to remark that the view presented utterly precludes mere Materialism on the one hand, and mere Idealism on the other. If this view be correct, there is both a material universe of ever-changing phenomena, produced by ever-acting causes, related to everduring substances; and a (mental) spiritual universe, no less real, no less active, no less multifarious in phenomena.

It is also obvious to remark that, according to this view, the final centre, around which the universe of matter and the universe of mind revolve, can not be pantheistic; for mind everywhere and always recognizes its individual personality, freedom, and responsibility-its own self-hood, separating it not only from all surrounding material objects, but also from all other minds. This very assertion of selfhood denies, with all the emphasis of endless and countless iteration, the possibility of pantheism. The centre, self-supporting, all-supporting centre, is beyond the finite and philosophic. There is not a pantheistic whole, and the centre can not be pantheistic.

CHAPTER III.

FAITH AND POSITIVISM.

The Field of the Religious and Infinite.

ROM the field of the philosophic and finite,*

FROM

it is easy to pass to that of the religious and infinite. Indeed, true philosophy not only points out the direction, it conducts us far along the way. In this connection positivists will readily recall the saying of Bacon, distinguishing between shallowness and depth in philosophy; and rationalists will not forget the declaration of Coleridge, that "philosophy leads us ultimately to religion." It is unnecessary to recount the long list of eminent names to show that the great leaders in philosophic thought have been profoundly religious. Not only has philosophic prose been religious, but philosophic poetry has taught us to "look through nature up to nature's God."

While common poesy has fondly and freely roamed the field of devotion, poetic genius, like that * See Chap. ii.

of Milton and Dante and David, has attained its

loftiest flight in sacred song. While philosophy points us beyond the present and the visible, it is especially true that religion points to the invisible and the eternal. Even Comte, at the bottom of the scale, striving to be persistent in positiveness, sought to deify the phenomenal, but was carried. beyond himself to acknowledge a Religion of Humanity and adore the Grand Être, while woman was chosen only as the symbol of the real divinity he would revere. Herbert Spencer bids us worship, not the sensible and the finite, but the mysterious and the infinite. Religion has been no more prevalent than irrepressible in its impulse to trust and worship something other and higher than itself, and to look to something superior to the present-the climax, both in power and permanence, of what faith, in its varied surroundings and its various stages of development, could reach. This appears in every form of religion. With the cultured and the uncultured, having the same object in view— resting satisfied only with an object for its worship and dependence higher than the finite and the dependent-one that could defend, protect and bless the worshiper.

Not only, then, is it a fact that religious faith does point and impel us toward the infinite, the

supreme, but it requires only a moment's reflection to see that in the nature of the case it must do thus. Nothing less than the Supreme can defend, protect and bless the trusting soul. Anything less must, by the very terms of the supposition, be untrustworthy. We are led by both lines of thought,—— the physical and the metaphysical, the scientific and the religious-to the urgent question of the day, the paramount question for all time: Is there such an object? Is faith in God valid?

In reply we pursue, in this field, as in the field of the philosophic and finite, two lines of argument: the indirect and the direct--by the first, to vindicate a place for faith, by the admission of objectors-by the second, to establish a place for faith upon positive and reliable grounds.

We indicate, by a few examples, the line of indirect argument, which is capable of indefinite

extension.

At the outset we meet this universal admission of objectors, the acknowledged inability to prove that there is no God. By this one fatal admission, all atheistic arguments remain self-condemned as inadequate and inconclusive.

Again, all skeptical theories admit that something is. (We do not even reckon as a theory the suicidal assertion that nothing is, for then the doubter

is not, and can not even doubt.) All these theories admit that something is; and by the labored attempts to account for its existence, they imply the obligation to answer the great questions which press upon us evermore: Whence? and How? and Why? Now, within the limit of this admission, what are we to account for?

66

Even Mr. Spencer, positivist as he is, accepts the testimony of consciousness, and admits that we know ourselves at least as well as we know the material world which lies around us. The personality of which each is conscious, and of which the existence is to each a fact beyond all others the most certain," etc., etc.* The admission is by no means gracious, for "Positive Science," so far forth. as it is a science, has its real basis not in external nature, but in the mental constitution of man.

But Mr. Spencer admits still further,† that "it is rigorously impossible to conceive that our knowledge is a knowledge of appearances only, without at the same time conceiving a reality of which they are the appearances; for appearance without reality is unthinkable." And Mr. J. S. Mill (Introduction to Logic,) admits: "Whatever is known to us by consciousness is known beyond the possibility of question."

* First Principles, p. 66.

+ Ibid. p. 88.