so deeply into the nature of things that it will see precisely why these, and not other laws of variation, of development, of becoming, hold sway. This is just the meaning of the“reductions”of which we have already spoken. For instance, in regard to crystal formation,“explanation”will have replaced description only when, instead of demonstrating the forms and laws according to which a particular crystal always and necessarily arises out of a particular solution, we are able to show why, from a particular mixture and because[pg 047]of certain co-operating molecular forces, and of other more primary, more remote, but also intelligible conditions, these forms and processes of crystallisation should always and of necessity occur. If this explanation were possible, the“law”would also be explained, and would therefore become superfluous. From this and similar examples we can learn at what point“explanation”begins to replace description, namely, when processes resolve themselves into simpler processes from the concurrence of which they arise. This is exactly what natural science desires to bring about, and what naturalism hopes ultimately to succeed in, thereby solving the riddle of existence.But this kind of reduction to simpler terms only becomes“explanation”when these simpler terms are themselves clear and intelligible and not merely simple; that is to say, when we can immediately see why the simpler process occurs, and by what means it is brought about, when the question as to the“why”is no longer necessary, because, on becoming aware of the process, we immediately and directly perceive that it is a matter of course, indisputable, and requiring no proof. If this is not the case, the reduction to simpler terms has been misleading. We have only replaced one unintelligibility by another, one description by another, and so simply pushed back the whole problem. Naturalism supposes that by this gradual pushing back the task will at least become more and more simple, until at last a point is reached where the riddle will solve[pg 048]itself, because description becomes equivalent to explanation. This final stage is supposed to be found in the forces of attraction and repulsion, with which the smallest similar particles of matter are equipped. Out of the endlessly varied correlations of these there arise all higher forms of energy and all the combinations which make up more complex phenomena.But in reality this does not help us at all. For now we are definitely brought face to face with the quite unanswerable question, How, from all this homogeneity and unity of the ultimate particles and forces, can we account for the beginnings of the diversity which is so marked a characteristic of this world? Whence came the causes of the syntheses to higher unities, the reasons for the combination into higher resultants of energy?But even apart from that, it is quite obvious that we have not yet reached the ultimate point. For can“attraction,”influence at a distance,vis a fronte, be considered as a fact which is in itself clear? Is it not rather the most puzzling fundamental riddle we can be called upon to explain? Assuredly. And therefore the attempt is made to penetrate still deeper to the ultimate point, the last possible reduction to simpler terms, by referring all actual“forces”and reducing all movement, and therewith all“action,”to terms of attraction and repulsion, which are free from anything mysterious, whose mode of working can be unambiguously and plainly set forth in the law of the parallelogram of forces. Law? Set forth? Therefore still[pg 049]only description? Certainly only description, not explanation in the least. Even assuming that it is true, instead of a mere Utopia, that all the secrets and riddles of nature can be traced back to matter moved by attraction and repulsion according to the simplest laws of these, they would still only be summed up into a great general riddle, which is only the more colossal because it is able to embrace all others within itself. For attraction and repulsion, the transference of motion, and the combination of motion according to the law of the parallelogram of forces—all this is merely description of processes whose inner causes we do not understand, which appear simple, and are so, but are nevertheless not self-evident or to be taken as a matter of course; they are not in themselves intelligible, but form an absolute“world-riddle.”From the very root of things there gazes at us the same Sphinx which we had apparently driven from the foreground.But furthermore, this reduction to simpler terms is an impossible and never-ending task. There is fresh confusion at every step. In reducing to simpler terms, it is often forgotten that the principle of combination is not inherent in the more simple, and cannot be“reduced.”Or else there is an ignoring of the fact that a transition has been made, not from resultants to components, but to quite a different kind of phenomena. Innumerable as are the possible reductions to simpler terms, and mistaken as it would be to remain prematurely at the level of description, it cannot be denied[pg 050]that the fundamental facts of the world are pure facts which must simply be accepted where they occur, indisputable, inexplicable, impenetrable, the“whence”and the“how”of their existence quite uncomprehended. And this is especially true of every new and peculiar expression of what we call energy and energies. Gravitation cannot be reduced to terms of attraction and repulsion, nor action at a distance to action at close quarters; it might, indeed, be shown that repulsion in its turn presupposes attraction before it can become possible; the“energies”of ponderable matter cannot be reduced to the“ether”and its processes of motion, nor the complex play of the chemical affinities to the attraction of masses in general or to gravity. And thus the series ascends throughout the spheres of nature up to the mysterious directive energies in the crystal, and to the underivable phenomena of movement in the living substance, perhaps even to the functions of will-power. All these can be discovered, but not really understood. They can be described, but not explained. And we are absolutely ignorant as to why they should have emerged from the depth of nature, what that depth really is, or what still remains hidden in her mysterious lap. Neither what nature reveals to us nor what it conceals from us is in any true sense“comprehended,”and we flatter ourselves that we understand her secrets when we have only become accustomed to them. If we try to break the power of this accustomedness and to[pg 051]consider the actual relations of things there dawns in us a feeling already awakened by direct impressions and experience; the feeling of the mysterious and enigmatical, of the abyssmal depths beneath, and of what lies far above our comprehension, alike in regard to our own existence and every other. The world is at no point self-explanatory, but at all points marvellous. Its laws are only formulated riddles.Evolution and New Beginnings.All this throws an important light upon two subjects which are relevant in this connection, but which cannot here be exhaustively dealt with,—evolution and new beginnings. Let us consider, for instance, the marvellous range and diversity of the characteristic chemical properties and interrelations of substances. Each one of them, contrasted with the preceding lower forms and stages of“energy,”contrasted with mere attraction, repulsion, gravitation, is something absolutely new, a new interpolation (of course not in regard to time but to grade), a phenomenon which cannot be“explained”by what has gone before. It simply occurs, and we find it in its own time and place. We may call this new emergence“evolution,”and we may use this term in connection with every new stage higher than those preceding it. But it is not evolution in a crude and quantitative sense, according to which the“more highly evolved”is nothing more than an[pg 052]addition and combination of what was already there; it is evolution in the old sense of the word, according to which the more developed is a higher analogue of the less developed, but is in its own way as independent, as much a new beginning as each of the antecedent stages, and therefore in the strict sense neither derivable from them nor reducible to them.It must be noted that in this sense evolution and new beginnings are already present at a very early stage in nature and are part of its essence. We must bear this in mind if we are rightly to understand the subtler processes in nature which we find emerging at a higher level. It is illusory to suppose that it is a“natural”assumption to“derive”the living from lower processes in nature. The non-living and the inorganic are also underivable as to their individual stages, and the leap from the inorganic to the organic is simply much greater than that from attraction in general to chemical affinity. As a matter of fact, the first occurrence—undoubtedly controlled and conditioned by internal necessity—of crystallisation, or of life, or of sensation has just the same marvellousness as everything individual and everything new in any ascending series in nature. In short, every new beginning has the same marvel.Perhaps this consideration goes still deeper, throwing light upon or suggesting the proper basis for a study of the domain of mind and of history. It is immediately obvious that there, at any rate, we enter into a[pg 053]region of phenomena which cannot be derived from anything antecedent, or reduced to anything lower. It must be one of the chief tasks of naturalism to explain away these facts, and to maintain the sway of“evolution,”not in our sense but in its own, that is“to explain”everything new and individual from that which precedes it. But the assertion that this can be done is here doubly false. For, in the first place, it cannot be proved that methods of study which are relatively valid for natural phenomena are applicable also to those of the mind. And in the second place we must admit that even in nature—apart from mind—we have to do with new beginnings which are underivable from their antecedents.All being is inscrutable mystery as a whole, and from its very foundations upwards through each successively higher stage of its evolution, in an increasing degree, until it reaches a climax in the incomprehensibility of individuality. It is a mystery that does not force itself into nature as supernatural or miraculous, but is fundamentally implicit in it, a mystery that in its unfolding assuredly follows the strictest law, the most inviolable rules, whether in the chemical affinities a higher grade of energies reveals itself, or whether—unquestionably also in obedience to everlasting law—the physical and chemical conditions admit of the occurrence of life, or whether in his own time and place a genius arises.1[pg 054]The Dependence of the Order of Nature.(2 and 3). The“dependence”of all things is the second requirement of religion, without which it is altogether inconceivable. We avoid the words“creation”and“being created,”because they involve anthropomorphic and altogether insufficient modes of representation. But throughout we have in mind, as suggested by Schleiermacher's[pg 055]expression already quoted, what all religion means when it declares nature and the world to becreatures. The inalienable content of this idea is that deep and assured feeling that our nature and all nature does not rest in its own strength and self-sufficiency, that there must be more secure reasons for nature which are absolutely outside of it, and that it is dependent upon, and conditioned through and through by something above itself, independent, and unconditioned.“I believe that God has created me together with all creatures.”(Luther.)This faith seemed easier in earlier times, when men's eyes were not yet opened to see the deep-lying connectedness of all phenomena, the inexorableness of causal sequences, when it was believed that, in the apparently numerous interruptions of the causal sequences, the frailty and dependence of this world and its need for heavenly aid could be directly observed, when, therefore, it was not difficult to believe that the world was“nothing”and perishable, that it had been called forth out of nothing, and that in its transient nature it carried for ever the traces of this origin. But to-day it is not so easy to believe in this dependence, for nature seems to show itself, in its inviolable laws and unbroken sequences, as entirely sufficient unto itself, so that for every phenomenon a sufficient cause is to be found within nature, that is, in the sum of the antecedent states and conditions which, according to inevitable laws, must result in and produce what follows.[pg 056]We have already noted that this is most obviously discernible in the world of the great masses, the heavenly bodies which pursue their courses from everlasting to everlasting, mutually conditioning themselves and betraying no need for or dependence upon anything outside of themselves. Everything, even the smallest movement, is here determined strictly by the dependence of each upon all and of all upon each. There is no variation, no change of position for which an entirely satisfactory cause cannot be found in the system as a whole, which works like an immense machine. Nothing indicates dependence upon anything external. And as it is to-day so it was yesterday, and a million years ago, and innumerable millions of years ago. It seems quite gratuitous to suppose that something which does not occur to-day was necessary at an earlier period, and that everything has not been from all eternity just as it is now.We saw that naturalism is attempting to extend this character of independence and self-sufficiency from the astronomical world to the world as a whole. Shall we attempt, then, to oppose it in this ambition, but surrender the realm of the heavenly bodies as already conquered? By no means. For religion cannot exclude the solar system from the dependence of all being upon God. And this very example is the most conspicuous one, the one in regard to which the whole problem can be most definitely formulated.Astronomy teaches us that all cosmic processes are[pg 057]governed by a marvellous far-reaching uniformity of law, which unites in strictest harmony the nearest and the most remote. Has this fact any bearing upon the problem of the dependence of the world? No. It surely cannot be that a world without order could be brought under the religious point of view more readily than one governed by law! Let us suppose for a moment that we had to do with a world without strict nexus and definite order of sequence, without law and without order, full of capricious phenomena, unregulated associations, an inconstant play of causes. Such a world would be to us unintelligible, strange, absurd. But it would not necessarily be more“dependent,”more“conditioned”than any other. Had I no other reasons for looking beyond the world, and for regarding it as dependent on something outside of itself, the absence of law and order would assuredly furnish me with none. For, assuming that it is possible at all to conceive of a world and its contents as independent, and as containing its own sufficient cause within itself, it would be quite as easily thought of as a confused lawless play of chances as a well-ordered Cosmos. Perhaps more easily; for it goes without saying that such a conglomeration of promiscuous chances could not possibly be thought of as a world of God. Order and strict obedience to law, far from being excluded, are required by faith in God, are indeed a direct and inevitable preliminary to thinking of the world as dependent upon God. Thus we may state the paradox, that only a[pg 058]Cosmos which, by its strict obedience to law, gives us the impression of being sufficient unto itself, can be conceived of as actually dependent upon God, as His creation. If any man desires to stop short at the consideration of the apparent self-sufficiency of the Cosmos and its obedience to law, and refuses to recognise any reasons outside of the world for this, we should hardly be able, according to our own proposition, to require him to go farther. For we maintained that God could not be read out of nature, that the idea of God could never have been gained in the first instance from a study of nature and the world. The problem always before us is rather, whether, having gained the idea from other sources, we can include the world within it. Our present question is whether the world, as it is, and just because it is as it is, can be conceived of as dependent upon God. And this question can only be answered in the affirmative, and in the sense of Schiller's oft-quoted lines:The great CreatorWe see not—He conceals himself withinHis own eternal laws. The sceptic seesTheir operation, but beholds not Him,“Wherefore a God!”he cries,“the world itselfSuffices for itself!”and Christian prayerNe'er praised him more, than does this blasphemy.God's world could not possibly be a conglomeration of chances; it must be orderly, and the fact that it is so proves its dependence.But while we thus hold fast to our canon, we shall[pg 059]find that the assertion of the world's dependence receives indirect corroboration even in regard to the astronomical realm, from certain signs which it exhibits, from certain suggestions which are implied in it. We must not wholly overlook two facts which, to say the least, are difficult to fit in with the idea of the independence and self-sufficiency of the world; these are, on the one hand, the difficulties involved in the idea of an eternal machine, and on the other the difficult fact of“entropy.”We have already compared the world to a mighty clock, or a machine which, as a whole, represents what can never be found in one of its parts, aperpetuum mobile. Let us however leave aside the idea of aperpetuum mobile, and dwell rather on the comparison with a machine. It seems obvious that in order to be a machine there must be a closed solidarity in the system. But how could a machine have come into existence and become functional if it is driven by wheels, which are driven by wheels, which are again driven by wheels ... and so on unceasingly? It would not be a machine. The idea falls to pieces in our hands. Yet our world is supposed to be just such an infinitely continuous“system.”How does it begin to depend upon and be sufficient unto itself? But further. It is a clock, we are told, which ever winds itself up anew, which, without fatigue and in ceaseless repetition, adjusts the universal cycles of becoming, and disappearing, and becoming again. It seems a corroboration of the old Heraclitian and Stoic conception, that the eternal primitive fire brings forth[pg 060]all things out of itself, and takes them back into itself to bring them forth anew. Even to-day the conception is probably general that, out of the original states of the world-matter, circling fiery nebulæ form themselves and throw off their rings, that the breaking up of these rings gives rise to planets which circle in solar systems for many æons through space, till, finally, their energy lessened by friction with the ether, they plunge into their suns again, that the increased heat restores the original state and the whole play begins anew.All this was well enough in the days of naïvely vitalistic ideas of the world as having a life and soul. But not in these days of mechanics, the strict calculation of the amount of energy used, and the mechanical theory of heat. The world-clock cannot wind itself up. It, too, owes its activity to the transformation of potential energy into kinetic energy. And, since movement and work take place within it, there is in the clock as a whole just as in every one of its parts, a mighty process of relaxation of an originally tense spring, there is dissipation and transformation of the stored potential energy into work and ultimately into heat. And with every revolution of the earth and its moon the world is moving slowly but inexorably towards a final stage of complete relaxation of her powers of tension, a state in which all energy will be transformed into heat, in which there will be no different states but only the most uniform distribution, in which also all[pg 061]life and all movement will cease and the world-clock itself will come to a standstill.How does this fit in with the idea of independence and self-sufficiency? How could the world-clock ever wind itself up again to the original state of tension which was simply there as if shot from a pistol“in the beginning”? Where is the everlasting impressive uniformity and constancy of the world? How does it happen that the world-clock has not long ago come to a standstill? For even if the original sum of potential energy is postulated as infinite, the eternity that lies behind us is also infinite. And so one infinity swallows another. And innumerable questions of a similar kind are continually presenting themselves.The“Contingency”of the World.But we need not dwell in the meantime on these and the many other difficulties and riddles presented by our cosmological hypothesis. However these may be solved, a general consideration will remain—namely, that whether the world is governed by law or not, whether it is sufficient unto itself or not, thereisa world full of the most diverse phenomena, and therearelaws. Whence then have both these come? Is it a matter of course, is it quite obvious that they should exist at all, and that they should be exactly as they are? We do not here appeal without further ceremony to the saying“everything must have a cause, therefore the world also.”It[pg 062]is not absolutely correct. For instance, if the world were so constituted that it would be impossible for it not to exist, that the necessity for its existence and the inconceivability of its non-existence were at once explicit and obvious, then there would be no sense in inquiring after a cause. In regard to a“necessary”thing, if there were any such, we cannot ask,“Why, and from what cause does this exist?”If it was necessary, that implies that to think of it as not existing would be ridiculous, and logically or metaphysically impossible. Unfortunately there are no“necessary”things, so that we cannot illustrate the case by examples. But there are at least necessary truths as distinguished from contingent truths. And thus some light may be brought into the matter for the inexpert. For instance, a necessary truth is contained in the sentence,“Everything is equal to itself,”or,“The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.”We cannot even conceive of the contrary. Therefore these axioms have no reasons, and can neither be deduced nor proved. Every question as to their reasons is quite meaningless. As examples of a“contingent”truth we may take“It rains to-day,”or“The earth revolves round the sun.”For neither one nor the other of these is necessarily so. It is so as a matter of fact, but under other circumstances it might have been otherwise. The contrary can be conceived of and represented, and has in itself an equal degree of possibility. Therefore such a fact requires to[pg 063]be and is capable of being reasoned out. I can and must ask,“How does it happen that it rains to-day? What are the reasons for it?”But as we must seek for sufficient reasons for“contingent”truths, that is, for those of which the contrary was equally possible, so assuredly we must seek for sufficient causes for“contingent”phenomena and events, those which can be thought of as not existing, or as existing in a different form. For these we must find causes and actual reasons. Otherwise they have no foundation. The element of“contingency”must be done away with; they must be shown to result from sufficient causes. That is to say nothing less than that they must be traced back to some necessity. For it is one of the curious fundamental convictions of our reason, and one in which all scientific investigation has its ultimate roots, that what is“contingent”is only apparently so, and in reality is in some way or other based on necessity. Therefore reason seeks causes for everything.The search for causes involves showing that a thing was necessary. And this must obviously apply to the world as a whole. If it were quite obvious that the world and its existence as it is were necessary, that is, that it would be contrary to reason to think of the world, and its phenomena, and their obedience to law as non-existent, or as different from what they are, all inquiry would be at an end. This would betheultimate necessity in which all the apparent contingency of isolated phenomena and existences was firmly based.[pg 064]But this is far from being the case. That anything exists, and that the world exists, is for us absolutely the greatest“contingency”of all, and in regard to it we can and must continually ask,“Why does anything exist at all, and why should it not rather be non-existent?”Indeed, all our quest for sufficient causes here reaches its climax. In more detail: that these celestial systems and bodies, the ether, attraction and gravitation should exist, and that everything should be governed by definite laws, all literally“as if shot from a pistol,”there must undoubtedly be some sufficient reason, certain as it is that we shall never discover it. It is true, as some one has said, that we live not only in a very fortuitous world, but in an incredibly improbable one. And this is not affected by the fact that the world is completely governed by law. Law only confirms it. The fact that all details may be clearly and mathematically calculated in no way prevents them from being fundamentally contingent. For they are only so calculable on the basis of the given fundamental characters of the world. And that is precisely the problem:“Why do these characters exist and not quite different ones, and why should any exist at all?”If any one should say:“Well, we must just content ourselves with recognising the essentially‘contingent’nature of existence, for we shall never be able to get beyond that,”he would be right in regard to the second statement. To get beyond that and to see what it is—eternal[pg 065]and in itself necessary—that lies at the basis of this world of“contingency”is indeed impossible. But he would be wrong as to the first part of the assertion. For no onewill“content himself.”For that all chance is only apparently chance, and is ultimately based in necessity, is a deeply-rooted and fundamental conviction of our reason, one which directs all scientific investigation, and which cannot be ignored. It demands ceaselessly something necessary as the permanent basis of contingent existence. And this fact is and remains the truth involved in the“cosmological proofs of the existence of God”of former days. It was certainly erroneous to suppose that“God”could be proved. For it is a long way from that“idea of necessity”to religious experience of God. And it was erroneous, too, to suppose that anything could be really“proved.”What is necessary can never really be proved from what is contingent. But the recognition of the contingent nature of the world is a stimulus that stirs up within our reason the idea of the necessary, and it is a fact that reason finds rest only in this idea.The Real World.(4.) What was stated separately in our first and second propositions, and has hitherto been discussed, now unites and culminates in the fourth. For if we note the vital expressions of religion wherever it occurs, we find above all one thing as its most characteristic sign,[pg 066]indeed as its very essence, in all places and all times, often only as a scarce uttered wish or longing, but often breaking forth with impetuous might. This one thing is the impulse and desire to get beyond time and space, and beyond the oppressive narrowness and crampingness of the world surrounding us, the desire to see into the depth and“other side”of things and of existence. For it is the very essence of religion to distinguish this world from, and contrast it as insufficient with the real world which is sufficient, to regard this world which we see and know and possess as only an image, as only transiently real, in contrast with the real world of true being which is believed in. Religion has clothed this essential feature in a hundred mythologies and eschatologies, and one has always given place to another, the more sublimed to the more robust. But the fundamental feature itself cannot disappear.In apologetics and dogmatics the interest in this matter is often concentrated more or less exclusively upon the question of“immortality.”Wrongly so, however, for this quest after the real world is not a final chapter in religion, it is religion itself. And in the religious sense the question of immortality is only justifiable and significant when it is a part of the general religious conviction that this world is not the truly essential world, and that the true nature of things, and of our own being, is deeper than we can comprehend, and lies beyond this side of things, beyond[pg 067]time and space. To the religious mind it cannot be of great importance whether existence is to be continued for a little at least beyond this life. In what way would such a wish be religious? But the inward conviction that“all that is transitory is only a parable,”that all here is only a veil and a curtain, and the desire to get beyond semblance to truth, beyond insufficiency to sufficiency, concentrate themselves especially in the assertion of the eternity of our true being.It is with this characteristic of religion that the spirit and method of naturalism contrast so sharply. Naturalism points out with special satisfaction that this depth of things, this home of the soul is nowhere discoverable. The great discoveries of Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton have done away with the possibility of that. No empyrean, no corner of the world remains available. Even the attempted flight to sun, moon, or stars does not help. It is true that the newly discovered world is without end, but, beyond a doubt, in its outermost and innermost depths it is a world of space and time. Even in the stellar abysses“everything is just the same as with us.”All this is doubtless correct, and it is very wholesome for religion. For it prompts religion no longer to seek its treasure, the true nature of things, and its everlasting home in time and space, as the mythologies and eschatologies have sought them repeatedly. It throws religion back on the fundamental insight and on the convictions which it had attained long before[pg 068]philosophy and criticism of knowledge had arrived at similar views: namely, that time and space, and this world of time and space, do not comprise the whole of existence, nor existence as it really is, but are only a manifestation of it to our finite and limited knowledge. Before the days of modern astronomy, and without its help, religion knew that God was not confined to“heaven,”or anywhere in space, and that time as it is for us was not for Him. Even in the terms“eternity”and“infinity”it shows an anticipatory knowledge of a being and reality above time and space. These ideas were not gained from a contemplation of nature, but before it and from independent sources.But though it is by no means the task of apologetics to build up these ideas directly from a study of things, it is of no little importance to inquire whether religion possesses in these convictions only postulates of faith, for which it must laboriously and forcibly make a place in the face of knowledge, or whether a thorough and self-critical knowledge does not rather confirm them, and show us, within the world of knowledge itself, unmistakable signs that it cannot be the true, full reality, but points to something beyond itself.To study this question thoroughly would involve setting forth a special theory of knowledge and existence. This cannot be attempted here. But Kant's great doctrine of the“Antinomy of Reason”has for all time broken up for us the narrowness of the naturalistic way of thinking. Every one who has felt cramped by[pg 069]the narrow limits in which reality was confined by a purely mundane outlook must have experienced the liberating influence of the Kantian Antinomy if he has thought over it carefully. The thick curtain which separates being from appearance seems to be torn away, or at any rate to reveal itself as a curtain. Kant shows that, if we were to take this world as it lies before us for the true reality, we should land in inextricable contradictions. These contradictions show that the true world itself cannot coincide with our thought and comprehension, for in being itself there can be no contradictions. Otherwise it would not exist. The ancient problems of philosophy, from the time of the Eleatic school onwards, find here their adequate formulation. Kant's disciple, Fries, has carried the matter further, and has attempted to develop what for Kant still remained a sort of embarrassment of reason to more precise pronouncements as to the relation of true being to its manifestation,The Antimony of Our Conception of Time.A few examples may serve to make the point clear. The first of the antinomies is also the most impressive. It brings before us the insufficiency of our conceptions of time, and shows the impossibility of transferring, from the world as it appears to us, to real Being any mode of conceiving time which we possess. The difficulty is, whether we are to think of our world as having had a beginning or not. The naïve outlook[pg 070]will at once assume without further ado a beginning of all things. Everything must have had a beginning, though that may have been a very long time ago. But on more careful reflection it is found impossible to imagine this, and then the assumption that things had no beginning is made with as little scruple. Let us suppose that the beginning of things was six thousand, or, what is quite as easy, six thousand billion years ago. We are at once led to ask what there was the year before or many years before, and what there was before that again, and so on until we face the infinite and beginningless. Thus we find that we have never really thought of a beginning of things, and never could think of it, but that our thinking always carries us into the infinite. Time, at any rate, we have thought of as infinite. We may then amuse ourselves by trying to conceive of endless time as empty, but we shall hardly be able to give any reason for arriving at that idea. If time goes back to infinity, it seems difficult to see why it should not always have been filled, instead of only being so filled from some arbitrary point. And in any case the very fact of the existence of time makes the problem of beginning or not beginning insoluble. For such reasons Aristotle asserted that the world had no beginning, and rejected the contrary idea as childish.But the idea of no beginning is also childish or rather impossible, and in reality inconceivable. For if it be assumed that the world and time have never had[pg 071]a beginning, there stretches back from the time at which I now find myself a past eternity. It must have passed completely as a whole, for otherwise this particular point in time could never have been arrived at. So that I must think of an infinity which nevertheless comes to an end. I cannot do this. It would be like wooden iron.The matter sounds simple but is nevertheless difficult in its consequences. It confronts us at once with the fact, confirmed by the theory of knowledge, that time as we know it is an absolutely necessary and fundamental form of our conceptions and knowledge, but is likewise the veil over what is concealed, and cannot be carried over in the same form into the true nature of things. As the limits and contradictions in the time-conception reveal themselves to us, there wakes in us the idea which we accept as the analogue of time in true being, an idea of existence under the form of“eternity,”which, since we are tied down to temporal concepts, cannot be expressed or even thought of with any content.2The Antimony of the Conditioned and the Unconditioned.The antinomy of the conditioned and the unconditioned leads us along similar lines. Every individual finite thing or event is dependent on its causes and[pg 072]conditions, which precede it or co-exist in inter-relation with it. It is conditioned, and is only possible through its conditions. But that implies that it can only occur or be granted when all its conditions are first given in complete synthesis. If any one of them failed, it would not have come about. But every one of its conditioning circumstances is in its turn conditioned by innumerable others, and every one of these again by others, and so on into the infinite, backwards and on all sides, so that here again something without end and incapable of end must have come to an end, and must be thought of as having an end, before any event whatever can really come to pass. But this again is a sheer impossibility for our thinking: we require and must demand something completed, because now is really now, and something happens now, and yet in the world as it appears to us we are always forced to face what cannot have an end.The Antimony of Our Conception of Space.To bring our examples to a conclusion, we find the same sort of antinomy in regard to space, and the world as it is extended in space. Here, too, it becomes apparent that space as we imagine it, and as we carry it with us as a concept for arranging our sense-impressions, cannot correspond to the true reality. As in regard to time, so also in regard to space, we can never after any distance however enormous come to a halt and say,“Here is the end of space.”Whether we think of the diameter[pg 073]of the earth's orbit or the distance to Sirius, and multiply them by a million we always ask,“What lies behind?”and so extend space into the infinite. And as a matter of course we people it also without end with heavenly bodies, stars, nebulae, Milky Ways and the like. For here again there can be no obvious reason why space in our neighbourhood should be filled, while space at a greater distance should be thought of as empty. Therefore we actually think of star beyond star, and, as far as we can reckon, stars beyond that without end. For space extends not merely so far, but always farther. And the number of the stars is not so many, but always one more. This sounds quite obvious, but it has exactly the same impossibility as we found in our“past infinity.”For although we are carried by our conceptions into the infinite, and to what never could have an end, it is impossible to assume the same of reality.It is remarkable and quite characteristic that the whole difficulty and its peculiar nature become much more intelligible to us through the familiar images and expressions of religion. There we readily admit that we cannot comprehend the number of the stars and stellar spaces, because for us they never reach an end, there being always one more; but that in the eyes of God all is embraced in His universality, in a“perfect synthesis,”and that to Him Being is never and in no point“always one more.”God does not count.Without the help of religious expressions we say: Being itself is always itself and never implies any more;[pg 074]for if there were“always one more”it would not be Being. It can only exist“as a perfect synthesis,”which does not mean an endless number, which nevertheless somewhere comes to an end—again wooden iron—but something above all reckoning and beyond all number, as it is beyond space and time. And that which we are able to weigh and measure and number is therefore not reality itself, but only its inadequate manifestation to our limited capacity for understanding.But enough of this. The puzzles in the doctrines of the simple and the complex, of the causeless and the caused, into which this world of ours forces us, should teach us further to recognise it for what it is—insufficient and pointing beyond itself,—to its own transcendent depths. So, too, the problems that arise when we penetrate farther and farther into the ever more and more minute, and the indefiniteness of our thought-horizons in general should have the same effect.Intuitions of Reality.(5.) There are other evidences of this depth and hidden nature of things, towards which an examination of our knowledge points. For“in feeling and intuition appearance points beyond itself to real being.”So ran our fifth proposition. This subject indeed is delicate, and can only be treated of in the hearing of willing ears. But all apologetic counts upon willing ears; it is not conversion of doubters that is aimed at, it is religion which seeks to reassure itself. Our proposition[pg 075]does not speak of dreams but of facts, which are not the less facts because they are more subtle than others. What we are speaking of are the deep impressions, which cannot properly be made commensurable at all, which may spring up directly out of an inward experience, an apprehension of nature, the world and history, in the depths of the spirit. They call forth in us an“anamnesis,”a“reminiscence”in Plato's sense, awakening within us moods and intuitions in which something of the essence and meaning of being is directly experienced, although it remains in the form of feeling, and cannot easily, if at all, find expression in definable ideas or clear statements. Fries, in his book,“Wissen, Glaube, und Ahnung,”unhappily too much forgotten, takes account of this fact, for he places this region of spiritual experience beside the certainties of faith and knowledge, and regards these as“animated”by it. He has in mind especially the impressions of the beautiful and the sublime which far transcend our knowledge of nature, and to which knowledge and its concepts can never do adequate justice, facts though they undoubtedly are. In them we experience directly, in intuitive feeling, that the reality is greater than our power of understanding, and we feel something of its true nature and meaning. The utterances of Schleiermacher3in regard to religion follow the same lines. For this is precisely what he means when he insists[pg 076]that the universe must be experienced in intuition and feeling as well as in knowing and doing. He is less incisive in his expressions than Fries, but wider in ideas. He includes in this domain of“intuitive feeling”not only the aesthetic experiences of the beautiful and sublime, but takes the much more general and comprehensive view, that the receptive mind may gather from the finite impressions of the infinite, and may through its experiences of time gain some conception of the eternal. And he rightly emphasises, that such intuition has its true place in the sphere of mind and in face of the events of history, rather than in the outer court of nature. He, too, lays stress on the fact that doctrinal statements and ideas cannot be formulated out of such subtle material.The experience of which we are speaking may be most directly and impressively gained from the great, the powerful, the sublime in nature. It may be gained from the contemplation of nature's harmonies and beauties, but also of her overflowing abundance and her enigmatical dæmonic strength, from the purposeful intelligibility as well as the terrifying and bewildering enigmas of nature's operations, from all the manifold ways in which the mind is affected and startled, from all the suggestive but indefinable sensations which may be roused in us by the activity of nature, and which rise through a long scale to intoxicated self-forgetfulness and wordless ecstasy before her beauty, and her half-revealed, half-concealed mystery. If any or all of these be stirred up[pg 077]in a mind which is otherwise godless or undevout, it remains an indefinite, vacillating feeling, bringing with it nothing else. But in the religious mind it immediately unites with what is akin to it or of similar nature, and becomes worship. No dogmas or arguments for disputatious reasoning can be drawn from it. It can hardly even be expressed, except, perhaps, in music. And if it be expressed it tends easily to become fantastic or romantic pomposity, as is shown even by certain parts of the writings of Schleiermacher himself.The Recognition of Purpose.(6.) We must now turn to the question of“teleology.”Only now, not because it is a subordinate matter, for it is in reality the main one, but because it is the culminating point, not the starting point, of our argument. If the world be from God and of God, it and all that it contains must be for some definite purpose and for special ends. It must be swayed by eternal ideas, and must be subject to divine providence and guidance. But naturalism, and even, it appears, natural science, declares: Neither purposes nor ideas are of necessity to be assumed in nature. They do not occur either in the details or in the whole. The whole is an absolutely closed continuity of causes, a causal but blind machinery, in regard to which we cannot ask, What is meant to be produced by this? but only, What causes have produced what exists? This opposition goes deep and raises difficulties. And in all vindication or defence[pg 078]of religion it ought rightly to be kept in the foreground of attention, although the points we have already insisted on have been wrongly overlooked. The opposition concentrates itself to-day almost entirely around two theories of naturalism, which do not, indeed, set forth the whole case, but which are certainly typical examples, so that, if we analyse them, we shall have arrived at an orientation of the fundamental points at issue. The two doctrines are Darwinism and the mechanical theory of life, and it is to these that we must now turn our attention. And since the best elucidation and criticism of both theories is to be found in their own history, and in the present state of opinion within their own school, we shall have to combine our study of their fundamental principles with that of their history.We can here set forth, however, only the chief point of view, the gist of the matter, which will continue to exist and hold good however the analysis of details may turn out. For the kernel of the question may be discussed independently, without involving the particular interests of zoology or biology, though we shall constantly come across particular and concrete cases of the main problem in our more detailed study.The struggle against, and the aversion to ideas and purposes on the part of the nature-interpreters is not in itself directed against religion. It does not arise from any antagonism of natural science to the religious conception of the world, but is primarily an antagonism of[pg 079]one school of science to another, the modern against the mediæval-Aristotelian. The latter, again, was not in itself a religious world-outlook, it was simply an attempt at an interpretation of the processes of nature, and especially of evolution, which might be quite neutral towards religion, or might be purely naturalistic. It was the theory of Entelechies andformæ substaniales. In order to explain how a thing had come to be, it taught that the idea of the finished thing, the“form,”was implicit in it from the very beginning, and determined the course of its development. This“form,”the end aimed at in development, was“potentially,”“ideally,”or“virtually”implicit in the thing from the beginning, was thecausa finalis, the ultimate cause which determined the development. Modern natural science objects to this theory that it offers no explanation, but merely gives a name to what has to be explained. The aim of science, it tells us, is to elucidate the play of causes which brought about a particular result. The hypotheticalcausa finalisit regards as a mereasylum ignorantiæ, and as the problem itself not as its solution. For instance, if we inquire into the present form and aspect of the earth, nothing is advanced by stating that the“form,”the primitive model of the evolving earth was implicit in it from the beginning, and that it gradually determined the phases and transition-stages of its evolution, until the ultimate state, the end aimed at, was attained. The task of science is, through geology, geognosy,[pg 080]mineralogy, geodesy, physical geography, meteorology, and other sciences to discover the physical, chemical, and mechanical causes of the earth's evolution and their laws, and from the co-operation of these to interpret everything in detail and as a whole.Whether modern natural science is right in this or not, whether or not it has neglected an element of truth in the old theory of Entelechies which it cannot dispense with, especially in regard to living organisms, it is beyond dispute that, from the most general point of view, and in particular with reference to teleology, religion does not need to concern itself in the least about this opposition.“Purposes,”“ideas,”“guidance”in the religious sense, are quite unaffected by the manner in which the result is realised; everything depends upon the special and particular value of what has been attained or realised. If a concatenation of causes and stages of development lead to results in which we suddenly discern a special and particular value, then, and not till then, have we a reason and criterion for our assumption that it is not simply a result of a play of chances, but that it has been brought about by purposeful thought, by higher intervention and guidance of things. Certainly not before then. Thus we can only speak of purposes, aims, guidance, and creation in so far as we have within us the capacity for feeling and recognising the value, meaning and significance of things. But natural science itself cannot estimate these. It can or will only[pg 081]examine how everything has come about, but whether this result has a higher value than another, or has a lower, or none at all, it can neither assert nor deny. That lies quite outside of its province.Let us try to make this clear by taking at once the highest example—man and his origin. Let it be assumed that natural science could discover all the causes and factors which, operating for many thousands of years, have produced man and human existence. Even if these causes and factors had actually been pure“ideas,”formæ substantialesand the like, that would in no way determine whether the whole process was really subject to a divine idea of purpose or not. If we had not gained, from a different source, an insight into the supreme and incomparable worth of human existence, spiritual, rational, and free, with its capacity for morality, religion, art and science, we should be compelled to regard man, along with every other natural result, as the insignificant product of a blind play of nature. But, on the other hand, if we have once felt and recognised this value of human existence, its highest dignity, the knowledge that man has been produced through a play of highly complex natural processes, fulfilling themselves in absolute obedience to law, in no way prevents our regarding him as a“purpose,”as the realisation of a divine idea, in accordance with which nature in its orderliness was planned. In fact, this consideration leads us to discover and admire eternal plan and divine guidance in nature.[pg 082]For it does not rest with natural science either to discover or to deny“purpose”in the religious sense in nature; it belongs to quite a different order of experience, an entirely inward one. Just in proportion as I become aware of, and acknowledge in the domain of my inward experience and through my capacity of estimating values, the worth of the spiritual and moral life of man, so, with the confidence of this peculiar mode of conviction, I subordinate the concatenations of events and causes on which the possibility and the occurrence of the spiritual and moral life depend, to an eternal teleology, and see the order of the world that leads to this illuminated by everlasting meaning and by providence.Teleological and Scientific Interpretations are Alike Necessary.(7.) Thus religion confidently subjects the world to a teleological interpretation. And to a teleological study in this sense the strictly causal interpretations of natural science are not hostile, but indispensable. For how do things stand? Natural science endeavours by persistent labour to comprehend the whole of the facts occurring in our world, up to the existence of man, as the final outcome and result of an age-long process of evolution, attempts also to follow this process ever higher up the ladder of strictly causal and strictly law-governed sequences, and finally to connect it with the primary and simplest fundamental facts of existence, beyond which it cannot go, and which must simply be[pg 083]accepted as“given.”If these results of this causally interpreted evolution reveal themselves to our inward power of valuation as full of meaning and value, indeed of the deepest and most incomparable value, the causal mode of explanation is in no way affected, but its results are all at once placed in a new light and reveal a peculiarity which was previously not discoverable, yet which is their highest import. They become a strictly united system ofmeans. And purposefulness as a potentiality is thus carried back to the very foundation and“beginning,”to the fundamental conditions and primary factors of the cosmos itself. The strict nexus of conditions and causes is thus nothing more than the“endeavour after end and aim,”the carrying through and realisation of the eternal purpose, which was implicit potentially in the fundamental nature of things. The absolute obedience to law, and the inexorableness of chains of sequence are, instead of being fatal to this position, indispensable to it. When there is a purpose in view, it is only where the system of means is perfect, unbroken, and absolute, that the purpose can be realised, and therefore that intention can be inferred. In the inexplicable datum of the fundamental factors of the world's existence, in the strict nexus of causes, in the unfailing occurrence of the results which are determined by both these, and which reveal themselves to us as of value and purpose, teleology and providence are directly realised. The only assumptions are, that it is possible to judge the results[pg 084]according to their value, and that both the original nature of the world and the system of its causal sequences—that is, the world as we know it—can be conceived of in accordance with the ideas of dependence and conditionedness. Both assumptions are not only possible, but necessary.In thinking out this most general consideration, we find the real and fundamental answer to the question as to the validity and freedom of the religious conception of the world with regard to teleology in nature. And if it be held fast and associated with the insight into the autonomy of the spiritual and its underivability from the natural, we are freed at once from all the petty strife with the naturalistic doctrines of evolution, descent, and struggle for existence. We shall nevertheless be obliged to discuss these to some extent, because it is not a matter of indifference whether the detailed study of natural evolution fits in more or less easily with the conception of purpose whose validity we have demonstrated in general. If that proves to be the case, it will be an important factor in apologetics. The conclusion which we have already arrived at on abstract grounds will then be corroborated and emphasised in the concrete.

The fundamental convictions of naturalism, its general tendencies, and the points of view which determine its outlook, are primarily related to that order of facts which forms the subject of the natural sciences, to“Nature.”It is only secondarily that it attempts to penetrate with the methods of the natural sciences into the region of the conscious, of the mind, into the domain that underlies the mental sciences, including history and the æsthetic, political, and religious sciences, and to show that, in this region as in the other, natural law and the same principles of interpretation obtain, that here, too, the“materialistic conception of history holds true, and that there is no autonomy of mind.”

The interests of religion here go hand in hand with those of the mental sciences, in so far as these claim to be distinct and independent. For the question is altogether one of the reality, pre-eminence, and independence of the spiritual as opposed to the“natural.”Occasionally it has been thought that the whole problem of the relations between religion and naturalism was concentrated on this point, and the study of nature has[pg 035]been left to naturalism as if it were indifferent or even hopeless, thus leaving a free field for theories of all kinds, the materialistic included. It is only in regard to the Darwinian theory of evolution and the mechanical theory of the origin and nature of life, and particularly in regard to the relatively unimportant question of“spontaneous generation”that a livelier interest is usually awakened. But these isolated theories are only a part of the“reduction,”which is characteristic of naturalism, and they can only be rightly estimated and understood in connection with it. We shall turn our attention to them only after we have carefully considered what is fundamental and essential. But the idea that religion may calmly neglect the study of nature as long as naturalism leaves breathing-room for the freedom and independence of mind is quite erroneous. If religion is true, nature must be of God, and it must bear tokens which allow us to interpret it as of God. And such signs are to be found. What we shall have to say in regard to them may be summed up in the following propositions:—

1. Even the world, which has been brought under the reign of scientific laws, is a mystery; it has beenformulated, but notexplained.

2. The world governed by law is still dependent, conditioned, and“contingent.”

3. The conception of Nature as obedient to law is not excluded but rather demanded by belief in God.

4, 5. We cannot comprehend the true nature and[pg 036]depth of things, and the world which we do comprehend is not the true Reality of things; it is only its appearance. In feeling and intuition this appearance points beyond itself to the true nature of things.

6. Ideas and purposes, and with them Providence and the control of things, can neither be established by the natural sciences nor disputed by them.

7. The causal interpretation demanded by natural science fits in with an explanation according to purpose, and the latter presupposes the former.

How the Religious and the Naturalistic Outlooks Conflict.Religion comes into contact with naturalism and demands to be reconciled with it, not merely at its periphery, but at its very core, namely, with its characteristic ideal of a mathematical-mechanical interpretation of the whole world. This ideal seems to be most nearly, if not indeed completely, attained in reference to the inter-relations of the great masses, in the realm of astronomy, with the calculable, inviolable, and entirely comprehensible conditions which govern the purely mechanical correlations of the heavenly bodies. To bring the same clearness and intelligibility, the same inevitableness and calculability into the world in general, and into the whole realm of nature down to the mysterious law determining the development of the daintiest insect's wing, and the stirrings of the grey matter in the[pg 037]cortex of the brain which reveal themselves to us as sensation, desire, and thought, this has always been the aim and secret faith of the naturalistic mode of thought. It is thus aiming at a Cosmos of all Being and Becoming, which can be explained from itself, and comprehended in itself alone, supported by its own complete and all-sufficing causality and uniformity, resting in itself, shut up within itself, complete in itself—a God sufficient unto himself and resting in himself.We do not need to probe very deeply to find out how strongly religion resists this attempt, and we easily discover what is the disturbing element which awakens hostile feeling. It is of three kinds, and depends on three characteristic aims and requirements of religion, which are closely associated with one another, yet distinct from one another, though it is not always easy to represent them in their true proportions and relative values. The first of these interests seems to be“teleology,”the search after guiding ideas and purposes, after plan and directive control in the whole machinery, that sets itself in sharp opposition to a mere inquiry into proximate causes. Little or nothing is gained by knowing how everything came about or must have come about; all interest lies in the fact that everything has come about in such a way that it reveals intention, wisdom, providence, and eternal meaning, realising itself in details and in the whole. This has always been rightly regarded as the true concern and interest of every religious conception of the world. But it has[pg 038]been sometimes forgotten that this is by no means the only, or even the primary interest that religion has in world-lore. We call it its highest and ultimate interest, but we find, on careful study, that two others are associated with and precede it.For before all belief in Providence and in the divine meaning of the world, indeed before faith at all, religion is primarily feeling—a deep, humble consciousness of the entire dependence and conditionality of our existence, and of all things. The belief we have spoken of is, in relation to this feeling, merely a form—as yet not in itself religious. It is not only the question“Have the world and existence a meaning, and are phenomena governed by ideas and purposes?”that brings religion and its antagonists into contact; there is a prior and deeper question. Is there scope for this true inwardness of all religion, the power to comprehend itself and all the world in humility in the light of that which is not of the world, but is above world and existence? But this is seriously affected by that doctrine which attempts to regard the Cosmos as self-governing and self-sufficing, needing nothing, and failing in nothing. It is this and not Darwinism or the descent from a Simian stock that primarily troubles the religious spirit. It is more specially sensitive to the strange and antagonistic tendency of naturalism shown even in that marvellous and terrifying mathematical-mechanical system of the great heavenly bodies, in this clock of the universe which, in obedience to clear and[pg 039]inviolable laws, carries on its soundless play from everlasting to everlasting, needing no pendulum and no pedestal, without any stoppage and without room for dependence on anything outside of itself, apparently entirely godless, but absolutely reason and God enough for itself. It shrinks in terror from the thought that the same autonomy and self-regulation may be brought down from the stage of immensity into the play of everyday life and events.But we must penetrate still deeper. Schleiermacher has directed our attention anew to the fact that the most profound element in religion is that deep-lying consciousness of all creatures,“I that am dust and ashes,”that humble feeling of the absolute dependence of every being in the world on One that is above all the world. But religion does not fully express itself even in this; there is yet another note that sounds still deeper and is the keynote of the triad.“Let a man examine himself.”Is it not the case that we ourselves, in as far as the delight in knowledge and the enthusiasm for solving riddles have taken hold of us, rejoice in every new piece of elucidation and interpretation that science succeeds in making, that we are in the fullest sympathy with the impulse to understand everything and bring reason and clearness into it, and that we give hearty adherence to the leading ideas which guide the investigations of natural science? Yet on the other hand, in as far as we are religious, do we not sometimes feel a sudden inward recoil from this almost profane eagerness[pg 040]to penetrate into the mystery of things, this desire to have everything intelligible, clear, rational and transparent? This feeling which stirs in us has always existed in all religious minds and will only die with them. And we need not hesitate to say so plainly. For this is the most real characteristic of religion; it seeks depth in things, reaches out towards what is concealed, uncomprehended, and mysterious. It is more than humility; it is piety. And piety is experience of mystery.It is at this point that religion comes most violently into antagonism with the meaning and mood of naturalism. Here they first conflict in earnest. And it is here above all that scientific investigation and its materialistic complement seem to take away freedom and truth, air and light from religion. For science is seeking especially this: Deeper penetration into and illumination of the world. It presses with macroscope and microscope into its most outlying regions and most hidden corners, into its abysses and fastnesses. It explains away the old idea of two worlds, one on this side and one on that, and rejects heavenly things with the notice“No Room”of which D. Fr. Strauss speaks. It aims at discovering the mathematical world-formulæ, if not indeed one great general formula which embraces, defines unequivocally, and rationalises all the processes of and in infinity, from the movements of Sirius to those of the cilia of the infusorian in the drop of water, and which not only crowds“heaven”out of the world,[pg 041]but strips away from things the fringe of the mysterious and incommensurable which seemed to surround them.

Religion comes into contact with naturalism and demands to be reconciled with it, not merely at its periphery, but at its very core, namely, with its characteristic ideal of a mathematical-mechanical interpretation of the whole world. This ideal seems to be most nearly, if not indeed completely, attained in reference to the inter-relations of the great masses, in the realm of astronomy, with the calculable, inviolable, and entirely comprehensible conditions which govern the purely mechanical correlations of the heavenly bodies. To bring the same clearness and intelligibility, the same inevitableness and calculability into the world in general, and into the whole realm of nature down to the mysterious law determining the development of the daintiest insect's wing, and the stirrings of the grey matter in the[pg 037]cortex of the brain which reveal themselves to us as sensation, desire, and thought, this has always been the aim and secret faith of the naturalistic mode of thought. It is thus aiming at a Cosmos of all Being and Becoming, which can be explained from itself, and comprehended in itself alone, supported by its own complete and all-sufficing causality and uniformity, resting in itself, shut up within itself, complete in itself—a God sufficient unto himself and resting in himself.

We do not need to probe very deeply to find out how strongly religion resists this attempt, and we easily discover what is the disturbing element which awakens hostile feeling. It is of three kinds, and depends on three characteristic aims and requirements of religion, which are closely associated with one another, yet distinct from one another, though it is not always easy to represent them in their true proportions and relative values. The first of these interests seems to be“teleology,”the search after guiding ideas and purposes, after plan and directive control in the whole machinery, that sets itself in sharp opposition to a mere inquiry into proximate causes. Little or nothing is gained by knowing how everything came about or must have come about; all interest lies in the fact that everything has come about in such a way that it reveals intention, wisdom, providence, and eternal meaning, realising itself in details and in the whole. This has always been rightly regarded as the true concern and interest of every religious conception of the world. But it has[pg 038]been sometimes forgotten that this is by no means the only, or even the primary interest that religion has in world-lore. We call it its highest and ultimate interest, but we find, on careful study, that two others are associated with and precede it.

For before all belief in Providence and in the divine meaning of the world, indeed before faith at all, religion is primarily feeling—a deep, humble consciousness of the entire dependence and conditionality of our existence, and of all things. The belief we have spoken of is, in relation to this feeling, merely a form—as yet not in itself religious. It is not only the question“Have the world and existence a meaning, and are phenomena governed by ideas and purposes?”that brings religion and its antagonists into contact; there is a prior and deeper question. Is there scope for this true inwardness of all religion, the power to comprehend itself and all the world in humility in the light of that which is not of the world, but is above world and existence? But this is seriously affected by that doctrine which attempts to regard the Cosmos as self-governing and self-sufficing, needing nothing, and failing in nothing. It is this and not Darwinism or the descent from a Simian stock that primarily troubles the religious spirit. It is more specially sensitive to the strange and antagonistic tendency of naturalism shown even in that marvellous and terrifying mathematical-mechanical system of the great heavenly bodies, in this clock of the universe which, in obedience to clear and[pg 039]inviolable laws, carries on its soundless play from everlasting to everlasting, needing no pendulum and no pedestal, without any stoppage and without room for dependence on anything outside of itself, apparently entirely godless, but absolutely reason and God enough for itself. It shrinks in terror from the thought that the same autonomy and self-regulation may be brought down from the stage of immensity into the play of everyday life and events.

But we must penetrate still deeper. Schleiermacher has directed our attention anew to the fact that the most profound element in religion is that deep-lying consciousness of all creatures,“I that am dust and ashes,”that humble feeling of the absolute dependence of every being in the world on One that is above all the world. But religion does not fully express itself even in this; there is yet another note that sounds still deeper and is the keynote of the triad.“Let a man examine himself.”Is it not the case that we ourselves, in as far as the delight in knowledge and the enthusiasm for solving riddles have taken hold of us, rejoice in every new piece of elucidation and interpretation that science succeeds in making, that we are in the fullest sympathy with the impulse to understand everything and bring reason and clearness into it, and that we give hearty adherence to the leading ideas which guide the investigations of natural science? Yet on the other hand, in as far as we are religious, do we not sometimes feel a sudden inward recoil from this almost profane eagerness[pg 040]to penetrate into the mystery of things, this desire to have everything intelligible, clear, rational and transparent? This feeling which stirs in us has always existed in all religious minds and will only die with them. And we need not hesitate to say so plainly. For this is the most real characteristic of religion; it seeks depth in things, reaches out towards what is concealed, uncomprehended, and mysterious. It is more than humility; it is piety. And piety is experience of mystery.

It is at this point that religion comes most violently into antagonism with the meaning and mood of naturalism. Here they first conflict in earnest. And it is here above all that scientific investigation and its materialistic complement seem to take away freedom and truth, air and light from religion. For science is seeking especially this: Deeper penetration into and illumination of the world. It presses with macroscope and microscope into its most outlying regions and most hidden corners, into its abysses and fastnesses. It explains away the old idea of two worlds, one on this side and one on that, and rejects heavenly things with the notice“No Room”of which D. Fr. Strauss speaks. It aims at discovering the mathematical world-formulæ, if not indeed one great general formula which embraces, defines unequivocally, and rationalises all the processes of and in infinity, from the movements of Sirius to those of the cilia of the infusorian in the drop of water, and which not only crowds“heaven”out of the world,[pg 041]but strips away from things the fringe of the mysterious and incommensurable which seemed to surround them.

Mystery : Dependence : Purpose.There is then a threefold religious interest, and there are three corresponding points of contact between the religious and the naturalistic interpretations of the world, where, as it appears, they are necessarily antagonistic to one another. Arranging them in their proper order we find, first, the interest, never to be relinquished, of experiencing and acknowledging the world and existence to be a mystery, and regarding all that is known and manifested in things merely as the thin crust which separates us from the uncomprehended and inexpressible. Secondly, there is the desire on the part of religion to bring ourselves and all creatures into the“feeling of absolute dependence,”and, as the belief in creation does, to subordinate ourselves and them to the Eternal Power that is not of the world, but is above the world. Finally, there is the interest in a teleological interpretation of the world as opposed to the purely causal interpretation of natural science; that is to say, an interpretation of the world according to eternal God-willed purposes, governing ideas, a plan and aim. In all three respects, it is important to religion that it should be able to maintain its validity and freedom as contrasted with naturalism.But while religion must inquire of itself into the[pg 042]reality of things, with special regard to its own needs, there are two possibilities which may serve to make peace between it and natural science. It may, for instance, be possible that the mathematical-mechanical interpretation of things, even if it be sufficient within its own domain, does not take away from nature the characters which religion seeks and requires in it, namely, purpose, dependence and mystery. Or it may be that nature itself does not correspond at all to this ideal of mathematical explicability, that this ideal may be well enough as a guide for investigation, but that it is not a fundamental clue really applying to nature as a whole and in its essence. It may be that nature as a whole cannot be scientifically summed up without straining the mechanical categories. And this suggests another possibility, namely, that the naturalistic method of interpretation cannot be applied throughout the whole territory of nature, that it embraces certain aspects but not others, and, finally, that it is distinctly interrupted and held in abeyance at particular points by the incommensurable which breaks forth spontaneously out of the depths of phenomena, revealing a depth which is not to be explained away.All these possibilities occur. And though they need not necessarily be regarded as the key to our order of discussion, in what follows we shall often meet them singly or together.

There is then a threefold religious interest, and there are three corresponding points of contact between the religious and the naturalistic interpretations of the world, where, as it appears, they are necessarily antagonistic to one another. Arranging them in their proper order we find, first, the interest, never to be relinquished, of experiencing and acknowledging the world and existence to be a mystery, and regarding all that is known and manifested in things merely as the thin crust which separates us from the uncomprehended and inexpressible. Secondly, there is the desire on the part of religion to bring ourselves and all creatures into the“feeling of absolute dependence,”and, as the belief in creation does, to subordinate ourselves and them to the Eternal Power that is not of the world, but is above the world. Finally, there is the interest in a teleological interpretation of the world as opposed to the purely causal interpretation of natural science; that is to say, an interpretation of the world according to eternal God-willed purposes, governing ideas, a plan and aim. In all three respects, it is important to religion that it should be able to maintain its validity and freedom as contrasted with naturalism.

But while religion must inquire of itself into the[pg 042]reality of things, with special regard to its own needs, there are two possibilities which may serve to make peace between it and natural science. It may, for instance, be possible that the mathematical-mechanical interpretation of things, even if it be sufficient within its own domain, does not take away from nature the characters which religion seeks and requires in it, namely, purpose, dependence and mystery. Or it may be that nature itself does not correspond at all to this ideal of mathematical explicability, that this ideal may be well enough as a guide for investigation, but that it is not a fundamental clue really applying to nature as a whole and in its essence. It may be that nature as a whole cannot be scientifically summed up without straining the mechanical categories. And this suggests another possibility, namely, that the naturalistic method of interpretation cannot be applied throughout the whole territory of nature, that it embraces certain aspects but not others, and, finally, that it is distinctly interrupted and held in abeyance at particular points by the incommensurable which breaks forth spontaneously out of the depths of phenomena, revealing a depth which is not to be explained away.

All these possibilities occur. And though they need not necessarily be regarded as the key to our order of discussion, in what follows we shall often meet them singly or together.

The Mystery of Existence Remains Unexplained.1. Let us begin with the problem of the mystery of all existence, and see whether it remains unaffected, or whether it disappears in face of naturalistic interpretation, with its discovery and formulation of law and order, with its methods of measuring and computing. More primary even than faith and heartfelt trust in everlasting wisdom and purposeful Providence there is piety; there is devout sense of awe before the marvellous and mysterious, before the depth and the hidden nature of all things and all being, before unspeakable mysteries over which we hover, and abysmal depths over which we are borne. In a world which had not these, and could not be first felt in this way, religion could not live at all. It could not sail on its too shallow waters, or breathe its too thin air. It is indeed a fact that what alone we can fitly speak of and love as religion—the sense of mystery and the gentle shuddering of piety before the depth of phenomena and their everlasting divine abysses,—has its true place and kingdom in the world of mind and history, with its experiences, riddles, and depths. But mystery is to be found in the world of nature as well. It is only to a very superficial study that it could appear as though nature were, or ever could become, plain and obvious, as if the veil of Isis which shrouds its depths from all investigation could ever be torn away. From this point of view it would make no[pg 044]difference even though the attempt to range the whole realm of nature under the sway of inviolable laws were to be immediately successful. This is expressed in the first of our main propositions (p.35).In order to realise this it is necessary to reflect for a little on the relation of“explanation”and“description”to one another, and on what is meant by“establishing laws”and“understanding”in general. The aim of all investigation is to understand the world. To understand it obviously means something more than merely to know it. It is not enough for us to know things, that is, to know what, how many, and what different kinds of things there are. On the contrary, we want to understand them, to know how they came to be as they are, and why they are precisely as they are. The first step towards this understanding is merely to know, that is, we must rightly apprehend and disentangle the things and processes of the world, grouping them, and describing them adequately and exhaustively.But what I have merely described I have not yet understood; I am only preparing to try to understand it. It stands before me enveloped in all its mystery, and I must now begin to attempt to solve it, for describing is not explaining; it is only challenging explanation. The next step is to discover and formulate the laws. For when man sifts out things and processes and follows them out into their changes and stages he discovers the iron regularity of sequences, the strictly defined lines and paths, the inviolable order and connection[pg 045]in things and occurrences, and he formulates these into laws, ascribing to them the idea of necessity which he finds in himself. In so doing he makes distinct progress, for he can now go beyond what is actually seen, he can draw inferences with certainty as to effects and work back to causes. And thus order, breadth of view, and uniformity are brought into his acquaintance with facts, and his science begins. For science does not merely mean acquaintance with phenomena in their contingent or isolated occurrence, manifold and varied as that may be; it is the discovery and establishment of the laws and general modes of occurrence. Without this we might collect curiosities, but we should not have science. And to discover this network of uniformities throughout all phenomena, in the movements of the heavenly bodies and in the living substance of the cell alike, is the primary aim of all investigation. We are still far away from this goal, and it is more than questionable whether we shall ever reach it.But if the goal should ever be reached, if, in other words, we should ever be able to say with certainty what must result if occurrencesaandbare given, or whataandbmust have been whencoccurs, would explanation then have taken the place of description? Or would understanding have replaced mystery? Obviously not at all. It has indeed often been supposed that this would be the case. People have imagined they have understood, when they have seen that[pg 046]“that is always so, and that it always happens in this particular way.”But this is a naïve idea. The region of the described has merely become larger, and the riddle has become more complex. For now we have before us not only the things themselves, but the more marvellous laws which“govern”them. But laws are not forces or impelling causes. They do not cause anything to happen, and they do not explain anything. And as in the case of things so in that of laws, we want to know how they are, whence they come, and why they are as they are and not quite different. The fact that we have described them simply excites still more strongly the desire to explain them. To explain is to be able to answer the question“Why?”Natural science is very well aware of this. It calls its previous descriptions“merely historical,”and it desires to supplement these with ætiology, causal explanation, a deeper interpretation, that in its turn will make laws superfluous, because it will penetrate so deeply into the nature of things that it will see precisely why these, and not other laws of variation, of development, of becoming, hold sway. This is just the meaning of the“reductions”of which we have already spoken. For instance, in regard to crystal formation,“explanation”will have replaced description only when, instead of demonstrating the forms and laws according to which a particular crystal always and necessarily arises out of a particular solution, we are able to show why, from a particular mixture and because[pg 047]of certain co-operating molecular forces, and of other more primary, more remote, but also intelligible conditions, these forms and processes of crystallisation should always and of necessity occur. If this explanation were possible, the“law”would also be explained, and would therefore become superfluous. From this and similar examples we can learn at what point“explanation”begins to replace description, namely, when processes resolve themselves into simpler processes from the concurrence of which they arise. This is exactly what natural science desires to bring about, and what naturalism hopes ultimately to succeed in, thereby solving the riddle of existence.But this kind of reduction to simpler terms only becomes“explanation”when these simpler terms are themselves clear and intelligible and not merely simple; that is to say, when we can immediately see why the simpler process occurs, and by what means it is brought about, when the question as to the“why”is no longer necessary, because, on becoming aware of the process, we immediately and directly perceive that it is a matter of course, indisputable, and requiring no proof. If this is not the case, the reduction to simpler terms has been misleading. We have only replaced one unintelligibility by another, one description by another, and so simply pushed back the whole problem. Naturalism supposes that by this gradual pushing back the task will at least become more and more simple, until at last a point is reached where the riddle will solve[pg 048]itself, because description becomes equivalent to explanation. This final stage is supposed to be found in the forces of attraction and repulsion, with which the smallest similar particles of matter are equipped. Out of the endlessly varied correlations of these there arise all higher forms of energy and all the combinations which make up more complex phenomena.But in reality this does not help us at all. For now we are definitely brought face to face with the quite unanswerable question, How, from all this homogeneity and unity of the ultimate particles and forces, can we account for the beginnings of the diversity which is so marked a characteristic of this world? Whence came the causes of the syntheses to higher unities, the reasons for the combination into higher resultants of energy?But even apart from that, it is quite obvious that we have not yet reached the ultimate point. For can“attraction,”influence at a distance,vis a fronte, be considered as a fact which is in itself clear? Is it not rather the most puzzling fundamental riddle we can be called upon to explain? Assuredly. And therefore the attempt is made to penetrate still deeper to the ultimate point, the last possible reduction to simpler terms, by referring all actual“forces”and reducing all movement, and therewith all“action,”to terms of attraction and repulsion, which are free from anything mysterious, whose mode of working can be unambiguously and plainly set forth in the law of the parallelogram of forces. Law? Set forth? Therefore still[pg 049]only description? Certainly only description, not explanation in the least. Even assuming that it is true, instead of a mere Utopia, that all the secrets and riddles of nature can be traced back to matter moved by attraction and repulsion according to the simplest laws of these, they would still only be summed up into a great general riddle, which is only the more colossal because it is able to embrace all others within itself. For attraction and repulsion, the transference of motion, and the combination of motion according to the law of the parallelogram of forces—all this is merely description of processes whose inner causes we do not understand, which appear simple, and are so, but are nevertheless not self-evident or to be taken as a matter of course; they are not in themselves intelligible, but form an absolute“world-riddle.”From the very root of things there gazes at us the same Sphinx which we had apparently driven from the foreground.But furthermore, this reduction to simpler terms is an impossible and never-ending task. There is fresh confusion at every step. In reducing to simpler terms, it is often forgotten that the principle of combination is not inherent in the more simple, and cannot be“reduced.”Or else there is an ignoring of the fact that a transition has been made, not from resultants to components, but to quite a different kind of phenomena. Innumerable as are the possible reductions to simpler terms, and mistaken as it would be to remain prematurely at the level of description, it cannot be denied[pg 050]that the fundamental facts of the world are pure facts which must simply be accepted where they occur, indisputable, inexplicable, impenetrable, the“whence”and the“how”of their existence quite uncomprehended. And this is especially true of every new and peculiar expression of what we call energy and energies. Gravitation cannot be reduced to terms of attraction and repulsion, nor action at a distance to action at close quarters; it might, indeed, be shown that repulsion in its turn presupposes attraction before it can become possible; the“energies”of ponderable matter cannot be reduced to the“ether”and its processes of motion, nor the complex play of the chemical affinities to the attraction of masses in general or to gravity. And thus the series ascends throughout the spheres of nature up to the mysterious directive energies in the crystal, and to the underivable phenomena of movement in the living substance, perhaps even to the functions of will-power. All these can be discovered, but not really understood. They can be described, but not explained. And we are absolutely ignorant as to why they should have emerged from the depth of nature, what that depth really is, or what still remains hidden in her mysterious lap. Neither what nature reveals to us nor what it conceals from us is in any true sense“comprehended,”and we flatter ourselves that we understand her secrets when we have only become accustomed to them. If we try to break the power of this accustomedness and to[pg 051]consider the actual relations of things there dawns in us a feeling already awakened by direct impressions and experience; the feeling of the mysterious and enigmatical, of the abyssmal depths beneath, and of what lies far above our comprehension, alike in regard to our own existence and every other. The world is at no point self-explanatory, but at all points marvellous. Its laws are only formulated riddles.

1. Let us begin with the problem of the mystery of all existence, and see whether it remains unaffected, or whether it disappears in face of naturalistic interpretation, with its discovery and formulation of law and order, with its methods of measuring and computing. More primary even than faith and heartfelt trust in everlasting wisdom and purposeful Providence there is piety; there is devout sense of awe before the marvellous and mysterious, before the depth and the hidden nature of all things and all being, before unspeakable mysteries over which we hover, and abysmal depths over which we are borne. In a world which had not these, and could not be first felt in this way, religion could not live at all. It could not sail on its too shallow waters, or breathe its too thin air. It is indeed a fact that what alone we can fitly speak of and love as religion—the sense of mystery and the gentle shuddering of piety before the depth of phenomena and their everlasting divine abysses,—has its true place and kingdom in the world of mind and history, with its experiences, riddles, and depths. But mystery is to be found in the world of nature as well. It is only to a very superficial study that it could appear as though nature were, or ever could become, plain and obvious, as if the veil of Isis which shrouds its depths from all investigation could ever be torn away. From this point of view it would make no[pg 044]difference even though the attempt to range the whole realm of nature under the sway of inviolable laws were to be immediately successful. This is expressed in the first of our main propositions (p.35).

In order to realise this it is necessary to reflect for a little on the relation of“explanation”and“description”to one another, and on what is meant by“establishing laws”and“understanding”in general. The aim of all investigation is to understand the world. To understand it obviously means something more than merely to know it. It is not enough for us to know things, that is, to know what, how many, and what different kinds of things there are. On the contrary, we want to understand them, to know how they came to be as they are, and why they are precisely as they are. The first step towards this understanding is merely to know, that is, we must rightly apprehend and disentangle the things and processes of the world, grouping them, and describing them adequately and exhaustively.

But what I have merely described I have not yet understood; I am only preparing to try to understand it. It stands before me enveloped in all its mystery, and I must now begin to attempt to solve it, for describing is not explaining; it is only challenging explanation. The next step is to discover and formulate the laws. For when man sifts out things and processes and follows them out into their changes and stages he discovers the iron regularity of sequences, the strictly defined lines and paths, the inviolable order and connection[pg 045]in things and occurrences, and he formulates these into laws, ascribing to them the idea of necessity which he finds in himself. In so doing he makes distinct progress, for he can now go beyond what is actually seen, he can draw inferences with certainty as to effects and work back to causes. And thus order, breadth of view, and uniformity are brought into his acquaintance with facts, and his science begins. For science does not merely mean acquaintance with phenomena in their contingent or isolated occurrence, manifold and varied as that may be; it is the discovery and establishment of the laws and general modes of occurrence. Without this we might collect curiosities, but we should not have science. And to discover this network of uniformities throughout all phenomena, in the movements of the heavenly bodies and in the living substance of the cell alike, is the primary aim of all investigation. We are still far away from this goal, and it is more than questionable whether we shall ever reach it.

But if the goal should ever be reached, if, in other words, we should ever be able to say with certainty what must result if occurrencesaandbare given, or whataandbmust have been whencoccurs, would explanation then have taken the place of description? Or would understanding have replaced mystery? Obviously not at all. It has indeed often been supposed that this would be the case. People have imagined they have understood, when they have seen that[pg 046]“that is always so, and that it always happens in this particular way.”But this is a naïve idea. The region of the described has merely become larger, and the riddle has become more complex. For now we have before us not only the things themselves, but the more marvellous laws which“govern”them. But laws are not forces or impelling causes. They do not cause anything to happen, and they do not explain anything. And as in the case of things so in that of laws, we want to know how they are, whence they come, and why they are as they are and not quite different. The fact that we have described them simply excites still more strongly the desire to explain them. To explain is to be able to answer the question“Why?”

Natural science is very well aware of this. It calls its previous descriptions“merely historical,”and it desires to supplement these with ætiology, causal explanation, a deeper interpretation, that in its turn will make laws superfluous, because it will penetrate so deeply into the nature of things that it will see precisely why these, and not other laws of variation, of development, of becoming, hold sway. This is just the meaning of the“reductions”of which we have already spoken. For instance, in regard to crystal formation,“explanation”will have replaced description only when, instead of demonstrating the forms and laws according to which a particular crystal always and necessarily arises out of a particular solution, we are able to show why, from a particular mixture and because[pg 047]of certain co-operating molecular forces, and of other more primary, more remote, but also intelligible conditions, these forms and processes of crystallisation should always and of necessity occur. If this explanation were possible, the“law”would also be explained, and would therefore become superfluous. From this and similar examples we can learn at what point“explanation”begins to replace description, namely, when processes resolve themselves into simpler processes from the concurrence of which they arise. This is exactly what natural science desires to bring about, and what naturalism hopes ultimately to succeed in, thereby solving the riddle of existence.

But this kind of reduction to simpler terms only becomes“explanation”when these simpler terms are themselves clear and intelligible and not merely simple; that is to say, when we can immediately see why the simpler process occurs, and by what means it is brought about, when the question as to the“why”is no longer necessary, because, on becoming aware of the process, we immediately and directly perceive that it is a matter of course, indisputable, and requiring no proof. If this is not the case, the reduction to simpler terms has been misleading. We have only replaced one unintelligibility by another, one description by another, and so simply pushed back the whole problem. Naturalism supposes that by this gradual pushing back the task will at least become more and more simple, until at last a point is reached where the riddle will solve[pg 048]itself, because description becomes equivalent to explanation. This final stage is supposed to be found in the forces of attraction and repulsion, with which the smallest similar particles of matter are equipped. Out of the endlessly varied correlations of these there arise all higher forms of energy and all the combinations which make up more complex phenomena.

But in reality this does not help us at all. For now we are definitely brought face to face with the quite unanswerable question, How, from all this homogeneity and unity of the ultimate particles and forces, can we account for the beginnings of the diversity which is so marked a characteristic of this world? Whence came the causes of the syntheses to higher unities, the reasons for the combination into higher resultants of energy?

But even apart from that, it is quite obvious that we have not yet reached the ultimate point. For can“attraction,”influence at a distance,vis a fronte, be considered as a fact which is in itself clear? Is it not rather the most puzzling fundamental riddle we can be called upon to explain? Assuredly. And therefore the attempt is made to penetrate still deeper to the ultimate point, the last possible reduction to simpler terms, by referring all actual“forces”and reducing all movement, and therewith all“action,”to terms of attraction and repulsion, which are free from anything mysterious, whose mode of working can be unambiguously and plainly set forth in the law of the parallelogram of forces. Law? Set forth? Therefore still[pg 049]only description? Certainly only description, not explanation in the least. Even assuming that it is true, instead of a mere Utopia, that all the secrets and riddles of nature can be traced back to matter moved by attraction and repulsion according to the simplest laws of these, they would still only be summed up into a great general riddle, which is only the more colossal because it is able to embrace all others within itself. For attraction and repulsion, the transference of motion, and the combination of motion according to the law of the parallelogram of forces—all this is merely description of processes whose inner causes we do not understand, which appear simple, and are so, but are nevertheless not self-evident or to be taken as a matter of course; they are not in themselves intelligible, but form an absolute“world-riddle.”From the very root of things there gazes at us the same Sphinx which we had apparently driven from the foreground.

But furthermore, this reduction to simpler terms is an impossible and never-ending task. There is fresh confusion at every step. In reducing to simpler terms, it is often forgotten that the principle of combination is not inherent in the more simple, and cannot be“reduced.”Or else there is an ignoring of the fact that a transition has been made, not from resultants to components, but to quite a different kind of phenomena. Innumerable as are the possible reductions to simpler terms, and mistaken as it would be to remain prematurely at the level of description, it cannot be denied[pg 050]that the fundamental facts of the world are pure facts which must simply be accepted where they occur, indisputable, inexplicable, impenetrable, the“whence”and the“how”of their existence quite uncomprehended. And this is especially true of every new and peculiar expression of what we call energy and energies. Gravitation cannot be reduced to terms of attraction and repulsion, nor action at a distance to action at close quarters; it might, indeed, be shown that repulsion in its turn presupposes attraction before it can become possible; the“energies”of ponderable matter cannot be reduced to the“ether”and its processes of motion, nor the complex play of the chemical affinities to the attraction of masses in general or to gravity. And thus the series ascends throughout the spheres of nature up to the mysterious directive energies in the crystal, and to the underivable phenomena of movement in the living substance, perhaps even to the functions of will-power. All these can be discovered, but not really understood. They can be described, but not explained. And we are absolutely ignorant as to why they should have emerged from the depth of nature, what that depth really is, or what still remains hidden in her mysterious lap. Neither what nature reveals to us nor what it conceals from us is in any true sense“comprehended,”and we flatter ourselves that we understand her secrets when we have only become accustomed to them. If we try to break the power of this accustomedness and to[pg 051]consider the actual relations of things there dawns in us a feeling already awakened by direct impressions and experience; the feeling of the mysterious and enigmatical, of the abyssmal depths beneath, and of what lies far above our comprehension, alike in regard to our own existence and every other. The world is at no point self-explanatory, but at all points marvellous. Its laws are only formulated riddles.

Evolution and New Beginnings.All this throws an important light upon two subjects which are relevant in this connection, but which cannot here be exhaustively dealt with,—evolution and new beginnings. Let us consider, for instance, the marvellous range and diversity of the characteristic chemical properties and interrelations of substances. Each one of them, contrasted with the preceding lower forms and stages of“energy,”contrasted with mere attraction, repulsion, gravitation, is something absolutely new, a new interpolation (of course not in regard to time but to grade), a phenomenon which cannot be“explained”by what has gone before. It simply occurs, and we find it in its own time and place. We may call this new emergence“evolution,”and we may use this term in connection with every new stage higher than those preceding it. But it is not evolution in a crude and quantitative sense, according to which the“more highly evolved”is nothing more than an[pg 052]addition and combination of what was already there; it is evolution in the old sense of the word, according to which the more developed is a higher analogue of the less developed, but is in its own way as independent, as much a new beginning as each of the antecedent stages, and therefore in the strict sense neither derivable from them nor reducible to them.It must be noted that in this sense evolution and new beginnings are already present at a very early stage in nature and are part of its essence. We must bear this in mind if we are rightly to understand the subtler processes in nature which we find emerging at a higher level. It is illusory to suppose that it is a“natural”assumption to“derive”the living from lower processes in nature. The non-living and the inorganic are also underivable as to their individual stages, and the leap from the inorganic to the organic is simply much greater than that from attraction in general to chemical affinity. As a matter of fact, the first occurrence—undoubtedly controlled and conditioned by internal necessity—of crystallisation, or of life, or of sensation has just the same marvellousness as everything individual and everything new in any ascending series in nature. In short, every new beginning has the same marvel.Perhaps this consideration goes still deeper, throwing light upon or suggesting the proper basis for a study of the domain of mind and of history. It is immediately obvious that there, at any rate, we enter into a[pg 053]region of phenomena which cannot be derived from anything antecedent, or reduced to anything lower. It must be one of the chief tasks of naturalism to explain away these facts, and to maintain the sway of“evolution,”not in our sense but in its own, that is“to explain”everything new and individual from that which precedes it. But the assertion that this can be done is here doubly false. For, in the first place, it cannot be proved that methods of study which are relatively valid for natural phenomena are applicable also to those of the mind. And in the second place we must admit that even in nature—apart from mind—we have to do with new beginnings which are underivable from their antecedents.All being is inscrutable mystery as a whole, and from its very foundations upwards through each successively higher stage of its evolution, in an increasing degree, until it reaches a climax in the incomprehensibility of individuality. It is a mystery that does not force itself into nature as supernatural or miraculous, but is fundamentally implicit in it, a mystery that in its unfolding assuredly follows the strictest law, the most inviolable rules, whether in the chemical affinities a higher grade of energies reveals itself, or whether—unquestionably also in obedience to everlasting law—the physical and chemical conditions admit of the occurrence of life, or whether in his own time and place a genius arises.1

All this throws an important light upon two subjects which are relevant in this connection, but which cannot here be exhaustively dealt with,—evolution and new beginnings. Let us consider, for instance, the marvellous range and diversity of the characteristic chemical properties and interrelations of substances. Each one of them, contrasted with the preceding lower forms and stages of“energy,”contrasted with mere attraction, repulsion, gravitation, is something absolutely new, a new interpolation (of course not in regard to time but to grade), a phenomenon which cannot be“explained”by what has gone before. It simply occurs, and we find it in its own time and place. We may call this new emergence“evolution,”and we may use this term in connection with every new stage higher than those preceding it. But it is not evolution in a crude and quantitative sense, according to which the“more highly evolved”is nothing more than an[pg 052]addition and combination of what was already there; it is evolution in the old sense of the word, according to which the more developed is a higher analogue of the less developed, but is in its own way as independent, as much a new beginning as each of the antecedent stages, and therefore in the strict sense neither derivable from them nor reducible to them.

It must be noted that in this sense evolution and new beginnings are already present at a very early stage in nature and are part of its essence. We must bear this in mind if we are rightly to understand the subtler processes in nature which we find emerging at a higher level. It is illusory to suppose that it is a“natural”assumption to“derive”the living from lower processes in nature. The non-living and the inorganic are also underivable as to their individual stages, and the leap from the inorganic to the organic is simply much greater than that from attraction in general to chemical affinity. As a matter of fact, the first occurrence—undoubtedly controlled and conditioned by internal necessity—of crystallisation, or of life, or of sensation has just the same marvellousness as everything individual and everything new in any ascending series in nature. In short, every new beginning has the same marvel.

Perhaps this consideration goes still deeper, throwing light upon or suggesting the proper basis for a study of the domain of mind and of history. It is immediately obvious that there, at any rate, we enter into a[pg 053]region of phenomena which cannot be derived from anything antecedent, or reduced to anything lower. It must be one of the chief tasks of naturalism to explain away these facts, and to maintain the sway of“evolution,”not in our sense but in its own, that is“to explain”everything new and individual from that which precedes it. But the assertion that this can be done is here doubly false. For, in the first place, it cannot be proved that methods of study which are relatively valid for natural phenomena are applicable also to those of the mind. And in the second place we must admit that even in nature—apart from mind—we have to do with new beginnings which are underivable from their antecedents.

All being is inscrutable mystery as a whole, and from its very foundations upwards through each successively higher stage of its evolution, in an increasing degree, until it reaches a climax in the incomprehensibility of individuality. It is a mystery that does not force itself into nature as supernatural or miraculous, but is fundamentally implicit in it, a mystery that in its unfolding assuredly follows the strictest law, the most inviolable rules, whether in the chemical affinities a higher grade of energies reveals itself, or whether—unquestionably also in obedience to everlasting law—the physical and chemical conditions admit of the occurrence of life, or whether in his own time and place a genius arises.1

The Dependence of the Order of Nature.(2 and 3). The“dependence”of all things is the second requirement of religion, without which it is altogether inconceivable. We avoid the words“creation”and“being created,”because they involve anthropomorphic and altogether insufficient modes of representation. But throughout we have in mind, as suggested by Schleiermacher's[pg 055]expression already quoted, what all religion means when it declares nature and the world to becreatures. The inalienable content of this idea is that deep and assured feeling that our nature and all nature does not rest in its own strength and self-sufficiency, that there must be more secure reasons for nature which are absolutely outside of it, and that it is dependent upon, and conditioned through and through by something above itself, independent, and unconditioned.“I believe that God has created me together with all creatures.”(Luther.)This faith seemed easier in earlier times, when men's eyes were not yet opened to see the deep-lying connectedness of all phenomena, the inexorableness of causal sequences, when it was believed that, in the apparently numerous interruptions of the causal sequences, the frailty and dependence of this world and its need for heavenly aid could be directly observed, when, therefore, it was not difficult to believe that the world was“nothing”and perishable, that it had been called forth out of nothing, and that in its transient nature it carried for ever the traces of this origin. But to-day it is not so easy to believe in this dependence, for nature seems to show itself, in its inviolable laws and unbroken sequences, as entirely sufficient unto itself, so that for every phenomenon a sufficient cause is to be found within nature, that is, in the sum of the antecedent states and conditions which, according to inevitable laws, must result in and produce what follows.[pg 056]We have already noted that this is most obviously discernible in the world of the great masses, the heavenly bodies which pursue their courses from everlasting to everlasting, mutually conditioning themselves and betraying no need for or dependence upon anything outside of themselves. Everything, even the smallest movement, is here determined strictly by the dependence of each upon all and of all upon each. There is no variation, no change of position for which an entirely satisfactory cause cannot be found in the system as a whole, which works like an immense machine. Nothing indicates dependence upon anything external. And as it is to-day so it was yesterday, and a million years ago, and innumerable millions of years ago. It seems quite gratuitous to suppose that something which does not occur to-day was necessary at an earlier period, and that everything has not been from all eternity just as it is now.We saw that naturalism is attempting to extend this character of independence and self-sufficiency from the astronomical world to the world as a whole. Shall we attempt, then, to oppose it in this ambition, but surrender the realm of the heavenly bodies as already conquered? By no means. For religion cannot exclude the solar system from the dependence of all being upon God. And this very example is the most conspicuous one, the one in regard to which the whole problem can be most definitely formulated.Astronomy teaches us that all cosmic processes are[pg 057]governed by a marvellous far-reaching uniformity of law, which unites in strictest harmony the nearest and the most remote. Has this fact any bearing upon the problem of the dependence of the world? No. It surely cannot be that a world without order could be brought under the religious point of view more readily than one governed by law! Let us suppose for a moment that we had to do with a world without strict nexus and definite order of sequence, without law and without order, full of capricious phenomena, unregulated associations, an inconstant play of causes. Such a world would be to us unintelligible, strange, absurd. But it would not necessarily be more“dependent,”more“conditioned”than any other. Had I no other reasons for looking beyond the world, and for regarding it as dependent on something outside of itself, the absence of law and order would assuredly furnish me with none. For, assuming that it is possible at all to conceive of a world and its contents as independent, and as containing its own sufficient cause within itself, it would be quite as easily thought of as a confused lawless play of chances as a well-ordered Cosmos. Perhaps more easily; for it goes without saying that such a conglomeration of promiscuous chances could not possibly be thought of as a world of God. Order and strict obedience to law, far from being excluded, are required by faith in God, are indeed a direct and inevitable preliminary to thinking of the world as dependent upon God. Thus we may state the paradox, that only a[pg 058]Cosmos which, by its strict obedience to law, gives us the impression of being sufficient unto itself, can be conceived of as actually dependent upon God, as His creation. If any man desires to stop short at the consideration of the apparent self-sufficiency of the Cosmos and its obedience to law, and refuses to recognise any reasons outside of the world for this, we should hardly be able, according to our own proposition, to require him to go farther. For we maintained that God could not be read out of nature, that the idea of God could never have been gained in the first instance from a study of nature and the world. The problem always before us is rather, whether, having gained the idea from other sources, we can include the world within it. Our present question is whether the world, as it is, and just because it is as it is, can be conceived of as dependent upon God. And this question can only be answered in the affirmative, and in the sense of Schiller's oft-quoted lines:The great CreatorWe see not—He conceals himself withinHis own eternal laws. The sceptic seesTheir operation, but beholds not Him,“Wherefore a God!”he cries,“the world itselfSuffices for itself!”and Christian prayerNe'er praised him more, than does this blasphemy.God's world could not possibly be a conglomeration of chances; it must be orderly, and the fact that it is so proves its dependence.But while we thus hold fast to our canon, we shall[pg 059]find that the assertion of the world's dependence receives indirect corroboration even in regard to the astronomical realm, from certain signs which it exhibits, from certain suggestions which are implied in it. We must not wholly overlook two facts which, to say the least, are difficult to fit in with the idea of the independence and self-sufficiency of the world; these are, on the one hand, the difficulties involved in the idea of an eternal machine, and on the other the difficult fact of“entropy.”We have already compared the world to a mighty clock, or a machine which, as a whole, represents what can never be found in one of its parts, aperpetuum mobile. Let us however leave aside the idea of aperpetuum mobile, and dwell rather on the comparison with a machine. It seems obvious that in order to be a machine there must be a closed solidarity in the system. But how could a machine have come into existence and become functional if it is driven by wheels, which are driven by wheels, which are again driven by wheels ... and so on unceasingly? It would not be a machine. The idea falls to pieces in our hands. Yet our world is supposed to be just such an infinitely continuous“system.”How does it begin to depend upon and be sufficient unto itself? But further. It is a clock, we are told, which ever winds itself up anew, which, without fatigue and in ceaseless repetition, adjusts the universal cycles of becoming, and disappearing, and becoming again. It seems a corroboration of the old Heraclitian and Stoic conception, that the eternal primitive fire brings forth[pg 060]all things out of itself, and takes them back into itself to bring them forth anew. Even to-day the conception is probably general that, out of the original states of the world-matter, circling fiery nebulæ form themselves and throw off their rings, that the breaking up of these rings gives rise to planets which circle in solar systems for many æons through space, till, finally, their energy lessened by friction with the ether, they plunge into their suns again, that the increased heat restores the original state and the whole play begins anew.All this was well enough in the days of naïvely vitalistic ideas of the world as having a life and soul. But not in these days of mechanics, the strict calculation of the amount of energy used, and the mechanical theory of heat. The world-clock cannot wind itself up. It, too, owes its activity to the transformation of potential energy into kinetic energy. And, since movement and work take place within it, there is in the clock as a whole just as in every one of its parts, a mighty process of relaxation of an originally tense spring, there is dissipation and transformation of the stored potential energy into work and ultimately into heat. And with every revolution of the earth and its moon the world is moving slowly but inexorably towards a final stage of complete relaxation of her powers of tension, a state in which all energy will be transformed into heat, in which there will be no different states but only the most uniform distribution, in which also all[pg 061]life and all movement will cease and the world-clock itself will come to a standstill.How does this fit in with the idea of independence and self-sufficiency? How could the world-clock ever wind itself up again to the original state of tension which was simply there as if shot from a pistol“in the beginning”? Where is the everlasting impressive uniformity and constancy of the world? How does it happen that the world-clock has not long ago come to a standstill? For even if the original sum of potential energy is postulated as infinite, the eternity that lies behind us is also infinite. And so one infinity swallows another. And innumerable questions of a similar kind are continually presenting themselves.

(2 and 3). The“dependence”of all things is the second requirement of religion, without which it is altogether inconceivable. We avoid the words“creation”and“being created,”because they involve anthropomorphic and altogether insufficient modes of representation. But throughout we have in mind, as suggested by Schleiermacher's[pg 055]expression already quoted, what all religion means when it declares nature and the world to becreatures. The inalienable content of this idea is that deep and assured feeling that our nature and all nature does not rest in its own strength and self-sufficiency, that there must be more secure reasons for nature which are absolutely outside of it, and that it is dependent upon, and conditioned through and through by something above itself, independent, and unconditioned.“I believe that God has created me together with all creatures.”(Luther.)

This faith seemed easier in earlier times, when men's eyes were not yet opened to see the deep-lying connectedness of all phenomena, the inexorableness of causal sequences, when it was believed that, in the apparently numerous interruptions of the causal sequences, the frailty and dependence of this world and its need for heavenly aid could be directly observed, when, therefore, it was not difficult to believe that the world was“nothing”and perishable, that it had been called forth out of nothing, and that in its transient nature it carried for ever the traces of this origin. But to-day it is not so easy to believe in this dependence, for nature seems to show itself, in its inviolable laws and unbroken sequences, as entirely sufficient unto itself, so that for every phenomenon a sufficient cause is to be found within nature, that is, in the sum of the antecedent states and conditions which, according to inevitable laws, must result in and produce what follows.

We have already noted that this is most obviously discernible in the world of the great masses, the heavenly bodies which pursue their courses from everlasting to everlasting, mutually conditioning themselves and betraying no need for or dependence upon anything outside of themselves. Everything, even the smallest movement, is here determined strictly by the dependence of each upon all and of all upon each. There is no variation, no change of position for which an entirely satisfactory cause cannot be found in the system as a whole, which works like an immense machine. Nothing indicates dependence upon anything external. And as it is to-day so it was yesterday, and a million years ago, and innumerable millions of years ago. It seems quite gratuitous to suppose that something which does not occur to-day was necessary at an earlier period, and that everything has not been from all eternity just as it is now.

We saw that naturalism is attempting to extend this character of independence and self-sufficiency from the astronomical world to the world as a whole. Shall we attempt, then, to oppose it in this ambition, but surrender the realm of the heavenly bodies as already conquered? By no means. For religion cannot exclude the solar system from the dependence of all being upon God. And this very example is the most conspicuous one, the one in regard to which the whole problem can be most definitely formulated.

Astronomy teaches us that all cosmic processes are[pg 057]governed by a marvellous far-reaching uniformity of law, which unites in strictest harmony the nearest and the most remote. Has this fact any bearing upon the problem of the dependence of the world? No. It surely cannot be that a world without order could be brought under the religious point of view more readily than one governed by law! Let us suppose for a moment that we had to do with a world without strict nexus and definite order of sequence, without law and without order, full of capricious phenomena, unregulated associations, an inconstant play of causes. Such a world would be to us unintelligible, strange, absurd. But it would not necessarily be more“dependent,”more“conditioned”than any other. Had I no other reasons for looking beyond the world, and for regarding it as dependent on something outside of itself, the absence of law and order would assuredly furnish me with none. For, assuming that it is possible at all to conceive of a world and its contents as independent, and as containing its own sufficient cause within itself, it would be quite as easily thought of as a confused lawless play of chances as a well-ordered Cosmos. Perhaps more easily; for it goes without saying that such a conglomeration of promiscuous chances could not possibly be thought of as a world of God. Order and strict obedience to law, far from being excluded, are required by faith in God, are indeed a direct and inevitable preliminary to thinking of the world as dependent upon God. Thus we may state the paradox, that only a[pg 058]Cosmos which, by its strict obedience to law, gives us the impression of being sufficient unto itself, can be conceived of as actually dependent upon God, as His creation. If any man desires to stop short at the consideration of the apparent self-sufficiency of the Cosmos and its obedience to law, and refuses to recognise any reasons outside of the world for this, we should hardly be able, according to our own proposition, to require him to go farther. For we maintained that God could not be read out of nature, that the idea of God could never have been gained in the first instance from a study of nature and the world. The problem always before us is rather, whether, having gained the idea from other sources, we can include the world within it. Our present question is whether the world, as it is, and just because it is as it is, can be conceived of as dependent upon God. And this question can only be answered in the affirmative, and in the sense of Schiller's oft-quoted lines:

The great CreatorWe see not—He conceals himself withinHis own eternal laws. The sceptic seesTheir operation, but beholds not Him,“Wherefore a God!”he cries,“the world itselfSuffices for itself!”and Christian prayerNe'er praised him more, than does this blasphemy.

The great CreatorWe see not—He conceals himself withinHis own eternal laws. The sceptic seesTheir operation, but beholds not Him,“Wherefore a God!”he cries,“the world itselfSuffices for itself!”and Christian prayerNe'er praised him more, than does this blasphemy.

The great Creator

We see not—He conceals himself within

His own eternal laws. The sceptic sees

Their operation, but beholds not Him,

“Wherefore a God!”he cries,“the world itself

Suffices for itself!”and Christian prayer

Ne'er praised him more, than does this blasphemy.

God's world could not possibly be a conglomeration of chances; it must be orderly, and the fact that it is so proves its dependence.

But while we thus hold fast to our canon, we shall[pg 059]find that the assertion of the world's dependence receives indirect corroboration even in regard to the astronomical realm, from certain signs which it exhibits, from certain suggestions which are implied in it. We must not wholly overlook two facts which, to say the least, are difficult to fit in with the idea of the independence and self-sufficiency of the world; these are, on the one hand, the difficulties involved in the idea of an eternal machine, and on the other the difficult fact of“entropy.”We have already compared the world to a mighty clock, or a machine which, as a whole, represents what can never be found in one of its parts, aperpetuum mobile. Let us however leave aside the idea of aperpetuum mobile, and dwell rather on the comparison with a machine. It seems obvious that in order to be a machine there must be a closed solidarity in the system. But how could a machine have come into existence and become functional if it is driven by wheels, which are driven by wheels, which are again driven by wheels ... and so on unceasingly? It would not be a machine. The idea falls to pieces in our hands. Yet our world is supposed to be just such an infinitely continuous“system.”How does it begin to depend upon and be sufficient unto itself? But further. It is a clock, we are told, which ever winds itself up anew, which, without fatigue and in ceaseless repetition, adjusts the universal cycles of becoming, and disappearing, and becoming again. It seems a corroboration of the old Heraclitian and Stoic conception, that the eternal primitive fire brings forth[pg 060]all things out of itself, and takes them back into itself to bring them forth anew. Even to-day the conception is probably general that, out of the original states of the world-matter, circling fiery nebulæ form themselves and throw off their rings, that the breaking up of these rings gives rise to planets which circle in solar systems for many æons through space, till, finally, their energy lessened by friction with the ether, they plunge into their suns again, that the increased heat restores the original state and the whole play begins anew.

All this was well enough in the days of naïvely vitalistic ideas of the world as having a life and soul. But not in these days of mechanics, the strict calculation of the amount of energy used, and the mechanical theory of heat. The world-clock cannot wind itself up. It, too, owes its activity to the transformation of potential energy into kinetic energy. And, since movement and work take place within it, there is in the clock as a whole just as in every one of its parts, a mighty process of relaxation of an originally tense spring, there is dissipation and transformation of the stored potential energy into work and ultimately into heat. And with every revolution of the earth and its moon the world is moving slowly but inexorably towards a final stage of complete relaxation of her powers of tension, a state in which all energy will be transformed into heat, in which there will be no different states but only the most uniform distribution, in which also all[pg 061]life and all movement will cease and the world-clock itself will come to a standstill.

How does this fit in with the idea of independence and self-sufficiency? How could the world-clock ever wind itself up again to the original state of tension which was simply there as if shot from a pistol“in the beginning”? Where is the everlasting impressive uniformity and constancy of the world? How does it happen that the world-clock has not long ago come to a standstill? For even if the original sum of potential energy is postulated as infinite, the eternity that lies behind us is also infinite. And so one infinity swallows another. And innumerable questions of a similar kind are continually presenting themselves.

The“Contingency”of the World.But we need not dwell in the meantime on these and the many other difficulties and riddles presented by our cosmological hypothesis. However these may be solved, a general consideration will remain—namely, that whether the world is governed by law or not, whether it is sufficient unto itself or not, thereisa world full of the most diverse phenomena, and therearelaws. Whence then have both these come? Is it a matter of course, is it quite obvious that they should exist at all, and that they should be exactly as they are? We do not here appeal without further ceremony to the saying“everything must have a cause, therefore the world also.”It[pg 062]is not absolutely correct. For instance, if the world were so constituted that it would be impossible for it not to exist, that the necessity for its existence and the inconceivability of its non-existence were at once explicit and obvious, then there would be no sense in inquiring after a cause. In regard to a“necessary”thing, if there were any such, we cannot ask,“Why, and from what cause does this exist?”If it was necessary, that implies that to think of it as not existing would be ridiculous, and logically or metaphysically impossible. Unfortunately there are no“necessary”things, so that we cannot illustrate the case by examples. But there are at least necessary truths as distinguished from contingent truths. And thus some light may be brought into the matter for the inexpert. For instance, a necessary truth is contained in the sentence,“Everything is equal to itself,”or,“The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.”We cannot even conceive of the contrary. Therefore these axioms have no reasons, and can neither be deduced nor proved. Every question as to their reasons is quite meaningless. As examples of a“contingent”truth we may take“It rains to-day,”or“The earth revolves round the sun.”For neither one nor the other of these is necessarily so. It is so as a matter of fact, but under other circumstances it might have been otherwise. The contrary can be conceived of and represented, and has in itself an equal degree of possibility. Therefore such a fact requires to[pg 063]be and is capable of being reasoned out. I can and must ask,“How does it happen that it rains to-day? What are the reasons for it?”But as we must seek for sufficient reasons for“contingent”truths, that is, for those of which the contrary was equally possible, so assuredly we must seek for sufficient causes for“contingent”phenomena and events, those which can be thought of as not existing, or as existing in a different form. For these we must find causes and actual reasons. Otherwise they have no foundation. The element of“contingency”must be done away with; they must be shown to result from sufficient causes. That is to say nothing less than that they must be traced back to some necessity. For it is one of the curious fundamental convictions of our reason, and one in which all scientific investigation has its ultimate roots, that what is“contingent”is only apparently so, and in reality is in some way or other based on necessity. Therefore reason seeks causes for everything.The search for causes involves showing that a thing was necessary. And this must obviously apply to the world as a whole. If it were quite obvious that the world and its existence as it is were necessary, that is, that it would be contrary to reason to think of the world, and its phenomena, and their obedience to law as non-existent, or as different from what they are, all inquiry would be at an end. This would betheultimate necessity in which all the apparent contingency of isolated phenomena and existences was firmly based.[pg 064]But this is far from being the case. That anything exists, and that the world exists, is for us absolutely the greatest“contingency”of all, and in regard to it we can and must continually ask,“Why does anything exist at all, and why should it not rather be non-existent?”Indeed, all our quest for sufficient causes here reaches its climax. In more detail: that these celestial systems and bodies, the ether, attraction and gravitation should exist, and that everything should be governed by definite laws, all literally“as if shot from a pistol,”there must undoubtedly be some sufficient reason, certain as it is that we shall never discover it. It is true, as some one has said, that we live not only in a very fortuitous world, but in an incredibly improbable one. And this is not affected by the fact that the world is completely governed by law. Law only confirms it. The fact that all details may be clearly and mathematically calculated in no way prevents them from being fundamentally contingent. For they are only so calculable on the basis of the given fundamental characters of the world. And that is precisely the problem:“Why do these characters exist and not quite different ones, and why should any exist at all?”If any one should say:“Well, we must just content ourselves with recognising the essentially‘contingent’nature of existence, for we shall never be able to get beyond that,”he would be right in regard to the second statement. To get beyond that and to see what it is—eternal[pg 065]and in itself necessary—that lies at the basis of this world of“contingency”is indeed impossible. But he would be wrong as to the first part of the assertion. For no onewill“content himself.”For that all chance is only apparently chance, and is ultimately based in necessity, is a deeply-rooted and fundamental conviction of our reason, one which directs all scientific investigation, and which cannot be ignored. It demands ceaselessly something necessary as the permanent basis of contingent existence. And this fact is and remains the truth involved in the“cosmological proofs of the existence of God”of former days. It was certainly erroneous to suppose that“God”could be proved. For it is a long way from that“idea of necessity”to religious experience of God. And it was erroneous, too, to suppose that anything could be really“proved.”What is necessary can never really be proved from what is contingent. But the recognition of the contingent nature of the world is a stimulus that stirs up within our reason the idea of the necessary, and it is a fact that reason finds rest only in this idea.

But we need not dwell in the meantime on these and the many other difficulties and riddles presented by our cosmological hypothesis. However these may be solved, a general consideration will remain—namely, that whether the world is governed by law or not, whether it is sufficient unto itself or not, thereisa world full of the most diverse phenomena, and therearelaws. Whence then have both these come? Is it a matter of course, is it quite obvious that they should exist at all, and that they should be exactly as they are? We do not here appeal without further ceremony to the saying“everything must have a cause, therefore the world also.”It[pg 062]is not absolutely correct. For instance, if the world were so constituted that it would be impossible for it not to exist, that the necessity for its existence and the inconceivability of its non-existence were at once explicit and obvious, then there would be no sense in inquiring after a cause. In regard to a“necessary”thing, if there were any such, we cannot ask,“Why, and from what cause does this exist?”If it was necessary, that implies that to think of it as not existing would be ridiculous, and logically or metaphysically impossible. Unfortunately there are no“necessary”things, so that we cannot illustrate the case by examples. But there are at least necessary truths as distinguished from contingent truths. And thus some light may be brought into the matter for the inexpert. For instance, a necessary truth is contained in the sentence,“Everything is equal to itself,”or,“The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.”We cannot even conceive of the contrary. Therefore these axioms have no reasons, and can neither be deduced nor proved. Every question as to their reasons is quite meaningless. As examples of a“contingent”truth we may take“It rains to-day,”or“The earth revolves round the sun.”For neither one nor the other of these is necessarily so. It is so as a matter of fact, but under other circumstances it might have been otherwise. The contrary can be conceived of and represented, and has in itself an equal degree of possibility. Therefore such a fact requires to[pg 063]be and is capable of being reasoned out. I can and must ask,“How does it happen that it rains to-day? What are the reasons for it?”But as we must seek for sufficient reasons for“contingent”truths, that is, for those of which the contrary was equally possible, so assuredly we must seek for sufficient causes for“contingent”phenomena and events, those which can be thought of as not existing, or as existing in a different form. For these we must find causes and actual reasons. Otherwise they have no foundation. The element of“contingency”must be done away with; they must be shown to result from sufficient causes. That is to say nothing less than that they must be traced back to some necessity. For it is one of the curious fundamental convictions of our reason, and one in which all scientific investigation has its ultimate roots, that what is“contingent”is only apparently so, and in reality is in some way or other based on necessity. Therefore reason seeks causes for everything.

The search for causes involves showing that a thing was necessary. And this must obviously apply to the world as a whole. If it were quite obvious that the world and its existence as it is were necessary, that is, that it would be contrary to reason to think of the world, and its phenomena, and their obedience to law as non-existent, or as different from what they are, all inquiry would be at an end. This would betheultimate necessity in which all the apparent contingency of isolated phenomena and existences was firmly based.[pg 064]But this is far from being the case. That anything exists, and that the world exists, is for us absolutely the greatest“contingency”of all, and in regard to it we can and must continually ask,“Why does anything exist at all, and why should it not rather be non-existent?”Indeed, all our quest for sufficient causes here reaches its climax. In more detail: that these celestial systems and bodies, the ether, attraction and gravitation should exist, and that everything should be governed by definite laws, all literally“as if shot from a pistol,”there must undoubtedly be some sufficient reason, certain as it is that we shall never discover it. It is true, as some one has said, that we live not only in a very fortuitous world, but in an incredibly improbable one. And this is not affected by the fact that the world is completely governed by law. Law only confirms it. The fact that all details may be clearly and mathematically calculated in no way prevents them from being fundamentally contingent. For they are only so calculable on the basis of the given fundamental characters of the world. And that is precisely the problem:“Why do these characters exist and not quite different ones, and why should any exist at all?”

If any one should say:“Well, we must just content ourselves with recognising the essentially‘contingent’nature of existence, for we shall never be able to get beyond that,”he would be right in regard to the second statement. To get beyond that and to see what it is—eternal[pg 065]and in itself necessary—that lies at the basis of this world of“contingency”is indeed impossible. But he would be wrong as to the first part of the assertion. For no onewill“content himself.”For that all chance is only apparently chance, and is ultimately based in necessity, is a deeply-rooted and fundamental conviction of our reason, one which directs all scientific investigation, and which cannot be ignored. It demands ceaselessly something necessary as the permanent basis of contingent existence. And this fact is and remains the truth involved in the“cosmological proofs of the existence of God”of former days. It was certainly erroneous to suppose that“God”could be proved. For it is a long way from that“idea of necessity”to religious experience of God. And it was erroneous, too, to suppose that anything could be really“proved.”What is necessary can never really be proved from what is contingent. But the recognition of the contingent nature of the world is a stimulus that stirs up within our reason the idea of the necessary, and it is a fact that reason finds rest only in this idea.

The Real World.(4.) What was stated separately in our first and second propositions, and has hitherto been discussed, now unites and culminates in the fourth. For if we note the vital expressions of religion wherever it occurs, we find above all one thing as its most characteristic sign,[pg 066]indeed as its very essence, in all places and all times, often only as a scarce uttered wish or longing, but often breaking forth with impetuous might. This one thing is the impulse and desire to get beyond time and space, and beyond the oppressive narrowness and crampingness of the world surrounding us, the desire to see into the depth and“other side”of things and of existence. For it is the very essence of religion to distinguish this world from, and contrast it as insufficient with the real world which is sufficient, to regard this world which we see and know and possess as only an image, as only transiently real, in contrast with the real world of true being which is believed in. Religion has clothed this essential feature in a hundred mythologies and eschatologies, and one has always given place to another, the more sublimed to the more robust. But the fundamental feature itself cannot disappear.In apologetics and dogmatics the interest in this matter is often concentrated more or less exclusively upon the question of“immortality.”Wrongly so, however, for this quest after the real world is not a final chapter in religion, it is religion itself. And in the religious sense the question of immortality is only justifiable and significant when it is a part of the general religious conviction that this world is not the truly essential world, and that the true nature of things, and of our own being, is deeper than we can comprehend, and lies beyond this side of things, beyond[pg 067]time and space. To the religious mind it cannot be of great importance whether existence is to be continued for a little at least beyond this life. In what way would such a wish be religious? But the inward conviction that“all that is transitory is only a parable,”that all here is only a veil and a curtain, and the desire to get beyond semblance to truth, beyond insufficiency to sufficiency, concentrate themselves especially in the assertion of the eternity of our true being.It is with this characteristic of religion that the spirit and method of naturalism contrast so sharply. Naturalism points out with special satisfaction that this depth of things, this home of the soul is nowhere discoverable. The great discoveries of Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton have done away with the possibility of that. No empyrean, no corner of the world remains available. Even the attempted flight to sun, moon, or stars does not help. It is true that the newly discovered world is without end, but, beyond a doubt, in its outermost and innermost depths it is a world of space and time. Even in the stellar abysses“everything is just the same as with us.”All this is doubtless correct, and it is very wholesome for religion. For it prompts religion no longer to seek its treasure, the true nature of things, and its everlasting home in time and space, as the mythologies and eschatologies have sought them repeatedly. It throws religion back on the fundamental insight and on the convictions which it had attained long before[pg 068]philosophy and criticism of knowledge had arrived at similar views: namely, that time and space, and this world of time and space, do not comprise the whole of existence, nor existence as it really is, but are only a manifestation of it to our finite and limited knowledge. Before the days of modern astronomy, and without its help, religion knew that God was not confined to“heaven,”or anywhere in space, and that time as it is for us was not for Him. Even in the terms“eternity”and“infinity”it shows an anticipatory knowledge of a being and reality above time and space. These ideas were not gained from a contemplation of nature, but before it and from independent sources.But though it is by no means the task of apologetics to build up these ideas directly from a study of things, it is of no little importance to inquire whether religion possesses in these convictions only postulates of faith, for which it must laboriously and forcibly make a place in the face of knowledge, or whether a thorough and self-critical knowledge does not rather confirm them, and show us, within the world of knowledge itself, unmistakable signs that it cannot be the true, full reality, but points to something beyond itself.To study this question thoroughly would involve setting forth a special theory of knowledge and existence. This cannot be attempted here. But Kant's great doctrine of the“Antinomy of Reason”has for all time broken up for us the narrowness of the naturalistic way of thinking. Every one who has felt cramped by[pg 069]the narrow limits in which reality was confined by a purely mundane outlook must have experienced the liberating influence of the Kantian Antinomy if he has thought over it carefully. The thick curtain which separates being from appearance seems to be torn away, or at any rate to reveal itself as a curtain. Kant shows that, if we were to take this world as it lies before us for the true reality, we should land in inextricable contradictions. These contradictions show that the true world itself cannot coincide with our thought and comprehension, for in being itself there can be no contradictions. Otherwise it would not exist. The ancient problems of philosophy, from the time of the Eleatic school onwards, find here their adequate formulation. Kant's disciple, Fries, has carried the matter further, and has attempted to develop what for Kant still remained a sort of embarrassment of reason to more precise pronouncements as to the relation of true being to its manifestation,

(4.) What was stated separately in our first and second propositions, and has hitherto been discussed, now unites and culminates in the fourth. For if we note the vital expressions of religion wherever it occurs, we find above all one thing as its most characteristic sign,[pg 066]indeed as its very essence, in all places and all times, often only as a scarce uttered wish or longing, but often breaking forth with impetuous might. This one thing is the impulse and desire to get beyond time and space, and beyond the oppressive narrowness and crampingness of the world surrounding us, the desire to see into the depth and“other side”of things and of existence. For it is the very essence of religion to distinguish this world from, and contrast it as insufficient with the real world which is sufficient, to regard this world which we see and know and possess as only an image, as only transiently real, in contrast with the real world of true being which is believed in. Religion has clothed this essential feature in a hundred mythologies and eschatologies, and one has always given place to another, the more sublimed to the more robust. But the fundamental feature itself cannot disappear.

In apologetics and dogmatics the interest in this matter is often concentrated more or less exclusively upon the question of“immortality.”Wrongly so, however, for this quest after the real world is not a final chapter in religion, it is religion itself. And in the religious sense the question of immortality is only justifiable and significant when it is a part of the general religious conviction that this world is not the truly essential world, and that the true nature of things, and of our own being, is deeper than we can comprehend, and lies beyond this side of things, beyond[pg 067]time and space. To the religious mind it cannot be of great importance whether existence is to be continued for a little at least beyond this life. In what way would such a wish be religious? But the inward conviction that“all that is transitory is only a parable,”that all here is only a veil and a curtain, and the desire to get beyond semblance to truth, beyond insufficiency to sufficiency, concentrate themselves especially in the assertion of the eternity of our true being.

It is with this characteristic of religion that the spirit and method of naturalism contrast so sharply. Naturalism points out with special satisfaction that this depth of things, this home of the soul is nowhere discoverable. The great discoveries of Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton have done away with the possibility of that. No empyrean, no corner of the world remains available. Even the attempted flight to sun, moon, or stars does not help. It is true that the newly discovered world is without end, but, beyond a doubt, in its outermost and innermost depths it is a world of space and time. Even in the stellar abysses“everything is just the same as with us.”

All this is doubtless correct, and it is very wholesome for religion. For it prompts religion no longer to seek its treasure, the true nature of things, and its everlasting home in time and space, as the mythologies and eschatologies have sought them repeatedly. It throws religion back on the fundamental insight and on the convictions which it had attained long before[pg 068]philosophy and criticism of knowledge had arrived at similar views: namely, that time and space, and this world of time and space, do not comprise the whole of existence, nor existence as it really is, but are only a manifestation of it to our finite and limited knowledge. Before the days of modern astronomy, and without its help, religion knew that God was not confined to“heaven,”or anywhere in space, and that time as it is for us was not for Him. Even in the terms“eternity”and“infinity”it shows an anticipatory knowledge of a being and reality above time and space. These ideas were not gained from a contemplation of nature, but before it and from independent sources.

But though it is by no means the task of apologetics to build up these ideas directly from a study of things, it is of no little importance to inquire whether religion possesses in these convictions only postulates of faith, for which it must laboriously and forcibly make a place in the face of knowledge, or whether a thorough and self-critical knowledge does not rather confirm them, and show us, within the world of knowledge itself, unmistakable signs that it cannot be the true, full reality, but points to something beyond itself.

To study this question thoroughly would involve setting forth a special theory of knowledge and existence. This cannot be attempted here. But Kant's great doctrine of the“Antinomy of Reason”has for all time broken up for us the narrowness of the naturalistic way of thinking. Every one who has felt cramped by[pg 069]the narrow limits in which reality was confined by a purely mundane outlook must have experienced the liberating influence of the Kantian Antinomy if he has thought over it carefully. The thick curtain which separates being from appearance seems to be torn away, or at any rate to reveal itself as a curtain. Kant shows that, if we were to take this world as it lies before us for the true reality, we should land in inextricable contradictions. These contradictions show that the true world itself cannot coincide with our thought and comprehension, for in being itself there can be no contradictions. Otherwise it would not exist. The ancient problems of philosophy, from the time of the Eleatic school onwards, find here their adequate formulation. Kant's disciple, Fries, has carried the matter further, and has attempted to develop what for Kant still remained a sort of embarrassment of reason to more precise pronouncements as to the relation of true being to its manifestation,

The Antimony of Our Conception of Time.A few examples may serve to make the point clear. The first of the antinomies is also the most impressive. It brings before us the insufficiency of our conceptions of time, and shows the impossibility of transferring, from the world as it appears to us, to real Being any mode of conceiving time which we possess. The difficulty is, whether we are to think of our world as having had a beginning or not. The naïve outlook[pg 070]will at once assume without further ado a beginning of all things. Everything must have had a beginning, though that may have been a very long time ago. But on more careful reflection it is found impossible to imagine this, and then the assumption that things had no beginning is made with as little scruple. Let us suppose that the beginning of things was six thousand, or, what is quite as easy, six thousand billion years ago. We are at once led to ask what there was the year before or many years before, and what there was before that again, and so on until we face the infinite and beginningless. Thus we find that we have never really thought of a beginning of things, and never could think of it, but that our thinking always carries us into the infinite. Time, at any rate, we have thought of as infinite. We may then amuse ourselves by trying to conceive of endless time as empty, but we shall hardly be able to give any reason for arriving at that idea. If time goes back to infinity, it seems difficult to see why it should not always have been filled, instead of only being so filled from some arbitrary point. And in any case the very fact of the existence of time makes the problem of beginning or not beginning insoluble. For such reasons Aristotle asserted that the world had no beginning, and rejected the contrary idea as childish.But the idea of no beginning is also childish or rather impossible, and in reality inconceivable. For if it be assumed that the world and time have never had[pg 071]a beginning, there stretches back from the time at which I now find myself a past eternity. It must have passed completely as a whole, for otherwise this particular point in time could never have been arrived at. So that I must think of an infinity which nevertheless comes to an end. I cannot do this. It would be like wooden iron.The matter sounds simple but is nevertheless difficult in its consequences. It confronts us at once with the fact, confirmed by the theory of knowledge, that time as we know it is an absolutely necessary and fundamental form of our conceptions and knowledge, but is likewise the veil over what is concealed, and cannot be carried over in the same form into the true nature of things. As the limits and contradictions in the time-conception reveal themselves to us, there wakes in us the idea which we accept as the analogue of time in true being, an idea of existence under the form of“eternity,”which, since we are tied down to temporal concepts, cannot be expressed or even thought of with any content.2

A few examples may serve to make the point clear. The first of the antinomies is also the most impressive. It brings before us the insufficiency of our conceptions of time, and shows the impossibility of transferring, from the world as it appears to us, to real Being any mode of conceiving time which we possess. The difficulty is, whether we are to think of our world as having had a beginning or not. The naïve outlook[pg 070]will at once assume without further ado a beginning of all things. Everything must have had a beginning, though that may have been a very long time ago. But on more careful reflection it is found impossible to imagine this, and then the assumption that things had no beginning is made with as little scruple. Let us suppose that the beginning of things was six thousand, or, what is quite as easy, six thousand billion years ago. We are at once led to ask what there was the year before or many years before, and what there was before that again, and so on until we face the infinite and beginningless. Thus we find that we have never really thought of a beginning of things, and never could think of it, but that our thinking always carries us into the infinite. Time, at any rate, we have thought of as infinite. We may then amuse ourselves by trying to conceive of endless time as empty, but we shall hardly be able to give any reason for arriving at that idea. If time goes back to infinity, it seems difficult to see why it should not always have been filled, instead of only being so filled from some arbitrary point. And in any case the very fact of the existence of time makes the problem of beginning or not beginning insoluble. For such reasons Aristotle asserted that the world had no beginning, and rejected the contrary idea as childish.

But the idea of no beginning is also childish or rather impossible, and in reality inconceivable. For if it be assumed that the world and time have never had[pg 071]a beginning, there stretches back from the time at which I now find myself a past eternity. It must have passed completely as a whole, for otherwise this particular point in time could never have been arrived at. So that I must think of an infinity which nevertheless comes to an end. I cannot do this. It would be like wooden iron.

The matter sounds simple but is nevertheless difficult in its consequences. It confronts us at once with the fact, confirmed by the theory of knowledge, that time as we know it is an absolutely necessary and fundamental form of our conceptions and knowledge, but is likewise the veil over what is concealed, and cannot be carried over in the same form into the true nature of things. As the limits and contradictions in the time-conception reveal themselves to us, there wakes in us the idea which we accept as the analogue of time in true being, an idea of existence under the form of“eternity,”which, since we are tied down to temporal concepts, cannot be expressed or even thought of with any content.2

The Antimony of the Conditioned and the Unconditioned.The antinomy of the conditioned and the unconditioned leads us along similar lines. Every individual finite thing or event is dependent on its causes and[pg 072]conditions, which precede it or co-exist in inter-relation with it. It is conditioned, and is only possible through its conditions. But that implies that it can only occur or be granted when all its conditions are first given in complete synthesis. If any one of them failed, it would not have come about. But every one of its conditioning circumstances is in its turn conditioned by innumerable others, and every one of these again by others, and so on into the infinite, backwards and on all sides, so that here again something without end and incapable of end must have come to an end, and must be thought of as having an end, before any event whatever can really come to pass. But this again is a sheer impossibility for our thinking: we require and must demand something completed, because now is really now, and something happens now, and yet in the world as it appears to us we are always forced to face what cannot have an end.

The antinomy of the conditioned and the unconditioned leads us along similar lines. Every individual finite thing or event is dependent on its causes and[pg 072]conditions, which precede it or co-exist in inter-relation with it. It is conditioned, and is only possible through its conditions. But that implies that it can only occur or be granted when all its conditions are first given in complete synthesis. If any one of them failed, it would not have come about. But every one of its conditioning circumstances is in its turn conditioned by innumerable others, and every one of these again by others, and so on into the infinite, backwards and on all sides, so that here again something without end and incapable of end must have come to an end, and must be thought of as having an end, before any event whatever can really come to pass. But this again is a sheer impossibility for our thinking: we require and must demand something completed, because now is really now, and something happens now, and yet in the world as it appears to us we are always forced to face what cannot have an end.

The Antimony of Our Conception of Space.To bring our examples to a conclusion, we find the same sort of antinomy in regard to space, and the world as it is extended in space. Here, too, it becomes apparent that space as we imagine it, and as we carry it with us as a concept for arranging our sense-impressions, cannot correspond to the true reality. As in regard to time, so also in regard to space, we can never after any distance however enormous come to a halt and say,“Here is the end of space.”Whether we think of the diameter[pg 073]of the earth's orbit or the distance to Sirius, and multiply them by a million we always ask,“What lies behind?”and so extend space into the infinite. And as a matter of course we people it also without end with heavenly bodies, stars, nebulae, Milky Ways and the like. For here again there can be no obvious reason why space in our neighbourhood should be filled, while space at a greater distance should be thought of as empty. Therefore we actually think of star beyond star, and, as far as we can reckon, stars beyond that without end. For space extends not merely so far, but always farther. And the number of the stars is not so many, but always one more. This sounds quite obvious, but it has exactly the same impossibility as we found in our“past infinity.”For although we are carried by our conceptions into the infinite, and to what never could have an end, it is impossible to assume the same of reality.It is remarkable and quite characteristic that the whole difficulty and its peculiar nature become much more intelligible to us through the familiar images and expressions of religion. There we readily admit that we cannot comprehend the number of the stars and stellar spaces, because for us they never reach an end, there being always one more; but that in the eyes of God all is embraced in His universality, in a“perfect synthesis,”and that to Him Being is never and in no point“always one more.”God does not count.Without the help of religious expressions we say: Being itself is always itself and never implies any more;[pg 074]for if there were“always one more”it would not be Being. It can only exist“as a perfect synthesis,”which does not mean an endless number, which nevertheless somewhere comes to an end—again wooden iron—but something above all reckoning and beyond all number, as it is beyond space and time. And that which we are able to weigh and measure and number is therefore not reality itself, but only its inadequate manifestation to our limited capacity for understanding.But enough of this. The puzzles in the doctrines of the simple and the complex, of the causeless and the caused, into which this world of ours forces us, should teach us further to recognise it for what it is—insufficient and pointing beyond itself,—to its own transcendent depths. So, too, the problems that arise when we penetrate farther and farther into the ever more and more minute, and the indefiniteness of our thought-horizons in general should have the same effect.

To bring our examples to a conclusion, we find the same sort of antinomy in regard to space, and the world as it is extended in space. Here, too, it becomes apparent that space as we imagine it, and as we carry it with us as a concept for arranging our sense-impressions, cannot correspond to the true reality. As in regard to time, so also in regard to space, we can never after any distance however enormous come to a halt and say,“Here is the end of space.”Whether we think of the diameter[pg 073]of the earth's orbit or the distance to Sirius, and multiply them by a million we always ask,“What lies behind?”and so extend space into the infinite. And as a matter of course we people it also without end with heavenly bodies, stars, nebulae, Milky Ways and the like. For here again there can be no obvious reason why space in our neighbourhood should be filled, while space at a greater distance should be thought of as empty. Therefore we actually think of star beyond star, and, as far as we can reckon, stars beyond that without end. For space extends not merely so far, but always farther. And the number of the stars is not so many, but always one more. This sounds quite obvious, but it has exactly the same impossibility as we found in our“past infinity.”For although we are carried by our conceptions into the infinite, and to what never could have an end, it is impossible to assume the same of reality.

It is remarkable and quite characteristic that the whole difficulty and its peculiar nature become much more intelligible to us through the familiar images and expressions of religion. There we readily admit that we cannot comprehend the number of the stars and stellar spaces, because for us they never reach an end, there being always one more; but that in the eyes of God all is embraced in His universality, in a“perfect synthesis,”and that to Him Being is never and in no point“always one more.”God does not count.

Without the help of religious expressions we say: Being itself is always itself and never implies any more;[pg 074]for if there were“always one more”it would not be Being. It can only exist“as a perfect synthesis,”which does not mean an endless number, which nevertheless somewhere comes to an end—again wooden iron—but something above all reckoning and beyond all number, as it is beyond space and time. And that which we are able to weigh and measure and number is therefore not reality itself, but only its inadequate manifestation to our limited capacity for understanding.

But enough of this. The puzzles in the doctrines of the simple and the complex, of the causeless and the caused, into which this world of ours forces us, should teach us further to recognise it for what it is—insufficient and pointing beyond itself,—to its own transcendent depths. So, too, the problems that arise when we penetrate farther and farther into the ever more and more minute, and the indefiniteness of our thought-horizons in general should have the same effect.

Intuitions of Reality.(5.) There are other evidences of this depth and hidden nature of things, towards which an examination of our knowledge points. For“in feeling and intuition appearance points beyond itself to real being.”So ran our fifth proposition. This subject indeed is delicate, and can only be treated of in the hearing of willing ears. But all apologetic counts upon willing ears; it is not conversion of doubters that is aimed at, it is religion which seeks to reassure itself. Our proposition[pg 075]does not speak of dreams but of facts, which are not the less facts because they are more subtle than others. What we are speaking of are the deep impressions, which cannot properly be made commensurable at all, which may spring up directly out of an inward experience, an apprehension of nature, the world and history, in the depths of the spirit. They call forth in us an“anamnesis,”a“reminiscence”in Plato's sense, awakening within us moods and intuitions in which something of the essence and meaning of being is directly experienced, although it remains in the form of feeling, and cannot easily, if at all, find expression in definable ideas or clear statements. Fries, in his book,“Wissen, Glaube, und Ahnung,”unhappily too much forgotten, takes account of this fact, for he places this region of spiritual experience beside the certainties of faith and knowledge, and regards these as“animated”by it. He has in mind especially the impressions of the beautiful and the sublime which far transcend our knowledge of nature, and to which knowledge and its concepts can never do adequate justice, facts though they undoubtedly are. In them we experience directly, in intuitive feeling, that the reality is greater than our power of understanding, and we feel something of its true nature and meaning. The utterances of Schleiermacher3in regard to religion follow the same lines. For this is precisely what he means when he insists[pg 076]that the universe must be experienced in intuition and feeling as well as in knowing and doing. He is less incisive in his expressions than Fries, but wider in ideas. He includes in this domain of“intuitive feeling”not only the aesthetic experiences of the beautiful and sublime, but takes the much more general and comprehensive view, that the receptive mind may gather from the finite impressions of the infinite, and may through its experiences of time gain some conception of the eternal. And he rightly emphasises, that such intuition has its true place in the sphere of mind and in face of the events of history, rather than in the outer court of nature. He, too, lays stress on the fact that doctrinal statements and ideas cannot be formulated out of such subtle material.The experience of which we are speaking may be most directly and impressively gained from the great, the powerful, the sublime in nature. It may be gained from the contemplation of nature's harmonies and beauties, but also of her overflowing abundance and her enigmatical dæmonic strength, from the purposeful intelligibility as well as the terrifying and bewildering enigmas of nature's operations, from all the manifold ways in which the mind is affected and startled, from all the suggestive but indefinable sensations which may be roused in us by the activity of nature, and which rise through a long scale to intoxicated self-forgetfulness and wordless ecstasy before her beauty, and her half-revealed, half-concealed mystery. If any or all of these be stirred up[pg 077]in a mind which is otherwise godless or undevout, it remains an indefinite, vacillating feeling, bringing with it nothing else. But in the religious mind it immediately unites with what is akin to it or of similar nature, and becomes worship. No dogmas or arguments for disputatious reasoning can be drawn from it. It can hardly even be expressed, except, perhaps, in music. And if it be expressed it tends easily to become fantastic or romantic pomposity, as is shown even by certain parts of the writings of Schleiermacher himself.

(5.) There are other evidences of this depth and hidden nature of things, towards which an examination of our knowledge points. For“in feeling and intuition appearance points beyond itself to real being.”So ran our fifth proposition. This subject indeed is delicate, and can only be treated of in the hearing of willing ears. But all apologetic counts upon willing ears; it is not conversion of doubters that is aimed at, it is religion which seeks to reassure itself. Our proposition[pg 075]does not speak of dreams but of facts, which are not the less facts because they are more subtle than others. What we are speaking of are the deep impressions, which cannot properly be made commensurable at all, which may spring up directly out of an inward experience, an apprehension of nature, the world and history, in the depths of the spirit. They call forth in us an“anamnesis,”a“reminiscence”in Plato's sense, awakening within us moods and intuitions in which something of the essence and meaning of being is directly experienced, although it remains in the form of feeling, and cannot easily, if at all, find expression in definable ideas or clear statements. Fries, in his book,“Wissen, Glaube, und Ahnung,”unhappily too much forgotten, takes account of this fact, for he places this region of spiritual experience beside the certainties of faith and knowledge, and regards these as“animated”by it. He has in mind especially the impressions of the beautiful and the sublime which far transcend our knowledge of nature, and to which knowledge and its concepts can never do adequate justice, facts though they undoubtedly are. In them we experience directly, in intuitive feeling, that the reality is greater than our power of understanding, and we feel something of its true nature and meaning. The utterances of Schleiermacher3in regard to religion follow the same lines. For this is precisely what he means when he insists[pg 076]that the universe must be experienced in intuition and feeling as well as in knowing and doing. He is less incisive in his expressions than Fries, but wider in ideas. He includes in this domain of“intuitive feeling”not only the aesthetic experiences of the beautiful and sublime, but takes the much more general and comprehensive view, that the receptive mind may gather from the finite impressions of the infinite, and may through its experiences of time gain some conception of the eternal. And he rightly emphasises, that such intuition has its true place in the sphere of mind and in face of the events of history, rather than in the outer court of nature. He, too, lays stress on the fact that doctrinal statements and ideas cannot be formulated out of such subtle material.

The experience of which we are speaking may be most directly and impressively gained from the great, the powerful, the sublime in nature. It may be gained from the contemplation of nature's harmonies and beauties, but also of her overflowing abundance and her enigmatical dæmonic strength, from the purposeful intelligibility as well as the terrifying and bewildering enigmas of nature's operations, from all the manifold ways in which the mind is affected and startled, from all the suggestive but indefinable sensations which may be roused in us by the activity of nature, and which rise through a long scale to intoxicated self-forgetfulness and wordless ecstasy before her beauty, and her half-revealed, half-concealed mystery. If any or all of these be stirred up[pg 077]in a mind which is otherwise godless or undevout, it remains an indefinite, vacillating feeling, bringing with it nothing else. But in the religious mind it immediately unites with what is akin to it or of similar nature, and becomes worship. No dogmas or arguments for disputatious reasoning can be drawn from it. It can hardly even be expressed, except, perhaps, in music. And if it be expressed it tends easily to become fantastic or romantic pomposity, as is shown even by certain parts of the writings of Schleiermacher himself.

The Recognition of Purpose.(6.) We must now turn to the question of“teleology.”Only now, not because it is a subordinate matter, for it is in reality the main one, but because it is the culminating point, not the starting point, of our argument. If the world be from God and of God, it and all that it contains must be for some definite purpose and for special ends. It must be swayed by eternal ideas, and must be subject to divine providence and guidance. But naturalism, and even, it appears, natural science, declares: Neither purposes nor ideas are of necessity to be assumed in nature. They do not occur either in the details or in the whole. The whole is an absolutely closed continuity of causes, a causal but blind machinery, in regard to which we cannot ask, What is meant to be produced by this? but only, What causes have produced what exists? This opposition goes deep and raises difficulties. And in all vindication or defence[pg 078]of religion it ought rightly to be kept in the foreground of attention, although the points we have already insisted on have been wrongly overlooked. The opposition concentrates itself to-day almost entirely around two theories of naturalism, which do not, indeed, set forth the whole case, but which are certainly typical examples, so that, if we analyse them, we shall have arrived at an orientation of the fundamental points at issue. The two doctrines are Darwinism and the mechanical theory of life, and it is to these that we must now turn our attention. And since the best elucidation and criticism of both theories is to be found in their own history, and in the present state of opinion within their own school, we shall have to combine our study of their fundamental principles with that of their history.We can here set forth, however, only the chief point of view, the gist of the matter, which will continue to exist and hold good however the analysis of details may turn out. For the kernel of the question may be discussed independently, without involving the particular interests of zoology or biology, though we shall constantly come across particular and concrete cases of the main problem in our more detailed study.The struggle against, and the aversion to ideas and purposes on the part of the nature-interpreters is not in itself directed against religion. It does not arise from any antagonism of natural science to the religious conception of the world, but is primarily an antagonism of[pg 079]one school of science to another, the modern against the mediæval-Aristotelian. The latter, again, was not in itself a religious world-outlook, it was simply an attempt at an interpretation of the processes of nature, and especially of evolution, which might be quite neutral towards religion, or might be purely naturalistic. It was the theory of Entelechies andformæ substaniales. In order to explain how a thing had come to be, it taught that the idea of the finished thing, the“form,”was implicit in it from the very beginning, and determined the course of its development. This“form,”the end aimed at in development, was“potentially,”“ideally,”or“virtually”implicit in the thing from the beginning, was thecausa finalis, the ultimate cause which determined the development. Modern natural science objects to this theory that it offers no explanation, but merely gives a name to what has to be explained. The aim of science, it tells us, is to elucidate the play of causes which brought about a particular result. The hypotheticalcausa finalisit regards as a mereasylum ignorantiæ, and as the problem itself not as its solution. For instance, if we inquire into the present form and aspect of the earth, nothing is advanced by stating that the“form,”the primitive model of the evolving earth was implicit in it from the beginning, and that it gradually determined the phases and transition-stages of its evolution, until the ultimate state, the end aimed at, was attained. The task of science is, through geology, geognosy,[pg 080]mineralogy, geodesy, physical geography, meteorology, and other sciences to discover the physical, chemical, and mechanical causes of the earth's evolution and their laws, and from the co-operation of these to interpret everything in detail and as a whole.Whether modern natural science is right in this or not, whether or not it has neglected an element of truth in the old theory of Entelechies which it cannot dispense with, especially in regard to living organisms, it is beyond dispute that, from the most general point of view, and in particular with reference to teleology, religion does not need to concern itself in the least about this opposition.“Purposes,”“ideas,”“guidance”in the religious sense, are quite unaffected by the manner in which the result is realised; everything depends upon the special and particular value of what has been attained or realised. If a concatenation of causes and stages of development lead to results in which we suddenly discern a special and particular value, then, and not till then, have we a reason and criterion for our assumption that it is not simply a result of a play of chances, but that it has been brought about by purposeful thought, by higher intervention and guidance of things. Certainly not before then. Thus we can only speak of purposes, aims, guidance, and creation in so far as we have within us the capacity for feeling and recognising the value, meaning and significance of things. But natural science itself cannot estimate these. It can or will only[pg 081]examine how everything has come about, but whether this result has a higher value than another, or has a lower, or none at all, it can neither assert nor deny. That lies quite outside of its province.Let us try to make this clear by taking at once the highest example—man and his origin. Let it be assumed that natural science could discover all the causes and factors which, operating for many thousands of years, have produced man and human existence. Even if these causes and factors had actually been pure“ideas,”formæ substantialesand the like, that would in no way determine whether the whole process was really subject to a divine idea of purpose or not. If we had not gained, from a different source, an insight into the supreme and incomparable worth of human existence, spiritual, rational, and free, with its capacity for morality, religion, art and science, we should be compelled to regard man, along with every other natural result, as the insignificant product of a blind play of nature. But, on the other hand, if we have once felt and recognised this value of human existence, its highest dignity, the knowledge that man has been produced through a play of highly complex natural processes, fulfilling themselves in absolute obedience to law, in no way prevents our regarding him as a“purpose,”as the realisation of a divine idea, in accordance with which nature in its orderliness was planned. In fact, this consideration leads us to discover and admire eternal plan and divine guidance in nature.[pg 082]For it does not rest with natural science either to discover or to deny“purpose”in the religious sense in nature; it belongs to quite a different order of experience, an entirely inward one. Just in proportion as I become aware of, and acknowledge in the domain of my inward experience and through my capacity of estimating values, the worth of the spiritual and moral life of man, so, with the confidence of this peculiar mode of conviction, I subordinate the concatenations of events and causes on which the possibility and the occurrence of the spiritual and moral life depend, to an eternal teleology, and see the order of the world that leads to this illuminated by everlasting meaning and by providence.

(6.) We must now turn to the question of“teleology.”Only now, not because it is a subordinate matter, for it is in reality the main one, but because it is the culminating point, not the starting point, of our argument. If the world be from God and of God, it and all that it contains must be for some definite purpose and for special ends. It must be swayed by eternal ideas, and must be subject to divine providence and guidance. But naturalism, and even, it appears, natural science, declares: Neither purposes nor ideas are of necessity to be assumed in nature. They do not occur either in the details or in the whole. The whole is an absolutely closed continuity of causes, a causal but blind machinery, in regard to which we cannot ask, What is meant to be produced by this? but only, What causes have produced what exists? This opposition goes deep and raises difficulties. And in all vindication or defence[pg 078]of religion it ought rightly to be kept in the foreground of attention, although the points we have already insisted on have been wrongly overlooked. The opposition concentrates itself to-day almost entirely around two theories of naturalism, which do not, indeed, set forth the whole case, but which are certainly typical examples, so that, if we analyse them, we shall have arrived at an orientation of the fundamental points at issue. The two doctrines are Darwinism and the mechanical theory of life, and it is to these that we must now turn our attention. And since the best elucidation and criticism of both theories is to be found in their own history, and in the present state of opinion within their own school, we shall have to combine our study of their fundamental principles with that of their history.

We can here set forth, however, only the chief point of view, the gist of the matter, which will continue to exist and hold good however the analysis of details may turn out. For the kernel of the question may be discussed independently, without involving the particular interests of zoology or biology, though we shall constantly come across particular and concrete cases of the main problem in our more detailed study.

The struggle against, and the aversion to ideas and purposes on the part of the nature-interpreters is not in itself directed against religion. It does not arise from any antagonism of natural science to the religious conception of the world, but is primarily an antagonism of[pg 079]one school of science to another, the modern against the mediæval-Aristotelian. The latter, again, was not in itself a religious world-outlook, it was simply an attempt at an interpretation of the processes of nature, and especially of evolution, which might be quite neutral towards religion, or might be purely naturalistic. It was the theory of Entelechies andformæ substaniales. In order to explain how a thing had come to be, it taught that the idea of the finished thing, the“form,”was implicit in it from the very beginning, and determined the course of its development. This“form,”the end aimed at in development, was“potentially,”“ideally,”or“virtually”implicit in the thing from the beginning, was thecausa finalis, the ultimate cause which determined the development. Modern natural science objects to this theory that it offers no explanation, but merely gives a name to what has to be explained. The aim of science, it tells us, is to elucidate the play of causes which brought about a particular result. The hypotheticalcausa finalisit regards as a mereasylum ignorantiæ, and as the problem itself not as its solution. For instance, if we inquire into the present form and aspect of the earth, nothing is advanced by stating that the“form,”the primitive model of the evolving earth was implicit in it from the beginning, and that it gradually determined the phases and transition-stages of its evolution, until the ultimate state, the end aimed at, was attained. The task of science is, through geology, geognosy,[pg 080]mineralogy, geodesy, physical geography, meteorology, and other sciences to discover the physical, chemical, and mechanical causes of the earth's evolution and their laws, and from the co-operation of these to interpret everything in detail and as a whole.

Whether modern natural science is right in this or not, whether or not it has neglected an element of truth in the old theory of Entelechies which it cannot dispense with, especially in regard to living organisms, it is beyond dispute that, from the most general point of view, and in particular with reference to teleology, religion does not need to concern itself in the least about this opposition.“Purposes,”“ideas,”“guidance”in the religious sense, are quite unaffected by the manner in which the result is realised; everything depends upon the special and particular value of what has been attained or realised. If a concatenation of causes and stages of development lead to results in which we suddenly discern a special and particular value, then, and not till then, have we a reason and criterion for our assumption that it is not simply a result of a play of chances, but that it has been brought about by purposeful thought, by higher intervention and guidance of things. Certainly not before then. Thus we can only speak of purposes, aims, guidance, and creation in so far as we have within us the capacity for feeling and recognising the value, meaning and significance of things. But natural science itself cannot estimate these. It can or will only[pg 081]examine how everything has come about, but whether this result has a higher value than another, or has a lower, or none at all, it can neither assert nor deny. That lies quite outside of its province.

Let us try to make this clear by taking at once the highest example—man and his origin. Let it be assumed that natural science could discover all the causes and factors which, operating for many thousands of years, have produced man and human existence. Even if these causes and factors had actually been pure“ideas,”formæ substantialesand the like, that would in no way determine whether the whole process was really subject to a divine idea of purpose or not. If we had not gained, from a different source, an insight into the supreme and incomparable worth of human existence, spiritual, rational, and free, with its capacity for morality, religion, art and science, we should be compelled to regard man, along with every other natural result, as the insignificant product of a blind play of nature. But, on the other hand, if we have once felt and recognised this value of human existence, its highest dignity, the knowledge that man has been produced through a play of highly complex natural processes, fulfilling themselves in absolute obedience to law, in no way prevents our regarding him as a“purpose,”as the realisation of a divine idea, in accordance with which nature in its orderliness was planned. In fact, this consideration leads us to discover and admire eternal plan and divine guidance in nature.

For it does not rest with natural science either to discover or to deny“purpose”in the religious sense in nature; it belongs to quite a different order of experience, an entirely inward one. Just in proportion as I become aware of, and acknowledge in the domain of my inward experience and through my capacity of estimating values, the worth of the spiritual and moral life of man, so, with the confidence of this peculiar mode of conviction, I subordinate the concatenations of events and causes on which the possibility and the occurrence of the spiritual and moral life depend, to an eternal teleology, and see the order of the world that leads to this illuminated by everlasting meaning and by providence.

Teleological and Scientific Interpretations are Alike Necessary.(7.) Thus religion confidently subjects the world to a teleological interpretation. And to a teleological study in this sense the strictly causal interpretations of natural science are not hostile, but indispensable. For how do things stand? Natural science endeavours by persistent labour to comprehend the whole of the facts occurring in our world, up to the existence of man, as the final outcome and result of an age-long process of evolution, attempts also to follow this process ever higher up the ladder of strictly causal and strictly law-governed sequences, and finally to connect it with the primary and simplest fundamental facts of existence, beyond which it cannot go, and which must simply be[pg 083]accepted as“given.”If these results of this causally interpreted evolution reveal themselves to our inward power of valuation as full of meaning and value, indeed of the deepest and most incomparable value, the causal mode of explanation is in no way affected, but its results are all at once placed in a new light and reveal a peculiarity which was previously not discoverable, yet which is their highest import. They become a strictly united system ofmeans. And purposefulness as a potentiality is thus carried back to the very foundation and“beginning,”to the fundamental conditions and primary factors of the cosmos itself. The strict nexus of conditions and causes is thus nothing more than the“endeavour after end and aim,”the carrying through and realisation of the eternal purpose, which was implicit potentially in the fundamental nature of things. The absolute obedience to law, and the inexorableness of chains of sequence are, instead of being fatal to this position, indispensable to it. When there is a purpose in view, it is only where the system of means is perfect, unbroken, and absolute, that the purpose can be realised, and therefore that intention can be inferred. In the inexplicable datum of the fundamental factors of the world's existence, in the strict nexus of causes, in the unfailing occurrence of the results which are determined by both these, and which reveal themselves to us as of value and purpose, teleology and providence are directly realised. The only assumptions are, that it is possible to judge the results[pg 084]according to their value, and that both the original nature of the world and the system of its causal sequences—that is, the world as we know it—can be conceived of in accordance with the ideas of dependence and conditionedness. Both assumptions are not only possible, but necessary.In thinking out this most general consideration, we find the real and fundamental answer to the question as to the validity and freedom of the religious conception of the world with regard to teleology in nature. And if it be held fast and associated with the insight into the autonomy of the spiritual and its underivability from the natural, we are freed at once from all the petty strife with the naturalistic doctrines of evolution, descent, and struggle for existence. We shall nevertheless be obliged to discuss these to some extent, because it is not a matter of indifference whether the detailed study of natural evolution fits in more or less easily with the conception of purpose whose validity we have demonstrated in general. If that proves to be the case, it will be an important factor in apologetics. The conclusion which we have already arrived at on abstract grounds will then be corroborated and emphasised in the concrete.

(7.) Thus religion confidently subjects the world to a teleological interpretation. And to a teleological study in this sense the strictly causal interpretations of natural science are not hostile, but indispensable. For how do things stand? Natural science endeavours by persistent labour to comprehend the whole of the facts occurring in our world, up to the existence of man, as the final outcome and result of an age-long process of evolution, attempts also to follow this process ever higher up the ladder of strictly causal and strictly law-governed sequences, and finally to connect it with the primary and simplest fundamental facts of existence, beyond which it cannot go, and which must simply be[pg 083]accepted as“given.”If these results of this causally interpreted evolution reveal themselves to our inward power of valuation as full of meaning and value, indeed of the deepest and most incomparable value, the causal mode of explanation is in no way affected, but its results are all at once placed in a new light and reveal a peculiarity which was previously not discoverable, yet which is their highest import. They become a strictly united system ofmeans. And purposefulness as a potentiality is thus carried back to the very foundation and“beginning,”to the fundamental conditions and primary factors of the cosmos itself. The strict nexus of conditions and causes is thus nothing more than the“endeavour after end and aim,”the carrying through and realisation of the eternal purpose, which was implicit potentially in the fundamental nature of things. The absolute obedience to law, and the inexorableness of chains of sequence are, instead of being fatal to this position, indispensable to it. When there is a purpose in view, it is only where the system of means is perfect, unbroken, and absolute, that the purpose can be realised, and therefore that intention can be inferred. In the inexplicable datum of the fundamental factors of the world's existence, in the strict nexus of causes, in the unfailing occurrence of the results which are determined by both these, and which reveal themselves to us as of value and purpose, teleology and providence are directly realised. The only assumptions are, that it is possible to judge the results[pg 084]according to their value, and that both the original nature of the world and the system of its causal sequences—that is, the world as we know it—can be conceived of in accordance with the ideas of dependence and conditionedness. Both assumptions are not only possible, but necessary.

In thinking out this most general consideration, we find the real and fundamental answer to the question as to the validity and freedom of the religious conception of the world with regard to teleology in nature. And if it be held fast and associated with the insight into the autonomy of the spiritual and its underivability from the natural, we are freed at once from all the petty strife with the naturalistic doctrines of evolution, descent, and struggle for existence. We shall nevertheless be obliged to discuss these to some extent, because it is not a matter of indifference whether the detailed study of natural evolution fits in more or less easily with the conception of purpose whose validity we have demonstrated in general. If that proves to be the case, it will be an important factor in apologetics. The conclusion which we have already arrived at on abstract grounds will then be corroborated and emphasised in the concrete.

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