VI.] Can Philosophy Avert it? 263 to the world-"We have nothing better to offer you than morality based on immorality: let us sow falsehoods so as to reap truth." That may be very diplomatic, and accord well with the ethics of expediency, but it certainly will not commend itself to honesty and common sense, Vastly more honest, more commendable, even though not more successful, the action of those who, believing religion to be false, reject it, and finding morality necessary, try to find some other basis for it,-some honest ground for moral growth. : And so the question of the present day is very much like this (1) All other religions have proved themselves inadequate, and must be abandoned by advancing man. (2) And now what shall regulate the world's morals for the coming age, Christianity as a religion or philosophy-a philosophy which claims to be founded on physical science, and to have its culmination in a moral system, and which shall regulate the world after the restraints and impulses of Religion are dead? And that is the question which Japan must ask and answer speedily. Before proceeding to examine the question more minutely in the light of the latest developments of this philosophy, let us glance at its general aspects.1 And first of all what is Philosophy, that she thus may remove religion and take her place in moulding character and controlling the actions of men? Science by research points out phenomena in their connection. Experience accumulates facts and figures. Sensations tell us of immediate effects, history of those more remote. Philosophy takes accumulated facts and puts them into a system and tries to explain their connection, origin, cause and probable result. But Philosophy can neither create, nor command, nor impel, nor rise above the level of the mind in which it was born, and the actual facts with which it deals. And it is precisely so with 1 See also"Dogmatic Faith" by Garbut. 264 Comparison of Philosophical [LECT. philosophical ethics. They may formulate and systematize certain experimental facts around an accepted hypothesis, but can create no higher ideal, give no upward impulse. On the other hand Christian ethics present a character far ahead of realized facts, commanding men in love, impelling men with help, leading men with power to realize and grasp a high and as yet unattained ideal. Philosophy is mechanical, speculative, purely a matter of intellect. Philosophical ethics, a pure mathematical calculation. Christian ethics is a matter of intellect also; but that which is light in the intellect gives warmth to the heart, gives sympathy and life, opens to man eternal hopes, furnishes him with elevating aims-a productive power. Philosophical ethics are deductive: i.e., lay down some hypothesis-make facts agree with that hypothesis, and then trim a moral system out of experience to fit into the assumed theory, though it be but an uncertain hypothesis. This method is not exactly Baconian-is rather scholastic-but it is the method of ancient and modern manufacturers of philosophical morality. Christian ethics are inductive-gather facts of nature, facts of mind, facts of history, facts of a well-certified revelation and on this foundation of certainty, regardless of hypotheses, build a system of well-ordered living. Philosophical ethics know no instrument higher than the human mind, no authority higher than selfishness or expediency or the state; though in modern times, with the help of Christianity, they can think the thought of humanity as a whole. Christian ethics point us at once to a higher overruling Intelligence, the Infinite Father whose love observes the acts of his human children, a consciousness of which, bringing men nearer the one centre of moral power, brings them nearer together as brethren. Philosophical speculation begins in mist, continues in VI.] and Christian Ethics. 265 clouds, and ends in darkness and loss. And so speculative ethics go in a perpetual misty round with no aim, no control, no light, and have always ended in darkness and folly. Christian ethics begin in blessing, increase in fullness of joyous fruition, flow on and on unhindered of death. The question is whether philosophical ethics as such, or Christian ethics as such, will be of the most practical use to the world of humanity of the present day. Another question arises. Has Philosophy ever before proposed to do away with religious sanctions, and replace them by philosophical? And the answer is, "Yes! times without number, through all the ages." Then again, has she ever succeeded in producing a regulative system that was of general practical use in developing a higher type of man? And the answer is, "No, never, never." And now may it not be legitimate to doubt whether that which has notably and perpetually failed for thousands of years, is calculated to be a success in these modern days of mighty impulses and throbbing political life? But it may be urged, modern Philosophy is more advanced than the ancient, the philosophical ethics of scientific to-day are far in advance of those of olden days. Let us glance along the line. It will not be necessary for me to delay long with the philosophies of the East. Confucianism, though it contains much that is true, and much that is morally noble, gives no universal ideal, and as a whole can be retained only by a fossilized humanity; it is incapable of lifting men to the levels of peoples now existing in many lands. The Philosophy of Laotze was in some respects higher than that of Confucius. He taught, for instance, that men should return good for evil. "What," exclaimed Confucius when he heard it, "what does he mean? How then shall we treat those who do good to us ?" showing how far Confucius stood below the morality of Christ. But Laotze's philosophy 266 Greece intellectually great, [LECT. went down in darkness and superstition. The philosophy of Buddha, for Buddhism was at first more a philosophy than a a religion-a philosophy evolved out of disgust of life and existence has proved itself a moral failure. And the same is true of the philosophies of India. Let us rather look at the long. line of the progenitors of modern European speculation. We trace in history some outlines of the greatness of old empires, and spell out their thinkings to-day in old documents of clay and stone, in pyramid and temple and sphinx, and we wonder that out of so much greatness so very little should have been bequeathed to humanity. We have next to nothing from them. There met, however, several lines of intellectual thought and focused upon Greece, when Greece was developing under sunny skies and smiling seas, fed by commerce with men of every hue and race. Upon this favored spot the noble-natured Aryan brought to grand intellectual fruition thoughts that had been crude but growing for centuries, flowing in single streams in less systematic, less practical minds. Strange forces seemed to unite and produce a remarkable race. They tell us that1 "the average ability of the Athenian race is, on the lowest possible estimate, very nearly two grades higher than our own-that is, about as much as our (the European) race is above the African negro." And now why did not this race go on and possess the world? Why not go on and evolve a still higher type? There are no greater names in history than those famous Greeks, who after 2000 years still teach us mathematics, poetry, oratory, sculpture, philosophy. Those master minds that opened the way for all modern intellectual progress. And among all those famous Greeks, no names stand higher than those fathers of philosophy, who, versed in all the science of the times, cleared the mind of fantastic images of false divinities, and gave birth to 1 Galton. VI.] Produces Eminent Moralists, 267 philosophical morality. Greece, 500 B.C., was in some respects like Japan of to-day, in a state of political and intellectual transition. An old aristocracy had lost control, and the people were about to take larger part in ruling the nation. Sophists, political lecturers, sprang up everywhere, and the people were harangued on all sorts of economical, political, national principles. A strange race were these sophists, and their race. is not dead. Philosophy had been growing. Ethics were scarcely a system. But in great Socrates the moral consciousness awoke to life, and spoke awakening words to the youth of his nation. His moral teaching was based upon reason and knowledge. "Know thyself" and act accordingly. He insisted on facts relating to self and to man as part of a society; reason was to recognize truth and love it. Morality was truth in practice. He hated shams as Carlyle did, and urged men to be true. He rose through the argument of design to a God, and from his moral consciousness to an idea of immortality. He was best, wisest, most just of all the Greeks. And yet his morality was simply a philosophical expression of the highest type of a Greek of that time. He has no consciousness of humanity as such. He is unconscious of the impurity of a state where harlots were more honorable than wives; he visits and advises a courtezan in the best way to catch men ; he rudely sends away wife and children who come for a last good-bye, and has no word for them in his last famous speech on immortality, and in the hands of his followers his excellencies soon develop into defects. The same facts are true of Plato, who develops the idea of beauty and harmony and order in the world. The beautiful was god-like; good was equivalent to pleasure; virtue, that which produced pleasure. He unfolds ideas of a state morality, and dwells on the life of the citizen. But he knows nothing of individual moral purity; his ideal state is one in which there shall be a community-life, no woman married to |