THE STUDY OF NATURE AND THE VISION OF GOD : WITH OTHEE ESSAYS 

IN PHILOSOPHY 



Then, if that is his motive, he will not be a statesman. 

By the dog of Egypt, he will ! in the city which is his own he 
certainly will, though in the land of his birth perhaps not, unless he 
have a divine call. 

I understand ; you mean that he will be a ruler in the city of 
which we are the founders, and which exists in idea only ; for 1 do 
not believe that there is such an one anywhere on earth ? 

In heaven, I replied, there is laid up a pattern of it, methinks, 
which he who desires may behold, and beholding, may set his own 
house in order. But whether such an one exists, or ever will exist in 
fact, is no matter ; for he will live after the manner of that city, 
having nothing to do with any other. 

I think so, he said. 

Plato, Republic, 592 (tr. Jowett). 



The Study of Nature and the Vision of God 
with Other Essays in Philosophy 



BY 

GEORGE JOHN BLEWETT 

Ryerson Professor of Moral Philosophy in Victoria College, Toronto 
Sometime Rogers Memorial Fellow of Harvard University 



^ I 
TORONTO *^\ \ 

WILLIAM BRIGGS 



M CM VII 



Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year one thousand nine hundred 
and seven, by GEORGE JOHN BLEWETT, at the Department of Agriculture. 



MORTVIS MEIS 



PREFACE. 

IN the endeavour of man to draw near to that ultimate reality 
with which it is his salvation to make himself at one the endeavour 
which is on its practical side religion, on its theoretical side philos 
ophy and theology there is an elemental distinction between two 
tendencies or methods. The one, to find God, denies the world. The 
other retains the world, but when God is found the world becomes 
new ; or rather, in finding God the world also is found, for the knowl 
edge of God is the ultimate truth about the world. To trace these 
tendencies, in the broad outline of their historical relations of con 
flict and of combination, was once the hope of the present writer. 
Such a study, if it could have been undertaken successfully, would 
have done two things: would have cast light on the forms which in 
human history the religious endeavour to be at one with God has 
assumed; and would have marked out for students, in an elementary 
but yet fundamental way, the ground-currents of the history of 
philosophy and theology. But it is now almost certain that that 
plan will never, even in briefest outline, be carried through ; and so a 
number of essays, written at different times and under different 
circumstances as studies toward it, are published here as separate 
papers. Each can be read by itself; yet, since there is enough of 
the original plan in the separate parts to give them a certain unity, 
it would be better to take them together as forming a single historical 
discussion. For this reason a short introduction has been prefixed, 
stating the main point of the discussion and the relation of each of 
the papers to it. 

The essay on Spinoza is the property of Harvard University, and 
is published here by permission of President Eliot. 1 This is only a 
single instance of the kindness with which through many years that 
great university has treated Canadian students ; though we came to 

1 A few changes have been made. 
vii 



PEEFACE 

her as strangers, she admitted us ungrudgingly to the use of her wide 
resources, and by a hospitality more generous than can be told in 
words bound to herself our hearts. I can scarcely record here the 
names of all those who at Harvard, whether by mastery in the things 
of the mind, or by personal kindness, placed me in their debt; but 
those who have a better right than I can perhaps allow me to refer 
with a gratitude made deeper by the sense of loss, to the gifted lady 
who left all the world of New England poorer when she was taken 
in sudden death from the place at the side of Professor Palmer which 
she filled with such grace and power. 

I am deeply indebted also to several of those who in old-world 
universities are carrying forward the greater traditions of philosophy ; 
nor is my sense of obligation lessened by the fact that they would 
disapprove of many things in these pages. The thoughtfulness of 
Professor Kiilpe, and the charm of his grave sincerity, brightened for 
me a time at Wiirzburg when work was almost out of question. 
To the kindness of the Master of Balliol I must refer with the special 
reverence and gratitude due to one whose venerable primacy in 
philosophy among English-speaking men makes him " our father Par- 
menides." And I must mention one other name : that of the late 
Thomas Hill Green, whose living voice I had never the happiness to 
hear, but whose Prolegomena to Ethics since Cudworth s day the 
greatest single piece of constructive work in the British literature 
of metaphysic and ethics was my " introduction " to the study of 
philosophy. 

But the masters in the schools of philosophy will find no fault 
with me, if with the deepest gratitude of all I mention an influence 
other than their own, though not alien to it that of three men who 
live now in God: Lesslie Matthew Sweetnam, who bore without 
flinching a fiery trial of pain, and went early to death, giving his 
own life in the attempt to save by operation that of a helpless stranger 
being in his death what he had been in life, a prince among the 
surgeons of his day, and a man whose character was a magnificence 
of the spirit ; John Petch, sometime Professor of French in Victoria 
College, Toronto, who throughout the long and painful illness which 
preceded his death, showed to those who waited upon him the same 

viii 



PBEFACE 

affectionate consideration and gentle courtesy that (joined with the 
finest sense of honour) had become in the days of his strength the 
settled habit of his mind; and my father, a brave and gifted man, 
who endured wrong in silence, and in spite of a frail body and the 
cruelty of circumstance discharged with fidelity the greater human 
duties, and to whom at last there came gently the grace of sudden 
death. To these three men, who were strong enough not to play the 
rebel s part when their doom was hard, but had their hope in God, 
and did with their might their work upon the earth, the pages which 
follow are inscribed; and it is the writer s grief that to their dear 
and lamented names he is not able to erect a more worthy monument. 



VICTORIA COLLEGE, 

TORONTO, January, 1907. 



IX 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

INTRODUCTORY 1 

THE STUDY OF NATURE AND THE VISION OP GOD 15 

THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 111 

PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 201 

THE COMPLETING OF IDEALISM - 249 

ERIGENA : THE DIVISION OF NATURE - 269 

Erigena s general position 271 280 

The four Forms of Nature 280331 

The first Form 281282 

The procession from the first Form to the second - 282 298 

The procession from the second Form to the third 298 310 

The return of all things the fourth Form of Nature 310331 

THE THEISM OF ST. THOMAS 333 

CONCLUSION - - 349 



INTRODUCTORY 

WHEN some great Christian kingdom has along its borders no 
rest from war, many young citizens the lion being still supreme in 
them 1 can recognise but one service of the state. The watch upon 
the frontier, with its discipline of arms and its incessant energies of 
defense and attack, is to them at once the duty of a man and the 
meaning of citizenship and the ideal life. But the years bring a 
graver wisdom; the man who went out eagerly to the tented 
field if he has retained the clear sense of devotion to the state, 
and has not become merely subdued to the trade of war comes 
more and more to see that, great as is his present service to the state, 
there is another, quieter and greater. The ultimate strength of the 
state lies otherwhere: in patient processes and structures of industry 
and commerce and legislation ; in unnumbered school-rooms ; in those 
ancient houses where learning is cherished for its own sake, and for 
their own sake the sciences are cultivated, and out of piety the memory 
of far-off benefactors is kept alive ; above all, in the " relations dear " 
of the homes, with their " charities of father, son, and brother," and 
their establishment in uprightness and integrity of the characters of 
those who presently are to do the world s work and shape the world s 
life; and in those companions of the homes, without which homes 
are scarcely homes at all, the parish churches that with sacraments 
and holy observances and the making of habitual prayer lie close to 
our mortal life from its beginning to its close: parish churches 
where the vows of baptism are made for little children; and with 
Morning Prayer and Evensong the growing life is reminded day by 
day of the heavenly glory which is its end; and to each relationship 
of life, with all that is in it of labour or sacred promise or discipline 
of grief, there is brought by solemn offices the assistance of the 
heavenly grace; and all, at last, the young with the old, the poor 
side by side with the great, lay themselves down together to their sleep 

i Plato, Republic, 588. 
2 1 



INTRODUCTORY 

in the shadow of the ancient walls. In these things is the strength 
and true life of the state; nay, these things are the state; and to 
them the man upon the frontier if he is a man indeed, and the times 
are not too grim makes soon or late his way, leaving the vigil upon 
the border to the younger men with whom the inward and spiritual 
voices of the rational soul have not yet come to mastery and the call 
of the trumpet remains the one voice of duty. 

In our day there has been something similar to this in the com 
monwealth of philosophy. It too has had its border-warfare: the 
strife between those who had, and those who had not, grasped the 
ancient and cardinal insight of philosophy, that if you would under 
stand the nature of the world you must understand the relation of the 
world to the soul. That insight received its first systematic applica 
tion, in a form singularly impressive and splendid, from Plato. And 
to win it again and learn how to carry it once more to its systematic 
application, has been precisely the work of recent philosophy ; a work 
undertaken upon the impulse and suggestion of Immanuel Kant. 
Kant compelled us to see that in any attempt to form a view of the 
world we must remember from the beginning that the facts of the 
world all facts that any man of science can in any sense inves 
tigate are facts for self-consciousness. To say that anything is 
capable of undergoing scientific investigation is to say that it is 
capable of becoming present to, of being comprehended by, of having 
its nature and structure expressed in forms of, the self-conscious spirit 
which is man. To say that material objects can be known is to say 
that material objects are capable of entering into organic union with 
self-conscious intelligence. Indeed, it is not doing justice to the 
facts of the case to say merely that in knowledge there is a union of 
subject and object. Throughout the whole process of gaining knowl 
edge the mind itself is active; active in shaping the impressions 
which are given to us into that objective order of facts in which we 
live and which we call the world. So that the subject actually bears 
a part in constructing its own object and its own objective order. 
Hence, until you have studied that activity of mind, you do not under 
stand how your world has come to be what it is; you do not under- 

2 



INTRODUCTORY 

stand the nature and structure of the world of your actual life. To 
try to understand the nature of the world without reference to the 
activity of the self-conscious subject, is like trying to solve a problem 
in neglect of .its central factor or to pronounce final verdict upon a 
case in forgetfulness of the most immediately relevant part of the 
evidence. Nothing, that is to say, worthy of being called a scientific 
view of the world in technical terms, nothing worthy of being called 
a metaphysic is possible to a man until he considers the relation of 
subject and object; or, to state the case more narrowly, until he 
considers the fact of knowledge and raises the question of the possi 
bility of knowledge. 1 

But in the age immediately preceding our own, philosophy found 

i The statement, in the above paragraph, of the character of our experience, is simply 
a statement of fact. It is not metaphysic ; but it clears the ground for metaphysic, by 
describing the object with which the metaphysician begins, and the conditions of whose 
possibility he seeks to understand. 

In our own day, this clearing of the ground for metaphysical construction has been 
effected by the psychologists in a way more primary if such an expression may be 
allowed than was possible to Kant, moving painfully as he did under his accumulation 
of inherited burdens. For the psychologist, as he goes on with his analysis, never comes 
to any object other than the psychical object ; in other words, the realities of individual 
experience are always psychical realities. Hence, any one who passes from psychology to 
metaphysic is at once in position to argue that, since the process to be explained is 
altogether psychical, that which explains its possibility must likewise be psychical ; and 
this, in whichever way the individual experience is supposed to be related to the greater 
(or total) reality whose nature the metaphysician seeks to know whether as effect to 
cause, or as part to whole, or as a product or reproduction to a source whose relation to 
the product is not adequately expressed by the category of cause and effect. 

The psychologist, as such, has, of course, no concern about metaphysic at all. His 
business is simply to observe the facts and processes of individual experience as these 
actually are. But if he performs that task with accuracy, his work whether he intends 
it or no clears the ground for metaphysical construction as it never has been cleared 
before ; and this puts every department of philosophy under a great debt to him. In 
referring to this contribution of the psychologist to metaphysic, I am thinking, of course, 
not of the older psychology which was a mixture of metaphysic and psychological 
observation in which neither component came to its right but of the psychology which 
is psychology and nothing else ; the psychology which, in the logical order of the sciences, 
is the first of the sciences of observation. This is often called the " new," or " experi 
mental," psychology. But the adjectives are not needed. When the psychologist applies 
methods of exact measurement to such psychical phenomena as admit of exact measure 
ment, he is doing only what any man of science ought to do. The fact that certain 
elements and certain processes in our experience admit of fairly exact measurement, does 
not make experience and the experienced world any the less spiritual or any the more 
mechanical. In this connexion I should refer, with warm admiration, to the name of 
Professor Kirschmann of the University of Toronto. I do this, not as in any sense sug 
gesting that Professor Kirschmann would approve of the views expressed in these pages ; 
but as indicating my own gratitude to him and to his teaching. 

3 



INTRODUCTORY 

itself face to face with views of the world which were formed by 
absolutely the opposite procedure and yet were threatening to dom 
inate the world. For there are more metaphysicians in the world 
than the Platonists and the Kantians. All men are metaphysicians 
by nature ; and most men impatient and hasty metaphysicians. They 
rush into metaphysic from whatever scientific ground they happen 
to have been working upon, and construct metaphysical systems with 
whatever categories they have been accustomed to use, without con 
sidering that there is an intervening question this question of the 
possibility of knowledge, and of the relation of the categories to 
nature. The physicist, for example, when he obeys the human 
impulse to be metaphysical, is tempted simply to treat the physical 
point of view as the ultimate one, and the categories of physical 
science as the ultimate categories the ultimate principles of explana 
tion of the world. Without quite seeing what he is doing for since 
he scorns the word " metaphysic," it is easy for him to imagine that 
he also scorns the thing he gets a metaphysic of his own at one 
stroke, by simply taking his physics as metaphysic. That the facts 
of our experience have relations other than the physical; that an 
investigation of these might lead to a deeper knowledge of the facts, 
and even to a re-interpretation of the physical relations themselves; 
that there is an inquiry (epistemology) which seeks to conduct pre 
cisely this investigation: this he does not see, and, not seeing it, 
enters boldly and easily upon a world-view which is blind to all 
aspects of the world but one ; and so we get that hasty and premature 
metaphysic which, when it puts the emphasis at one point, is called 
Materialism; when at another point, the mechanical view of the 
world. Then come other men of science who see that materialistic 
and mechanical views are not adequate as explanations of the world 
of our experience, but who yet will have nothing to do with the 
epistemological problem; these, finding the way of advance barred 
to themselves, assert that it is barred to all men; and thus we get 
the final development of this type of metaphysic, the development 
seen in the various forms of Agnosticism. 1 

i The Agnosticism here meant is that which may be called Agnosticism for its own 
sake; not that which, in ancient and mediaeval times, was simply one of the momenta 
of Mysticism. 

4 



INTKODUCTOKY 

These types of metaphysic have in our day exercised an immense 
influence. In the first place they have been powerful through a sort 
of transferred glory : the men who have urged them upon us are in 
many ways our benefactors ; are members of that great host to whose 
untiring labour and magnificent achievement in physical and natural 
science we are all of us and none of us more than the theologians 
profoundly indebted. And in the second place their influence has 
been wide because the movement of thought already described, the 
movement of thought by which one drifts into them from the modern 
scientific consciousness, is so easy and so natural. Certain principles 
of explanation used upon certain aspects of reality prove splendidly 
successful; what more easy than to take for granted that these are 
the supreme principles in the whole arsenal of man s mind? And 
that view once taken, the conclusions follow directly : either you apply 
these principles to the explanation of the whole process of the universe, 
and so gain a materialistic or mechanical view of the world; or you 
see that there are facts which these principles cannot explain, and then 
you say that, since these principles are the supreme principles of 
science, those facts are incapable of scientific explanation and lie 
beyond the horizon of human knowledge altogether. But, however 
easy such a movement of thought be, or however attractive to human 
nature, the present-day student of philosophy who knows his own 
field which amounts to saying, who has entered into metaphysic by 
the gateway of epistemology has no choice but to insist that views 
formed in this way are premature, uncritical, dogmatic; they 
announce their conclusions without having investigated a great prob 
lem which is not merely relevant but fundamental. 

That is to say, to return to the comparison of a moment ago, such 
a student recognises in views of this sort the hostile encampments 
upon the frontier; barbarians having nature s own strength in them 
and therefore magnificent in intellectual and spiritual potentialities, 
but seeking to destroy the ancient civilisation of church and state 
in which alone can the nature in them or in any man come to its true 
fulfilment. And while he is still young he is likely to feel it his 
special vocation to take up the conflict with these; always he is 
devising some new and clearer statement of Platonic or Kantian 

5 



INTRODUCTORY 

epistemology, such as will set out in plain light the immense and yet 
rudimentary fallacy of which they are habitually guilty, and without 
which their systems and their outlook upon the world would never 
have come into being at all. But as he grows older he finds that he 
himself has something to learn; riot a new lesson exactly, but a new 
temper. To him as well as to others that graver wisdom of the years 
is brought ; his heart begins to apprehend, and to respond to, a greater 
call. If his vocation is to be fulfilled in its integrity, he must pass 
on to those constructive labours that regard nothing save truth in her 
eternal form. And to take part in such labours there is but one way : 
he must turn to the ancient and catholic homes of his great science, 
must make them the dwelling-place of his mind, in their faith and 
in the power of their still light must at once look upon and participate 
in the struggle and fate of man. It is necessary, indeed, that the 
controversy upon the marches be maintained. But that work of serv 
ing God with the sword he may well leave to younger men. In the 
kingdom of the intellect, the greater service of God is that of those 
who in peaceful labour draw nearest to His glory ; and so, for himself, 
in the years that are left, he will turn toward that central region 
where, in their own native and appropriate forms, the greater things 
of philosophy stand in peace, and the spirits of the masters abide in 
the temples which they themselves have built. There he will dwell, 
and will seek, so far as he can, both to live over again in himself the 
great histories which have been enacted there, and to keep the access 
to those homes of light open to whatever men may be led by trouble 
of mind or by an inner vocation to turn their faces that way. 

But this central and catholic region of philosophy what is it 
like ? In a moment we shall have to consider the great division which 
is found in it. But first we must note the distinguishing characters 
in which all its structures and labours share, and which make it, with 
all its divisions, still one realm. These characters are, in the main, 
two; two characters which may seem very broad, very fugitive, very 
impalpable, to the man who looks upon the matter from the outside; 
but the opposite of fugitive or impalpable to the man who looks out 
upon philosophy from its own central point of view. In the first 

G 



INTEODUCTOEY 

place, the philosophies which belong here, however radically they differ 
from one another in other respects, agree in this they are a wisdom 
of the soul. They remember that reality is the seat and home of the 
soul, and that, therefore, in forgetfulness of the soul reality can never 
be understood or rightly interpreted. In the second place, they agree 
also in this, that to them truth and life are one. With whatever 
differences among themselves, they constitute that greater philosophy 
which, at one and the same time and by one and the same impulse, 
seeks to know reality and to enter into union with it. On the one 
side, such philosophy is what the Germans call Wissenschaft, what 
Plato and Aristotle with a still severer exaltation of meaning called 
eniGTrj^rf, and what in these pages (contrary to the ordinary usage 
of English men of thought) will be called science. On this side, 
seeking knowledge for the sake of knowledge, it endeavours to com 
prehend intellectually the world of which it is itself a part. But the 
same impulse and the same passion has as its other side the endeavour 
to be at one with the reality which it has scientifically apprehended. 
It seeks to take, as its way, the way of that reality; seeks to take the 
nature of that reality as its guide, the law and informing spirit of that 
reality as its law and its spirit. And so it is a principle of the unity 
of life; it seeks the unity of life by seeking that union with ultimate 
reality in which science and religion are one. 

But, as already has been indicated, within the limits of the greater 
philosophy which has these distinguishing characters, there is a cer 
tain profound and thoroughgoing division. In the attempt to appre 
hend the true nature of reality, and consequently in the endeavour 
to bring the life of man into accord with reality, there have been 
two great methods, two great tendencies, the distinction between 
which is not broken down by the fact that historically they have 
entered into the most manifold relations of combination and of con 
flict with each other. The division arises, as all great human 
divisions arise, from the existence of divergent tendencies in human 
nature itself, and of radical differences in the experience, happy or 
tragic, which falls to the lot of individuals and races. And since it 
arises in the effort to apprehend ultimate reality, it is a division 
elemental and ultimate the most radical of all the divisions known 

7 



INTEODUCTOEY 

to human nature and human life, and the one that must always be 
kept in mind, as a sort of ground-plan, in any attempt to understand 
the spiritual history of man. The tendencies themselves, however, 
and the two types of philosophy to which they give rise, we must seek 
to understand somewhat more fully. 

Each of the two types of philosophy is a movement from the 
changing and transient facts of the experienced world to a principle 
which is one and eternal; or, as this would usually be expressed, is 
a movement from the world to God. But each makes that movement 
in its own way. The one, in moving from the world to God, does not 
forget the world from which it started. When it finds the explanation 
of the world in a vision of God, it returns to the world, and seeks to 
give to the facts of the world their true interpretation in the light 
of that vision of God. The facts of the world and of our life are to 
it elements in a divine plan, the history of the world a process in 
which an eternal purpose is being realised. The nature of God 
and therefore, however veiled by cloud and storm, the nature of the 
world is that for which human language has no single word, 1 but 
which may be expressed by putting together the three words, reason, 
righteousness, love. And in unity with that true or ultimate nature 
of the universe lies the way of life for man; in character, unity with 
the divine character ; in action, unity with the divine purpose. Since, 
furthermore, the purpose of God is the ultimate law of the world, 
since the plan of God realises itself in and through the history of the 
world, that character and action in which man seeks to become at one 
with God must be character and action in this present world, not out 
of it. It is in and through the ways of this present life, in and 
through the " daily round " and the " common task/ in and through 
the regular forms and relationships, the normal duties and affections, 
of human work and human homes, that a man must make himself at 
one with the eternal reality. Even as there is "no other genuine 
enthusiasm for humanity," so also, to extend the late Professor 
Green s well-known statement, there is on this view no other genuine 
enthusiasm for God and for the eternal, than one "which has 
travelled the common highway of reason the life of the good neigh- 

1 Unless it be the word "spirit," in its concrete sense. 
8 



INTBODUCTOKY 

bour and the honest citizen and can never forget that it is still only 
a further stage of the same journey." 

The other tendency follows just the opposite procedure. In 
moving toward God it leaves the world behind. For the reality, 
knowledge of which is truth, and union with which is the way of 
life is it not something essentially different from these present 
appearances ? if not, why are we dissatisfied with these appearances ? 
What, indeed, sets us at all upon that quest which, as thinking, is 
philosophy, but as a life is religion, save precisely this, that the 
appearances which constitute our present experience and our present 
world are profoundly unsatisfactory? They are transient they fleet 
away and leave life empty for the man that trusted in them. 
Logically, they are self-contradictory. Morally and religiously they 
are inadequate, if indeed they do not stand absolutely condemned. 
Then how shall we define reality save by denying of it the characters 
of the appearances which make up our experience? And so reality 
comes to be conceived, not as that which at once explains and con 
tains the things and forms of our present life, the home of them and 
the truth of them, their law and their informing spirit, but as some 
thing which exists purely in itself and cannot be given to us under 
the ordinary forms of our thinking. On the contrary, it can be 
described only by denying of it all the characteristics of what can be 
so given to us. It is true that the men who seek reality by this 
method usually have, explicitly or implicitly, formal definitions of it 
definitions of which the ancient and ever-recurring one, that " sub 
stance is that which for its existence stands in need of nothing but 
itself," is a type. But no positive or concrete characterisation is 
possible when reality is described as one, eternal, unchangeable, 
these are not so much positive characters as negations of the multi 
plicity, the diversity, the change and transience, of that which is given 
to us and is our experience. For, as we have just seen, the very 
method by which the real is sought to be reached makes impossible 
any attempt to tell what its positive content or nature is. The forms, 
the energies, the activities, which are manifest in our experience, 
and make our world what it is what you know about reality is that 
it is not these. There is a reality, indeed that is your first and 

9 



INTRODUCTORY 

profoundest conviction as a denier of this false world in the name of 
the truly real; 1 and that reality needs for its existence nothing save 
itself ; but you are sure that it/ as it is in itself, is never given to you, 
and cannot be given to you, under the ordinary form of your 
experience. And so, in your search for reality, you must say of any 
natural or intellectual or moral form known to man s present 
experience, " It is not that." 

In a word, this philosophy, when it has gained its goal and its 
rest in God, remembers the world no more, except as a dream and 
an illusion which, at the coming of the vision of God, has vanished 
back into its own native and original nothingness. Reality is that 
which the world of our experience is not. And as reality is conceived, 
so also is the true way of life conceived. All that you can say of the 
consciousness or experience which is at one with reality, is that it is 
not our present consciousness; that it has no kinship in form or 
procedure with the normal consciousness manifest in man s ordinary 
science and labour, religion and society; that even such terms as 
" consciousness " or " experience " can be applied to it only by 
accommodation. 

Of all the divisions or distinctions that are found in human 
experience and have been influential in shaping the world s history, 
this is in the sense of being first and elemental the most important. 
Its fullest and most concrete expression of itself has been, of course, 
in religion. On the one side stand religions like Brahmanism (and, 
in a modified sense, Buddhism) the religion of men who deny the 
world and seek to become one with a reality which is not the changing 
world; 2 on the other, religions like Christianity, which see that it is 
only in God and unto God that the world reaches its truth and reality. 
Indeed, if one were speaking of Christendom still more, if one were 
speaking of the church rather than of Christianity, one would have 
to say that its history is a history precisely of the conflict of these 
two tendencies within one body. And naturally, as to some extent 

1 Though you may feel compelled to object to all possible human ways of expressing 
that conviction. 

2 "You let your boat drop quietly down the Ganges to-day, and along its banks the 
silent figures sit like carved brown statues, hour after hour, day after day, with eyes open 
and fixed on vacancy, clearing themselves of all thought, emotion, and desire, that, being 
emptied of self, they may see God." [I cannot find the reference.] 

10 



INTRODUCTORY 

we have seen already, this deepest distinction in man s practical life 
has expressed itself also, in every age and in numberless ways, in 
his endeavour rationally to comprehend himself and his life, whether 
that attempt be called philosophy or theology. Indeed, the man who 
attempts to understand the history of philosophy, or of theology (in 
the ancient sense of the term), without understanding this distinction 
and its place in those histories, is like a man of science who should 
examine the surface of some great current, without penetrating to the 
forces that actually have determined and actually are determining 
its nature and its flow. 

Of these two great types of religion, of theology, of philosophy, 
the one which, in seeking its home in God, follows in the way just 
indicated the via negativa, is commonly called Mysticism. To it the 
nature of God is altogether beyond the categories of our intelligence ; 
the vision of God, which is the light of the soul, is altogether above 
the ways and activities of our understanding; the rest in God, which 
is the blessedness of the soul, is altogether apart from the ordinary 
forms of our experience. Hence the name is quite appropriate. The 
true, the real, the One, words cannot utter it nor thought conceive 
it; how, then, shall the man who seeks it describe himself to the 
ordinary intelligence? and how shall the ordinary intelligence express 
its judgment concerning him ? Obviously there is but one way. He, 
whether as he attempts to describe himself to it, or as it judges him, 
is a Mystic; and his way of life is Mysticism. The other tendency, 
when formulated as a philosophy, is known historically as Idealism. 
Its first world-historical master was Plato; from one of his great 
words the name itself is taken. As a view of the world, it was in 
part explicitly wrought out by him, in part made possible by him to 
later men of thought who worked, on the one hand, with more 
powerful categories and therefore with greater opportunities for self- 
consistency, but on the other hand with less of inspiration, less of 
political and moral and religious passion. But Idealism, in this 
greater sense of the name, 1 the modern world has had almost to 
conquer anew for itself. And he who made the reconquest possible, 

1 As distinct from the Sensationalism of the English School, which also, because it is a 
" way of ideas " (in the sense of that word so unhappily used hy John Locke) has been 
called Idealism. 

11 



INTKODUCTOKY 

though he did his work stumblingly and with all possible awkward 
ness, was Immanuel Kant. 

This, then, is the first great division and the most radical of 
all possible divisions within the " church catholic " of philosophy. 
It is the. extreme and complete opposition of the via negativa to that 
positive or synthetic method which insists that the true universal is 
at once the home and the explanation of the particulars, and which, 
therefore, when it has gained a vision of God, seeks to use that vision 
as the light which gives a true vision of the world. But this first 
division is not all; there is a second and lesser to be considered one 
within Idealism. For the via negativa, where it does not secure that 
full triumph which (as at once a metaphysic and a way of life) is 
Mysticism, is sometimes able to cross over into the field of its 
opponent and secure a partial victory there. These are the cases 
where it cannot win men away from believing that the forms of reason 
express the nature of reality that ultimate reality is perfect reason. 
But it does lead them to believe that you must separate pure reason 
from sensation and sense-experience, and then accept that pure reason 
alone as expressing the nature of reality. So that you have reality 
as a world of abstract pure reason, and pure reason in man appre 
hending it; and then you somehow have another world, the sense- 
world, and corresponding to it, man s sense-experience. And the true 
way of life is to renounce this lower world and all its ways, and to 
live only in that upper world. This way of thinking may, for con 
venience of reference, be called Abstract Idealism ; in distinction from 
it, the fully-developed type may be called Concrete Idealism Hegel 
called it Absolute Idealism. 

We have, then, to sum up, a twofold opposition of the great ten 
dencies which we have been considering: first, their extreme oppo 
sition, giving us Mysticism and Idealism; secondly, their lesser 
opposition within the field of Idealism, giving us Abstract and Con 
crete Idealism. 1 

i When the distinction between these two types of philosophy and of religion is stated 
and not only stated, but insisted upon a very old question is likely to recur in a new 
form : Of what value is the distinction between the inner kingdom of philosophy and its 
borderland contentions, if that inner kingdom itself is rent apart by divisions of the most 

12 



INTRODUCTORY 

It is with this central and catholic region of philosophy, and with 
this twofold opposition of fundamental tendencies within it, that the 
following papers are in the main concerned. Most of them were 
written as separate studies; a fact which gives to each its own angle 
of approach, and involves, also, a certain amount of repetition. But 
they had a common purpose; 1 and when taken together have still a 
certain unity of plan, which may be indicated as follows. The first 
two essays deal with the main antithesis itself, that between Idealism 
and Mysticism: the first outlining, in simple form, and with refer 
ence to the life of our own day, the Idealistic position; while the 
second, in the historical discussion of what is there called Spinoza s 
"first metaphysic," traces the development of Mysticism. The 
remaining papers are studies in the history of Idealism, with special 
reference to the conflict of tendencies just described the lesser con 
flict within Idealism, the greater between Idealism and Mysticism. 
The history is studied, not consecutively, but by turning to those 
great masters in ancient and mediaeval thought in whom the forces 
that operate throughout the whole history are seen working with 
special clearness and intensity. In Plato is seen, for instance, the 

fundamental kind? The doubt implied in such a question is, however, not justified ; its 
unfairness can be shown if it is allowable to ride a parable so hard by turning once 
more to the comparison suggested earlier in the text. In the country there spoken of, the 
observer would soon have become aware of the existence of political parties. And as he 
looked upon the "fell incensed points " of their stubborn opposition, he might easily be 
tenanted to say that the division between these parties was a far more fundamental 
one than that between citizens within and hardy barbarians without. And yet, in one 
most important respect, he would be wrong. For, no matter how radical the opposition 
of those parties, their members have after all the most important things of life in com 
mon ; they have a common speech, a common literature, common arts and education, a 
common religion in one word, a common citizenship. The two parties are kindred to 
each other in a sense in which neither of them is kindred to that race of other blood that 
troubles the marches. And so here. Mysticism and Ide ilism are certainly as far apart 
as any types of philosophy or of religion can possibly be. But they agree in this: they 
know that the quest for the unity of existence and the quest for the true end and home of 
the soul are one and the same quest. Out of one and the same impulse proceed their 
effort after the intellectual apprehension of reality, and their effort, whether by ordinary 
or extraordinary experience, after the union of the soul with that reality. Of course, the 
other side of the matter should not be forgotten. Barbarian and citizen, though without 
a common citizenship, have a common human nature ; it lies within the potentialities of 
the barbarian s soul to become a citizen. So too, the Materialist or the Agnostic need 
only do justice to himself, and to the intellectual impulses already at work within him, 
to become an Idealist. 

i See Preface, p. vii. 

13 



INTRODUCTORY 

founding of Idealism as a systematic view of the world and of life. 
Then, when Greek thought, as one of the constituent elements of the 
mind of the church, had gone out into the wide world, the strife, or 
rather the combination, of Idealism with Mysticism is seen in 
Erigena; and the struggle between the two types of Idealism in St. 
Thomas. 



14 



THE STUDY OF NATURE AND THE 
VISION OF GOD 



THE STUDY OF NATUBE AND THE 
VISION OF GOD. 



AMONG the leaders of the English people in the nineteenth century 
there was one strangely devoid of the qualities and habits that we 
have grown accustomed to look for in a modern leader of modern 
men, and strangely out of accord with what the world regards as the 
genius of England. He was no captain of industry. He was the 
head of no princely merchant house. He was not a statesman; not 
a jurist; not one of the proconsuls of England, who establish her 
peace abroad in seats of ancient anarchy. He had no part in the 
labours of commerce, of war, of civil administration, by which Britain 
has done for parts of the modern world what Eome, with more con 
tinuous but more selfish energies, did for the whole of the ancient. 
From all these, the circles in which the leaders of England habitually 
move and the works at which they habitually labour, he turned 
deliberately and resolutely away. He made no quest of any sort after 
personal popularity. His voice was not heard in the streets; and 
when, from quiet places and chosen retreats, he spoke to the people 
of England, it was with warning and grave rebuke. Every word 
revealed a great gulf: on one side that solitary man; on the other, 
the customary life, the habitual thoughts, the characteristic activities, 
of his race. And in the presence of that gulf there came to Cardinal 
Newman s lips no single syllable of concession or of compromise. 

Once, indeed, he had been in more intimate contact with English 
life and English thought and English institutions. Virtually, though 
not in name, he had been the leader of the chivalry of the Church 
of England in its battle with modern Liberalism ; and had guided the 
first steps of that ecclesiastical revolution which has exercised upon the 
life of the great body of Englishmen an influence more widely form- 

3 17 



THE STUDY OF JSTATUBE 

ative than they themselves know. But those days were now done. 
That leadership had been laid aside, and for ever. He had with 
drawn from the noises of the world, and had sat him down in the 
quiet of an institution, itself in its very nature repugnant to the 
temper of England and alien to her settled thoughts. It seemed as 
if his influence upon the men of England were shattered for ever and 
by his own act. But what really came to pass was that that influence 
gradually took on a new life. It became more impalpable, less obtru 
sive, less noticeable; became something which few journalists would 
have remembered in enumerating the " forces of the day." But it 
became profounder, instinct with a power more truly essential and 
therefore more abiding. And it became so, because it became more 
broadly and simply human, more free from party interests and party 
accidents, more deeply rooted in the elementary material of life. The 
change in the character of the influence was due to a change which 
had come to the man himself who exercised it. A great division had 
passed out of his life. True, there were still difficulties for him. 
The policy of the Eoman Curia in the days of Pius might grieve him 
deeply. But it could never shatter the very foundations of his life, 
as once the attitude and the decisions of the Anglican bishops had 
done. In spite of all difficulties the fact remained that the much- 
tried spirit had found its home. Equably and strongly it moved 
henceforth on its way, like some star which at its true altitude and 
in its appointed and established orbit sweeps steadily forward " without I 
haste and without rest." In that deep assurance of soul Newman ; 
turned, as was natural, more and more to the things that are truly j 
catholic; more and more to the things that do not belong to parties 
and do not pass away with parties ; more and more to the things that, 
being eternal, are, in the words used a moment ago, broadly and 
simply human. It is true, he remained an uncompromising advocate 
of the Eoman view of the church and the Eoman interpretation of 
history. But though he himself would indignantly have repudiated 
the distinction his influence as such an advocate came to be the least 
important part of his influence; his deepest power upon his genera 
tion was not that which he exerted as a prophet of the specifically 
Eoman ideal in its conflict with the spirit of the time and with the 

18 



AND THE VISION OF GOD 

spirit of England. His true significance as a leader and benefactor 
of the English race came more and more to lie, not in any party 
advocacy, but in the fact that, in an age devoted to material prosperity 
and to the objects and interests of a materialised life, he, with no 
particle of submission to the spirit of the age, was a pilgrim of eternity 
and a prophet of eternity. 

And this came to be recognised by the men of clearest eyes in 
England; specially by one sane and wise critic of life who was 
separated by the whole diameter of human thought from Newman s 
political and ecclesiastical views, but had long had his finger upon 
the pulse of England and was grateful for every spiritual benefaction 
to her stubborn race. " There are deaths yet to come," wrote the 
late Richard Holt Hutton in the Spectator when Newman died, 
" which will agitate the English world more than Cardinal Newman s ; 
but there has been none, and will be none, so far as I know, that will 
leave the world that really knew him with so keen a sense of depriva 
tion, of a white star extinguished, of a sign vanished, of an age impov 
erished, of a grace withdrawn. To many, and to many who are not 
Eoman Catholics, it will seem the nearest approach in their own 
experience to what the death of the Apostle John must have been 
to the Church of the Fathers, when the closing words of his epistle, 
1 Little children, keep yourselves from idols/ were still ringing in 
their ears. . . . Though he served and was at rest, the mere 
knowledge that he was living in the quiet Oratory at Edgbaston 
helped men to realise that the spiritual world is even more real than 
the material world, and that in that lonely, austere, and yet gracious 
figure, God had made a sign to Great Britain that the great purpose 
of life is a purpose to which this life hardly more than introduces us." 

But it is best of all through his own words that we shall under 
stand him. The remarkable description of his own " special Father 
and Patron," St. Philip Neri, with which he brings to a close his 
Lectures upon the Idea of a University, is really a revelation of 
himself. " He lived " so the great words run " in an age as traitor 
ous to the interests of Catholicism as any that preceded it, or can 
follow it. He lived at a time when pride mounted high, and the 
senses held rule; a time when kings and nobles never had more of 

19 



THE STUDY OF NATURE 

state and homage, and never less of personal responsibility and peril ; 
when mediaeval winter was receding, and the summer sun of civilisa 
tion was bringing into leaf and flower a thousand forms of luxurious 
enjoyment; when a new world of thought and beauty had opened 
upon the human mind, in the discovery of the treasures of classic 
literature and art. He saw the great and gifted, dazzled by the 
Enchantress, and drinking in the magic of her song ; he saw the high 
and wise, the student and the artist, painting, and poetry, and sculp 
ture, and music, and architecture, drawn within her range, and 
circling round the abyss : he saw heathen forms mounting thence, 
and forming in the thick air : all this he saw, and he perceived that 
the mischief was to be met, not with argument, not with science, not 
with protests and warnings, not by the recluse or the preacher, but 
by means of the great counter-fascination of purity and truth. 
And so he contemplated as the idea of his mission, not 
the propagation of the faith, nor the exposition of doctrine, nor the 
catechetical schools; whatever was exact and systematic pleased him 
not; he put from him monastic rule and authoritative speech, as 
David refused the armour of his king. No; he would be but an 
ordinary individual priest as others: and his weapons should be but 
unaffected humility and unpretending love. All he did was to be done 
by the light, and fervour, and convincing eloquence of his personal 
character and his easy conversation. He came to the Eternal City 
and he sat himself down there, and his home and his family gradually 
grew up around him, by the spontaneous accession of materials from 
without. He did not so much seek his own as draw them to him. 
He sat in his small room, and they in their gay worldly dresses, the 
rich and the well-born, as well as the simple and the illiterate, crowded 
into it. In the mid-heats of summer, in the frosts of winter, still 
was he in that low and narrow cell at San Girolamo, reading the 
hearts of those who came to him, and curing their souls maladies 
by the very touch of his hand. It was a vision of the Magi wor 
shipping the infant Saviour, so pure and innocent, so sweet and 
beautiful was he; and so loyal and so dear to the gracious Virgin 
Mother. And they who came remained gazing and listening, till at 
length, first one and then another threw off their bravery, and took 

20 



AND THE VISION OF GOD 

his poor cassock and girdle instead : or, if they kept it, it was to put 
haircloth under it, or to take on them a rule of life, while to the world 
they looked as before." 

Such was St. Philip; and such, with a touch of lofty personal 
distinction unknown to Philip, was Cardinal Newman. But such 
character and such influence come to no man by accident. Newman 
in the Oratory was what he was, because of what his own inner heart 
had been while he was still an Anglican. And what that was we 
have earlier words of his own to show us. In his last days as an 
Anglican, when the pain was heavy upon him of his approaching 
separation from the friends of his youth and from the Church which 
he loved and from the University which had been his home, 1 the 
words, " Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the 
evening," seem to have been often in his mind. Twice he preached 
from them; and each sermon was a revelation of the inner and 
supreme principle of his own life. 

" Blessed are they, y: so ran the conclusion of the first 
" ( Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have 
right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the 
city/ Blessed will they be then, and only they, who with the 
Apostle have ever had on their lips and in their hearts the question, 
Lord, what wilt thou have me to do ? whose soul hath broken out 
for the very fervent desire that it hath alway unto His judgments ; 
who have made haste and prolonged not the time to keep His com 
mandments ; who have not waited to be hired, nor run uncertainly, 
nor beaten the air, nor taken darkness for light and light for darkness, 
nor contented themselves with knowing what is right, nor taken com 
fort in feeling what is good, nor prided themselves in their privileges, 
but set themselves vigorously to do God s will. 

" Let us turn from shadows of all kinds shadows of sense, or 
shadows of argument and disputation, or shadows addressed to our 
imagination and tastes. Let us attempt, through God s grace, to 
advance and sanctify the inner man. We cannot be wrong here. 
Whatever is right, whatever is wrong, in this perplexing world, we 

i " Trinity had ne ver been unkind to me. There used to be much snap-dragon growing 
on the walls opposite my freshman s rooms there,and I had for years taken it as the emblem 
of my own perpetual residence even unto death in my University." A pologia, p. 237. 

- 21 



THE STUDY OF NATUKE 

must be right in doing justly, in loving mercy, in walking humbly 
with our God/ in denying our wills, in ruling our tongues, in soften 
ing and sweetening our tempers, in mortifying our lusts ; in learning 
patience, meekness, purity, forgiveness of injuries and continuance 
in well-doing." 

The second was preached just after his resignation of the living 
of St. Mary s. He himself, and what life meant for him both stand 
revealed in the form which his sorrow took as he uttered what was 
really his farewell to all that had been dear to him upon the earth ; to 
the Church of England, to his University, to his friends. " mother 
of saints ! school of the wise ! nurse of the heroic ! of whom 
went forth, in whom have dwelt, memorable names of old, to spread 
the truth abroad, or to cherish and illustrate it at home ! thou 
from whom surrounding nations lit their lamps ! virgin of Israel ! 
wherefore dost thou now sit on the ground and keep silence, like one 
of the foolish women who were without oil on the coming of the 
Bridegroom? Where is now the ruler in Sion, and the doctor in the 
temple, and the ascetic on Carmel, and the herald in the wilderness, 
and the preacher in the market-place? ... my mother, 
whence is this unto thee, that thou hast good things poured upon 
thee and canst not keep them, and bearest children, yet darest not 
own them? Why hast thou not the skill to use their services, nor 
the heart to rejoice in their love ? How is it that whatever is generous 
in purpose, and tender or deep in devotion, thy flower and thy 
promise, falls from thy bosom and finds no home within thine arms? 
Who hath put this note upon thee to have a miscarrying womb and 
dry breasts/ to be strange unto thine own flesh, and thine eye cruel 
towards thy little ones ? Thine own offspring, the fruit of thy womb, 
who would toil for thee, thou dost gaze upon with fear as though a 
portent, or thou dost loathe as an offence at best thou dost but 
endure, as if they had no claim but on thy patience, self-possession, 
and vigilance, to be rid of them as easily as thou mayst. Thou makest 
them ( stand all the day idle as the very condition of thy bearing 
with them; or thou biddest them to be gone where they will be more 
welcome; or thou sellest them for nought to the stranger that passes 
by. ... 

22 



AND THE VISION OF GOD 

" And, my brethren, kind and affectionate hearts, loving 
friends, should you know any one whose lot it has been, by writing 
or by word of mouth, in some degree to help you thus to act; if he 
has ever told you what you knew about yourselves or what you did 
not know; has read to you your wants or feelings, and comforted 
you by the very reading; has made you feel that there was a higher 
life than this daily one, and a brighter world than that you see; or 
encouraged you, or sobered you, or opened a way to the inquiring, 
or soothed the perplexed; if what he has said or done has ever made 
you take interest in him, and feel well inclined towards him; 
remember such a one in time to come, though you hear him not, and 
pray for him, that in all things he may know God s will, and at all 
times he may be ready to fulfil it." 

A little earlier than Newman in the great and troubled days, 
fateful for the whole of humanity, which ushered in the century to 
which Newman belonged there had stood among the leaders of 
England another man, whose life moved in another air than 
Newman s, but in that other air had followed a strangely parallel 
course. In early manhood he too had undergone a struggle that 
shook him to the centre of his being, but at the same time unchained 
and aroused the mighty powers that were sleeping in him a struggle 
in which he had mingled his fate with causes and institutions 
that go beyond the individual and take in the world. And when his 
soul had found its peace, he too had taken up his dwelling apart 
from the noises of the world ; not, however, in a cloistral society, but 
in the company of still lakes and whispering woodland and solemn 
mountains, above him the alternate gloom and glory of the English 
sky and round about him the dalesmen s homes and the dalesmen s 
life. He too, through quiet years, had held like Newman high 
counsel with his own soul and had lifted up his heart to the powers 
that inhabit eternity ; nay, in this he had gone beyond Newman ; for 
he held counsel with nature also, and made his communion with her 
a means toward or rather, a form of communion with the eternal. 
And he too had spoken to the men of his generation; had spoken 
with a voice that in authority, in loftiness, in austerity, was equal to 



THE STUDY OF NATUKE 

Newman s own, and far surpassed Newman s in the catholicity of 
elementary and simple human interest, and in the timeless and ageless 
power of beauty. True, if you had met him face to face he would 
not have made such conquest of you as Newman habitually made 
of all who met him unless, indeed, you were one of the few that 
without allurement of external charm can be won to a mighty spirit 
by its own native greatness. Newman s unfailing distinction, his 
luminous ease, his unerring sense of fitness, his refined and winning 
charm, his personal attractiveness, the splendour of his gentleness 
and the splendour of his austerity what trace of these was there, or 
what equivalent for them, in that conversation which (save with 
Coleridge and one or two others) was no medium of expression either 
for the peace or for the passion of the intense and brooding soul of 
Wordsworth ? And yet this gaunt and rugged man, with the " severe, 
worn pressure of thought about his temples, a fire in his eye (as if 
he sa"w something in objects more than the outward appearance), an 
intense, high, narrow forehead, a Eoman nose, cheeks furrowed by 
strong purpose and feeling " this gaunt and rugged man is perhaps 
the greatest name in the spiritual history of the English race in the 
nineteenth century. He did that supreme thing which from the 
beginning of the world until now few men have done : he looked upon 
i the world and upon the life of man with absolute directness and 
clearness of gaze. The abstractness of the special sciences, the pas 
sions of sectarian theology, the limitations which the spirit of the 
time is able to force upon men it was as if these things simply were 
not, when Wordsworth, strong in his solitude at the heart of things, 
and immovable by the anger of his age, turned his eyes upon man, and 
upon man s soul, and upon the facts and conditions of human life, 
and expressed that which he saw in a poetry which fulfilled his own 
great and most accurate definition and was "the breath and finer 
spirit of all knowledge the impassioned expression which is in the 
countenance of all Science." 

For Wordsworth s attempt was something quite other than to 
dream about nature, and to weave beautiful fancies around certain 
of its more winning aspects, and in those dreams and fancies to find 
a refuge from life or a solace for life. He sought, in the most 

24 



AND THE VISION OF GOD 

genuine sense of the term, to know nature; sought to penetrate to 
its real character and to grasp its ultimate meaning. This he sought 
to do by long watching and resolute thought; by sympathetic vision; 
by that contemplation which is a " revealing agency " ;* by a com 
munion with nature which was like the friendship of a human heart 
with a human heart or the companionship of a spirit with a spirit. 
With a combination of meditation and perception, unparalleled in 
the history of human insight save by Plato meditation resolute to 
the point of stubbornness in its perseverance and laboriousness, per 
ception that with the unclouded directness of intuition penetrated to 
the inner nature of its object he looked upon nature and looked 
upon life ; and, looking, saw God in man, and saw nature as the form 
of a spirit kindred in character to the spirit which is man, and 
friendly to man in the great purposes of his life. And so, in Words 
worth s eyes, man s life, in its ordinary and daily course, in its 
elemental duties and charities and delights, in its natural relation 
ships and natural surroundings, took on beauty and sacredness: 
took on the tenderest beauty and the deepest sacredness that God 
can give or the universe contain. And this beauty and sacredness 
of the ordinary life, of the ordinary duties and charities of life, of 
the ordinary natural surroundings of life, Wordsworth felt not merely 
for himself. He was able to make others feel it. He had (though 
not continuously, nor without startling variations in degree) that 
gift which to such high and severe natures is not always given the 
gift of artistic beauty, at times in its absolutely highest order of 
elementary tenderness and elementary simplicity. So that he was 
able to cast about our ordinary life, and about the nature which is 
its earthly home, the supreme consecration of poetic light. And this 
in a way peculiarly his own: not with that lavish prodigality of the 
poetic imagination which at one stroke puts the object that it beau 
tifies out of touch with our ordinary thought and beyond the horizon 
of our daily life ; but with a " stern spiritual frugality " 2 which at 

1 F. W. H. Myers, Wordsworth, p. 131. Compare the whole chapter, pp. 124-153 ; and 
chapters IV. -VI. in Mr. Walter Raleigh s admirable volume (Wordsworth : London, 1903). 

2 R. H. Hutton, Literary Essays (Macmillan, 1896), p. 91. 

25 



THE STUDY OF NATURE 

once beautifies and sanctifies its object, and yet leaves that object 
a genuine and integral part of our human life upon the human earth. 1 

These two men stand, then, each in his own way, as the repre 
sentatives of one great principle that a divine presence is the reality 
of the world, and that the consciousness of that presence is the 
supreme illumination for a man s soul. 

"Each in his own way," I have said. And indeed, while that 
truth toward which they turn is one, no two men upon the earth 
could well be more different in the way in which they apprehend it, 
or in the quarters from which they turn their faces toward it. For 
the ways by which the soul enters into union with greater or with 
ultimate truth are many; and among those many ways are two which 
stand radically opposed. If, for instance, you would be face to face 
with the heavenly splendour of the dawn, you may go out into the 
free fields, where all the dewdrops are lustrous for very purity and 
in the absolute stillness of early morning the great trees stand in 
their solitary and monumental peace unroused to the tumult of the 
day. There you may take your stand, and there you may front the 
heavenly glory, and there, looking upon it, you may know yourself 
for a part of it, and may recognise that a city greater than Siena is 
opening to you her heart and in speech not alien to your own is 
declaring to you once more your citizenship in her. That you may 
do. But you may do something very different. You may have 
come to distrust yourself utterly and hopelessly; perhaps because 
others taught you that it is right to do so; perhaps because of long 
pain and long failure. And hence you may never have dared or 
never have learned to go about in the world with the open heart and 
the seeing eye and the undaunted step of a son in his father s house. 
Bather you have withdrawn from the world and have submitted 
yourself to an authority greater than yourself; and when morning 

i Wordsworth s poetry was "not properly an augury, but an interpretation. It led 
man up to the recognition of his own greatness, as universalised by communion with 
nature and intercourse with his kind. It was conversant, not with subtleties of the 
imagination, but with the great, the obvious, the habitual, with the common earth, the 
universal sky, the waters rolling evermore, the abiding social powers that lift man out of 
his animal self, and render him magnanimous to correspond with heaven ; with these 
restored to the ancient glory that belongs to them in their intelligible relations, but from 
which the prone and poring gaze of a false philosophy had during a century of conceit 
been diverted." (T. H. Green, Works, Vol. III., p. 120.) 

26 



AND THE VISION OF GOD 

comes it is only through the gateway or the deep window of some 
monastic enclosure that you can turn your eyes eastward. And the 
unyielding outline of that cloistral stone it is that then determines 
and defines what part of that heavenly glory, and how much of it, you 
shall see. 

The former way of viewing the nature which is in man and in the 
material order was Wordsworth s. That, in fact, to the man who 
looks with intelligent eyes upon the spiritual history of mankind, is 
what the name "Wordsworth" stands for. From the beginning 
until now, he is the supreme instance of it among the races that 
speak English; if not among all the races of the world. But 
Newman s method was the other. Himself as an individual he had 
distrusted; especially had distrusted the power of his own individual 
intellect to reach ultimate truth. And yet there was in him an 
imperious demand for the very truth which he distrusted his own 
power of attaining, and for the guidance which such truth alone can 
give to life. From the beginning it had been his prayer and his 
passionate desire that his soul might be with the saints ; not standing 
alone in mere individuality, nor left to its own caprices and mistakes, 
nor wasted in some blind alley of the world s affairs, nor lost in some 
wandering by-path of mistaken thoughts; but with the saints with 
the men by whose labours the central path in the history of man has 
been driven through the midst of the years. And slowly there had 
dawned upon him that mighty vision which to such a man has the 
power of absolute compulsion. An institution august with solem 
nities of ancient prayer, august with a thousand sanctities and a 
thousand heroic memories, august with mighty names innumerable 
and mighty deeds, the home of saints and the guardian of belief, 
drew him to herself and subdued to herself all his heart and made 
him in humility and obedience her son. To her, with a sense of 
gladness and of rest, he gave himself and gave the keeping of his 
life. And so he found rest; and having found rest was able to do, 
more positively and constructively than before, the work which it lay 
in him to do for the men of his day. 

But the price was a dear one ; and it was paid still more by those 
who sat at his feet than by himself. For in precisely that side of 

27 



THE STUDY OF NATUKE 

his work which most deeply concerned the men of England, his true 
strength was veiled. The things that he himself had learned so 
thoroughly, and that all men need to learn things universal, essen 
tial, elemental, catholic he preferred to base upon the authority of an 
earthly dogma and an earthly institution ; and to mingle with them, in 
obedience to that same authority, things not universal, not essential, 
not elemental, and therefore not catholic. So that those who hear 
him have always to separate that in his words which belongs to essen 
tial eternity from that which belongs to the party interest of a magnifi 
cent but sectarian priesthood. 

And to this so radical difference between the two men in their 
method of apprehending truth, there corresponded a difference in 
their manner of expressing it. Wordsworth, having " seen into 
the life of things " by that sort of companionship with them which 
passes over into a comprehension of their inner and ultimate reality, 
was, in his expression of what he had thus seen, a poet. And that 
in the true and most strict sense of the word. He was not a man 
who wrought out a system of philosophy or of theology, and then 
gave to it an alien garb of more or less successful rhythmic utterance. 
He was not even a man who lived to use Mr. Stopford Brooke s 
fine metaphor 1 in that " mingled region " of poetry where " its 
waves and currents near the coast receive the deep streams of religious 
and philosophic thought." His voyage and his home were upon its 
" central and lonely deep," where poetry is poetry and nothing else. 
Hence when Wordsworth is here spoken of as among the greatest 
of the spiritual leaders of the English race, the Wordsworth that is 
meant is Wordsworth the poet. He was a captain of the spirit, was 
among the greatest of all captains of the spirit, because he exercised, 
and in exercising, supremely a certain supreme function the function 
of the sacred poet. But Newman, meeting God in the inner heart, 
was as characteristically and as inevitably a prophet, in the strictest 
sense of that great word. To impress I had almost said, to force 
his consciousness of a divine presence and a divine commandment 
upon the men of his generation, making no slightest particle of con 
cession either to their practical or to their theoretical materialism, 

i Hibbert Journal, No. 1 (October, 1902), p. 62. 
28 



AND THE VISION OF GOD 

was the supreme business of his life. Kesolutely he set the whole 
of life in the light of ultimate eternity. Unflinchingly he insisted 
that every interest, every ambition, every affection, every dominant 
fashion and accepted tendency, should answer at that bar for its life. 
Authoritatively, uncompromisingly, in season and out of season, that 
voice and that pen, and, above all, that solitary and devoted life, 
declared that we men are living our lives in a divine presence; and 
that that divine presence is the one essential reality with which in our 
lives we have to do, and obedience to its purpose and commandment 
the one business of life which can claim in any sense to be of 
importance. 

Different enough, then, the two men were: different in individual 
habit and personal presence; different in the region and climate of 
their minds ; different in their ways, as of approaching and appre 
hending, so also of expressing, truth. But here our main concern 
is not with these differences but with that in which they agreed; 
with their consciousness of a divine presence and of that presence 
as the ultimate reality of the world and of our life. 

II. 

Once, among the men from whom we moderns draw our blood and 
our speech, and in whose places we now stand, such a consciousness, 
under the more limited of the two forms just described, dominated life. 
A "consciousness of a divine presence and of that presence as the 
ultimate reality of the world and of our life," and a consequent con 
sciousness of the supremacy of spiritual interests, were central and 
determinative among the forces that made the mediasval world what 
it was. So far as the religious spirit of their time lived in them, 
mediaeval men habitually looked upon themselves as members of an 
eternal order and citizens of an eternal kingdom. They worked " as 
seeing One who is invisible," and as "not being disobedient to a 
heavenly vision." They remembered that in order to live we must 
die, and that in every department of life the divine ordinance is the 
cross with its principle of self-renunciation and of living " not to be 

29 



THE STUDY OF NATUKE 

ministered unto, but to minister." They lived " under the power of 
the world to come;" and if this present world showed itself to their 
understanding as the foe of that world, they did not shrink from the 
separation, but made strong their souls, and denied the present world 
and all its love, and walked in it as strangers and pilgrims. This 
was in their hearts ; and in the great confession of their day, the book 
De Imitatione Christi, it spoke itself into words for ever; but it 
was no mere maxim for meditation and confession it was a genuine 
principle of unity of life. For that generation as truly as any other 
" went forth unto its work and to its labour until the evening " : 
nay, more truly, for the middle age stands as in all the history of the 
world pre-eminently the age of great workmen ; not of great machines, 
nor of great financial combinations standing over against sullen and 
reluctant labourers, but of great workmen and of the delight in 
craftsmanship which great workmen can feel. And that which was 
in their hearts and in their confession that habitual remembrance 
of God and craving to be at one with Him, that incessant and 
insistent vision of a world to come and of a divine order which 
earthly eyes cannot apprehend but which is manifest in the cross 
was also in their action and achievement. They worked greatly in 
the field of the intellect; and the effort was to gather all science 
into one thoroughly-articulated knowledge of God, which in part 
should illuminate, but still more should rebuke, the ways of this 
present world. They worked with equal greatness in the field of art; 
and there too though it is specially in art that the human soul 
rejoices in its own powers and in the exercise of them for their own 
sake they were under the banner of the world to come. For when 
they painted, it was the judgment, the heaven, the hell, which give to 
this life its awful significance; or it was the saints in their conflict 
with the world; or our Lord submitting Himself to the helplessness 
of infancy, or undergoing the death of the cross, or rising in that 
resurrection which showed another world triumphant over the ways 
of this. Or when they built and- they were for the sustained 
spiritual passion that animated their work the greatest builders in 
the history of the world their building culminated in houses 
of prayer which lift themselves almost out of connexion with the 

30 



AND THE VISION OF GOD 

earth and express in the most stately of all man s languages the 
majesty of heavenly things and the upward movement of the soul 
in prayer toward that majesty. Even when they sang, romance and 
folk-song the delight of the young in earthly love, and the illumina 
tion of this present life by the na ive imagination were felt to stand 
half-unconsecrated without the gate, while within the singing was 
that of men whose vigil was for another country and whose love was 
set upon a farther shore. And as were the works so were the men. 
If a man arose, at once to embody the ideals of the age and to dom 
inate its higher imagination, it was Bernard controlling Europe from 
that lowly cell where as the proper business of his life he sought the 
mystic vision of God; or it was Francis, with his humility, his self- 
denial, his pity and tenderness and loving ministration to the poor, 
his canticle of praise to our Lord for " our sister, the death of the 
body " and for " all those who forgive one another for His love s 
sake." Pilgrims of eternity, encamped for one troubled night upon 
this shore such the men over whom the spirit of that age had power 
felt themselves to be. The " lyrical cry " of their life was that of 
Israel ; but the cry wrung from solitary hearts in Israel by the afflic 
tions of the righteous and the measureless prosperity of the wicked 
and the desperation and disaster of Israel s struggle for racial exist 
ence, had become in them a settled conviction and an habitual temper : 

Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, 

And afterward receive me to glory. 

Whom have I in heaven but thee ? 

And there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. 

My flesh and my heart faileth : 

But God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever. 

God was the strength of their heart; God and the world to come 
were the realities that filled their thought. And precisely from this 
arose what we have just had to see : though the world was not their 
home, yet, so far as they looked upon it at all, they were worthy 
workmen in its affairs. The fact that they viewed the world from a 
point high above it, gave them alike in thought and in action a 
double strength: gave them, first, the loftiness of mind which arises 
out of a great devotion and the devotion of the unworldly to their 

31 



THE STUDY OF NATUKE 

causes is, as the inner soul of action, a power unspeakably greater 
than ambition; gave them, secondly, the spirit of comprehensive 
unity. Not only did they seek the unity, under a divine idea, of the 
intellectual outlook upon life; they sought a still greater goal the 
unity, in a divine order, of the social organisation of life. The con 
scious or unconscious aspiration after that twofold unity was, to their 
mind its inner power, to their society the highest of its organising 
principles. 

In this way a way narrow but profound and masterful a con 
sciousness of the supremacy of the spirit and of spiritual interests 
once dominated life. And of the men who bore that consciousness 
we are the children; we stand in the succession of their blood and of 
their labour. But we view the world and live our life in a temper 
radically different from theirs. The men amongst us who view life 
in a way similar to theirs, or in a way kindred to theirs but broader, 
are not the representative men, the men whose spirit is an expression 
and epitome of a temper which clearly or unclearly is common to us 
all the men who are to our day what Bernard or Francis was to 
his. It is true (now that the immediate personal conflicts are over) 
that we are very willing to listen to such men as Newman ; still more 
willing to listen to such men as Wordsworth. Indeed we listen to 
them with an urbanity, a completeness of intellectual toleration, which 
in mediaeval days one at least of them would have looked for in vain. 
We give them, in fact, everything they ask except the one supreme 
thing which they demand most of all. We appreciate the excellence 
of their literary workmanship. We do justice to the height of their 
characters. We are grateful to them for the grace and the dignity 
which they have added to our life, and for the honour accruing from 
their work to the English tongue. We listen gladly to the one as the 
bearer of a poetic vision. We hearken respectfully to the other as the 
prophet of what, with the forbearing courtesy of well-bred men but 
with hearts untouched, we call mystic piety. Only let us view them 
as a specially noble sort of dreamers, weaving around the hard core 
of the actual reality of things a garment of fancy and high emotion 
which adorns and dignifies its surface but can make no claim to 

32 






AND THE VISION OF GOD 

express its true nature: then they are quite intelligible to us; 
indeed, with our sense of the bareness and hardness of our life, not 
only intelligible but very estimable. But as soon as we are told that 
their words are the plain and simple truth about our world, and about 
the meaning of our life in it, and about our actual everyday affairs; 
as soon as we are told that their valuation of the things we modern 
men are all striving for is the true valuation: at that instant we 
feel a great gulf fixed between us and them; a gulf so deep as to 
preclude either mutual understanding or mutual sympathy or a com 
mon aim in life. 

So radical is the difference in temper between us and the mediaeval 
men whose children we are. But a glance at the history which lies 
between us and them will show that the change was inevitable. For 
in their position there lay a double difficulty. They forgot certain 
great works of God which cannot be forgotten without shattering 
soon or late the man or the age or the institution that forgets them. 
First, they forgot the natural world. With all their understanding 
of the supremacy of the spirit and of spiritual interests, they did not 
understand that nature also teaches that supremacy, and is herself, 
to those who know her as she is, and are able to use her wisely, a 
means toward it. And because their position thus did injustice to 
nature and the natural order, the time came when the man of science, 
the poet, and the ordinary man, had, each in his own way, to rebel 
against it. Secondly, save to rebuke it, they almost forgot the natural 
soul of man. But that soul contains powers which soon or late must 
come to their right: powers of affection and of passion; artistic 
powers and powers of the systematic intellect; and that power of 
initiative which makes man, like the God from whom he comes, in 
his own order a creator and founder. To a few of these capacities 
of the natural soul, the mediseval system, it is true, gave magnificent 
scope specially in the art of building; but most of them it scorned 
or repressed; and, by its tendency to change faith from an energy 
of the divinely illuminated individual soul into a systematic creed 
laid down by an authoritative institution, it sinned so deeply against 
human nature as to drive men at last into the modern position that 
the only illumination worth having is that of a free man, that even 

4 33 



THE STUDY OF NATUKE 

a heavenly vision is not to be received unless it come as to a free 
spirit. 

So that the man who studies history, however much he love that 
age of great workmen and of great workmanship and of great souls 
whose citizenship was in heaven, has to insist that the age could not 
continue. And, at first sight, the student of history seems able to 
go still farther ; seems able to point out the way in which the advance 
should have been made. It should have been by growth, not by rebel 
lion and revolution. The principle should not have been thrown away 
because it had been practised too narrowly. With the great achieve 
ment of mediaeval men a complete break should not have been made. 
Their light should not have been treated as though it were merely and 
simply darkness; rather it should have been retained in its integrity 
but freed from its limitations. Men should live still as citizens of 
the world to come, but recognising that of the world to come the 
present world is an organic part. The divine idea should still be 
seen as the one important reality in human life; but it should be 
remembered that the stage in the realisation of that idea at which we 
men can directly and sincerely labour, is the one found in the causes 
and activities which make up the life of a normal man in this present 
world the life of the good neighbour, good citizen, good churchman. 
Or, to put all this in one word, the true way of advance from the 
mediaeval position was to pass from the type of insight and of 
spiritual consciousness represented in modern form by Newman to 
that represented by Wordsworth. 

But whatever the reason be, the history of the universe so far, 
at any rate, as the history of man on this earth is a part of it and 
an index to its nature does not go on by any such direct and easy 
method. The God from whom we come shows Himself in His work 
a Lord of Hosts. He develops the powers of His creatures and the 
life of His universe by calling forth the mighty opposites that He has 
implanted in the natures of things, so that each develops its truth 
and its power against the other, until at last the very stress and pain 
of the conflict lead men to that still wider truth in which justice is 
done to the incomplete truth which each side had and was developing. 
Fortunately or unfortunately, it is as true in the kingdom of the 

34 



AND THE VISION OF GOD 

spirit as it is in the physical order that plain daylight is a thing 
most complex. All the great kinds of light (if one may so speak) 
have to be discovered and set in their places, by hard labour some 
times by hard fighting and many wounds and wanderings before 
that day can come in which all the types of light will blend in the 
illumination which alone in the full sense of the word can be called 
truth. 

And so it was that the spiritual splendour which in the mediaeval 
dawn of our history gleamed through cloud and storm and over the 
brute earth, was not, in the direct fashion mentioned an instant ago, 
to deepen into a more inclusive day. Age after age was to come, each 
in its own way a very antithesis to the mediaeval. First came the 
Renaissance. Men flung themselves with absolute delight upon the 
resources of this present life, and for the first time after many cen 
turies lived as masters and lords of this present world. New worlds 
they discovered in themselves; new worlds across the sea; and in the 
products of ancient culture, the most alluring of all their new worlds. 
They loved the world, and the sorrow in their words was because 
upon all the objects of their delight they found it written that the 
world and the fashion of it pass away. Augustine s mourning 
was that he had lived in the things of the world so long and had 
found God so late : " I have loved Thee late, Thou Beauty so old 
and so new; I have loved Thee late!" But the deep undernote of 
lament in the greater Renaissance writings was because the glorious 
children of the earth, in the midst of their life found themselves to 
be in death. And yet their love of the world was no ignoble passion ; 
their delight in the things of the world had in it such a magnificence 
of mind that it was a religion rather than a slavery; and to-day, it 
is the better men and not the worse who in hidden places of their 
souls have still the banner of the Renaissance flying. But already, 
unknown to the men of the Renaissance, profounder and more terrific 
forces than their view of life comprehended, were " toiling in the 
gloom," and soon throughout Europe, first in religion and then in 
political affairs, the trumpets were calling to war. In the end that 
war exhausted or destroyed nearly all that was noble in the forces 
which had given rise to it, and left for the close of the seventeenth 

35 



THE STUDY OF NATURE 

century and the earlier part of the eighteenth, a world degraded and 
desolate, a world that slowly regained the solid comforts of life, and 
acquired a certain hard and polished culture, but in which, probably 
to a greater extent than in any other Western century since Eome fell, 
the visible and established elements of society, churches and theo 
logians, rulers and ruled, forgot God. And then came our own day. 
It dawned at Paris; dawned in blood, and with mighty passions- 
passions social and political and one might almost say religious, 
which spread their energy throughout the world; but it proved in 
the end, and not unnaturally, to be the day of the scientific intellect. 
That intellect had long been held in check: alike in the age of 
passionate devotion to the humanities, and in the age of war, and 
in the hard age that had no place either for the enthusiasms of the 
pure intellect or for the devotion of the mind to nature. But now 
at last it came to its own; or rather, as is usual in such cases, to 
more than its own. Without the lofty Renaissance passion, without 
the special Renaissance delight in life, free also from much of the 
eighteenth-century hardness of spirit, it set itself to master the world. 
As an investigating intellect, it made itself at home with the facts 
and laws of nature ; as a contriving intelligence, it reduced the powers 
of nature to practical uses bringing in at last the day of which Bacon 
prophesied with such large magnificence of speech, but which prob 
ably he would view with a certain lordly contempt, if, with Eliza 
bethan memories, he were suddenly to come to life in it. 

Such an intervening history places more than the mere lapse of 
time between us and the mediaeval men who won from chaos, and 
established with settled forms and laws, that living and thinking 
which it is now our business to carry on. When we compare our 
mind, and the world of our life, with their world and their mind, 
we may sum up the loss and gain in two broad statements. First, 
while both in spirit and in skill of hand we are poorer workmen than 
the mediaeval men were, yet we have a mastery of this present world 
which they had not. We have explored, as they could not, the possi 
bilities of the present life, and have entered, both intellectually and 
practically, into possession of the two great kingdoms which it con 
tains on the one side, the kingdom of nature with its powers; on 

36 



AND THE VISION OF GOD 

the other, the kingdom of humane culture and of the higher passions 
and affections. Other men might use the materials which the world 
affords in building great houses of prayer to testify of another world 
and by their very majesty to shame into nothingness the vanities of 
this; we have found that those materials can be used in erecting and 
adorning mansions for the present habitation of our own souls. And, 
having such houses for our souls, we cannot regard ourselves, while 
upon the earth, as strangers and sojourners. Eather we feel ourselves 
to be citizens of no mean city; a city which we have placed on sure 
foundations by taking as the servants of our life the powers of nature, 
and as the tutors of our minds the laws of nature. 

But secondly, in this very conquest of the world we have to a 
great extent become lost in the world. We have made the earth our 
own ; but have become too much confined to it. It goes, indeed, with 
out saying, that the latter does not follow logically from the former. 
For the discovery of the greatness of the present life is absolutely 
no reason for ceasing to live the great present life under the power of 
some still greater life to come. The connexion, as already has been 
indicated, is one not of logic in the narrower sense, but of that greater 
logic which is history. The Eenaissance revolt contributed to it in 
one way; the Thirty Years War in another; the eighteenth century 
in still another. And we ourselves managed badly; we flung our 
selves so eagerly into the new fields and the new life that our hands 
became subdued to what they were working in. But here it is with 
the fact, rather than with the fault, that we are concerned. And 
the fact may be considered as moving in two spheres, a narrower and 
a wider. 

() 

The narrower sphere is that of thought. Here the new situation 
consists in a changed view of the field of knowledge. The things 
that we regard as certain the things that are the objects of reliable 
and indisputable insight are things strictly of this world. We have 
the knowledge of nature; that is assured and established science. 
Some of us feel that this assured science permits something farther; 
something which, if any one so chooses, may be called a knowledge 

37 



THE STUDY OF JSTATUKE 

of God, but would more properly be called a faith or a hope. Others 
of us believe that our science of nature does not permit such farther 
"knowledge" or "faith." But what we all seem agreed upon is 
that the two are essentially different things ; the knowledge of nature 
; , and the knowledge of God cannot be regarded as essentially akin, as 
two stages in one growing insight, or as two levels in one and the 
same structure. 

In this shattering of the former unity of science, and this limita 
tion of knowledge in the strict sense of the term to one of the frag 
ments, the leading influence has been the modern study of nature. 
But we must notice with special care how the exertion of such an 
influence has been rendered possible. It has been made possible, 
not from one side but from two : from the side of the men of natural 
science themselves; and from the side of the theological leaders of 
the church. 

First, from the side of the men of science. The movement of 
thought by which many of these passed from their knowledge of 
nature to a materialistic or agnostic view of the world has already 
been described. 1 It is sufficient here to indicate the result. This 
was the placing before modern men of a teaching about life and the 
world, which was not new, indeed, but which now took on a new power. 
For it was inculcated now by men deservedly of great influence ; men 
of wide knowledge, of disciplined mind, of undoubted honesty, the 
leaders in the most striking and most evidently successful of the 
intellectual labours of modern times. Moreover the movement of 
thought by which it was now reached (though really involving a 
great oversight) was so direct that the resultant view seemed to be 
based immediately upon established and indisputable science. That 
the physical process is continuous and its sum of energy constant; 
that it must lead our planet soon or late to a dead eternity in which 
self-conscious life can have no footing: these (so that resultant 
view may be stated) are the things that are beyond doubt, and upon 
them anything which is to be a sober and reliable wisdom for the 
conduct of life must base itself. Hence it is no longer open to us 
to regard ourselves as other than beings of the present world; nor 

1 Supra, pp. 4, 5. 



AND THE VISION OF GOD 

to regard as other than visionary any view which makes " the great 
purpose of life " to be " a purpose to which this life hardly more than 
introduces us." If you would know the true character and meaning 
and destiny of human life, there is but one way to gain the knowledge : 
you must consider the total system of which that life is a part; that 
is to say, you must consider the system of natural facts, out of which 
it arises and in which it is lived. If you ask : But was it not those 
very facts that Wordsworth considered? the answer comes in very 
direct words : "His views were a poet s fancies ; fancies clad in 
beauty, but none the less fancies. And the dreams of a poet, or the 
visions of hearts that cling to life and to love, cannot take precedence 
of established and disinterested knowledge. Such knowledge it is 
that we have in the sciences of nature, and it affords no ground for 
visions and hopes that go beyond this present life. Modern science, 
in one word, has shattered old religion." 

But as was indicated above, the fact that the modern scientific * 
movement has contributed to the materialisation of thought and of 
life has been^made possible, not only from the side of the men of 
science, but also from the side of the theological leaders of the church. 
And the latter is the greater and the sadder story. Theology, upon 
the older conception of it, included all knowledge. It meant the 
whole of science brought to the unity of a supreme and ultimate 
principle; brought to unity in and as a knowledge of God. Hence 
the theologians were bound by their own conception of their task 
to be catholic-minded, to be hospitable to all the orders of science. 
The notion of theology as a single special science standing among 
the other special sciences, and at war with some of them, was a 
notion which if they could have formed it they would have rejected 
as monstrous. On the contrary, it was only by taking all the sciences 
as their " parish," and considering each as part of the knowledge of 
God, that they could fulfil their function. Hence inevitable as was 
their failure to complete their science they were qualified by the very 
nature of their attempt to perform one great service for humanity. 
If there came an intellectual movement whether the recovery of 
Aristotelian treatises or the founding of new sciences bringing with 
it a body of knowledge new but convincing to tfye age, they, as theo- 

39 



THE STUDY OF NATURE 

logians, were the men at once obliged and qualified to receive it, to 
interpret it, and to set it in its place in the one knowledge of God. 

It was precisely such a work of interpretation that the modern 
world needed from its theologians. There had come a great, a trium 
phantly successful, scientific movement, giving us a better acquaint 
ance than ever before with that work of God which is the natural 
world. The duty of theology was to receive with catholicity of mind 
that new body of science, to penetrate to its real significance, and so 
to give it its place in the one body of man s knowledge of God. To 
have received in that way the sciences of nature, to have viewed sub 
specie aeternitatis their work, and so to have given to them their 
" divine interpretation " this, and this alone, would have given us 
what we needed. For what we needed was not polemic, but a point 
of view from which we could look upon both sides of the conflict, and 
see into the ultimate harmony in one rational world of the great 
truths which seemed to have come from radically different worlds and 
to be in death-struggle with each other. 

That we needed; and that the theology of Albert or of Thomas, 
recognising its high prerogative of being the guide of the human race 
in those spiritual crises which the revolutions of time bring forth, 
would have striven with all its might to give. But the greater prin 
ciples and greater procedures of those masters had long ceased to 
obtain; their conception of theology, with its demand for a compre 
hensive view of the world and consequently for a catholic attitude 
toward all sciences that deal with the world, had long been forgotten ; 
or if remembered, was remembered with grave dislike. " Systematic 
theology/ as it was when the minds were being formed of those who 
are now doing the world s work, would have been remarkable to St. 
Thomas chiefly for its limitations, for its absent problems and absent 
provinces; he would have shuddered alike ^ at the narrowness of its 
scope and at its dread of the greater enginery of the intellect. It is 
impossible, indeed, to enter here into anyTengt^y comparison of the 
new conception and place of theology with the old. But the essential 
nature of the difference may be very briefly indicated : 

Just as, upon the highest conception of the matter, religion arises 
from the practical passion after God, so theology arises from the 

40 






AND THE VISION OF GOD 

intellectual passion after God. But the knowledge of God means all 
knowledge; to know God means also to know the world; unless you 
are a Mystic, there is no such thing for you as a knowledge of God 
which is not also science of the world. And if you urge that with 
you theology is less proud, and renounces so high an endeavour ; that 
the one thing you are intent upon is the salvation of the soul; that 
your one function as a theologian is to cast intellectual light upon 
the course of that salvation and thus, even though it be indirectly, 
to assist in it : your new definition of your science still does not free 
you from the obligation to walk in its greater way. For what is the 
salvation of the soul ? That question you can answer only by raising 
another: What is the soul? What the salvation of the soul is, 
depends on what the soul itself is; unless you know what the soul is, 
you do not know either what its salvation properly consists in, or how 
wide the scope of that salvation is. But if you would know what 
the soul is, you are brought by a double road to a demand for the 
knowledge of God. First, to know what the soul is, you must 
know the true nature of the world, of which the soul is a part, and 
in whose order and conditions the soul lives its life and has its place 
to fill ; and thus to know the world you must know God whose char 
acter is the ultimate character of the world, and whose purpose is 
the ultimate law of its order. Secondly, and directly, if you would 
know what the soul is, you must apprehend the nature of its source, 
that is, of God, and the nature of the end for which He made it, the 
attaining of which is its salvation. So that theology, in order to be 
a wisdom of salvation, must be a wisdom of the soul, a wisdom of the 
world, a wisdom of God. And the scientific or constructive order of 
these should be noted. Whether the first and impelling interest of 
the theologian is in the soul or in God, that which is first in the order 
of scientific construction is God. In anything which is to be a 
"system" of theology, the knowledge of God that is to say, the 
theistic view of the world must stand as the prius of the knowledge 
of salvation. Unless theology is to be blind, unless it is to build its 
upper structure without giving any attention to its foundations, it 
must begin by working out, with all the completeness possible to such 
an intellect as man s, the theistic view of the world; and in its sub- 

41 



THE STUDY OF NATUKE 

sequent work, soteriology or eschatology, it must take up no positions 
inconsistent with the principles of that theistic view. Whichever 
interest, then, sets us upon the work of theology, with whichever con 
ception of it we approach it, we are brought, first or last, to the fact 
that, in order to discharge any of its functions, it must be that highest 
and final science which is at once a wisdom of God and of the world 
of God as realising His purpose in and through the history of the 
world; of the world as at once the scene and the process of a divine 
activity. 

It is in this regard that theology upon the medieval conception 
of it, and modern professional theology, are essentially diverse. The 
view which mediaeval theologians took of their work approximated 
to that just described. Hence they were profoundly in earnest about 
the theistic view of the world. They may not have succeeded per 
haps no man can succeed in working out such a view consistently; 
but at any rate the attempt was made as the first and fundamental 
labour of theology, and to it was devoted the whole energy of one of 
the greatest of intellectual generations. By one and the same inten 
tion their theology was a wisdom of God and a wisdom of the universe. 
But modern systematic theology, at the time when the sciences of 
nature were beginning to dominate the intellectual field, was dis 
tinguished by nothing more than by a great timidity about the theistic 
view of the world; nothing was farther from its thoughts than to be 
a wisdom of the universe. How anything so contrary to nature as 
this for theology afraid of theism is like mathematics afraid of being 
mathematical could come to be, is a long story the main outlines 
of which are easily traceable by the student but cannot except in a 
brief reference be noted here. In broad terms, the change was simply 
a part of the general and inevitable breaking up of the mediaeval 
unity of thought and life. Theology became separated, on the one 
side from metaphysic and from the metaphysical mind, on the other 
from the special sciences. And that meant that it lost from both 
sides its capacity for discharging its older function its function of 
receiving scientific knowledge and giving it its divine interpretation. 
And then too, this tendency of theology to become a smaller thing 
both in its intellectual soul and in its outward extent, was fostered 

42 



AND THE VISION OF GOD. 

by another aspect of modern life the dividedness of the church. 
Theology no longer had " centre everywhere." In some of the 
churches " systematic theology " fell into the background altogether, 
the institution preferring to stand in its own living and continuous 
strength. While, where it did survive, it was usually with an unhappy 
procedure. Instead of seeking first the knowledge of God, and then 
basing upon that its account of salvation, it came more and more to 
have as its centre of gravity, came more and more to be " built 
around," a certain forensic scheme of soteriology. That scheme, as 
a matter of historical fact, was not fairly drawn from any of the 
chief theological sources. It had almost no connexion with the actual 
mind of Jesus as shown in the Evangelia. It did no justice to St. 
Paul s great philosophy of the world and of history, which centres 
in the views (1) that the supreme principle of the order of the uni 
verse is the eternal Christ in Christ the universe consists and (2) 
that God s attitude toward man, as revealed in Christ, is one of grace/ 
not of that requirement of legal satisfaction for wrong done which is 
the exact opposite of grace. It stood at an unspeakable remove from 
St. John s view of Jesus that He is the Word in whom the character 
of the Father and His attitude toward men and the world stand 
revealed ; that, in other words, He came into the world not to change 
the Father s attitude toward men, but came because of it and to reveal 
it. Eather it had arisen under the influence of Eoman Law and of 
the Eoman legal and political mind (with Jewish law in the back 
ground), and had been fostered in the West by ideas and procedures 
belonging to the primitive jurisprudence of the Germanic peoples. 
But though so largely heathen in its origin, it had come to be regarded 
as Christian because it was so tenaciously held by Christians, and 
because it could be supported by a careful selection of passages from 
St. Paul. For the men in question, this forensic scheme of soteriology 
was theology; and anything beyond it they were inclined to dread. 
Of necessity they called themselves theists; but, while they could be 
severe upon those who were not called by that name, there was 
nothing from which they shrank with a deeper repugnance than the 
bringing out into clear light of the meaning and the implications of 
the theistic view of the world. But precisely that theistic view it was 

43 



THE STUDY OF NATURE 

which, seriously held and seriously developed, would have enabled 
them to receive the new knowledge of nature and to make it at home 
as part of the knowledge of God. For what the intelligent theist 
knows is precisely this: that just because God dwells in eternity, He 
is the informing spirit, the home and the goal, of the world that now 
is; that of Him the natural order is a visible Word, and therefore 
the study of nature the study of a part of his thought; that in the 
actual history of yesterday and to-day and to-morrow He is at work 
realising an eternal purpose, and through a thousand channels is call 
ing upon men to work along with Him; that He is the nearest of 
all things to each man s heart, seeking to win each man s heart to 
Himself and to become its supreme principle and central energy 
the Father, in a thousand ways and by a thousand appeals seeking to 
win the hearts of His prodigal children back to Himself and to 
engage them in the great works at which He Himself is working. 
Such theism, however, they could not enter upon, much less develop 
into clear articulation as a view of nature and of history. It lay too 
far from that with which their minds were filled the view of the 
universe as a court of law; of the divine administration of the uni 
verse as consisting in the transactions and expedients of such a court; 
of the death of Jesus as central in those transactions, greatest among 
those expedients. 

As was said before, the question is one of fact, not one of fault. 
Perhaps (though few nowadays care to believe it) it is well for us, 
when we study history, to carry our hearts our humanity, not our 
partisanship back with us to the bygone struggles, and mourn for 
the mistakes of the dead as for our own sins. But however that be, 
one thing is clear: we ought, in dealing with the past, to turn as 
much as possible from the easy work of fault-finding to the more 
difficult but more honourable task of seeking to trace a wisdom of the 
ages at work through all the apparent confusion and wrong. And 
this is specially important in dealing with the present point. For, 
as was noted a moment ago, the modern disintegration of theology was 
part of the general modern disintegration of the mediaeval unity of 
thought and of life. And that deep and far-reaching disintegration 
may in the end have a good result; the "hidden wisdom of the 

44 



AND THE VISION OF GOD 

world," in whose service all the generations stand even those which 
"know it not" may be, or rather must be, at work in it. Indeed, 
some at least of the signs of this have long been visible. Many of the 
sundered factors, forced to stand alone each erected into a solitary 
kingdom, and compelled to find a whole world in itself in order to 
live at all have entered into deeper possession of themselves and of 
their own resources; science, for instance, ceasing for a time to look 
upon God, has entered with a new freedom and a new fulness upon the 
mastery of nature; while literature, with new powers of sympathy 
and passion and insight, has recovered and has glorified whole regions 
of the soul that long had lain in neglect. And of this enriching and 
deepening of life in its estranged and severed aspects, the result is 
that if a new integration of thought and of life a new intellectual 
and social integration should in any future be achieved, it would 
be one vastly richer than the mediaeval. All those powers of human 
nature industrial, commercial, political, literary, scientific, humani 
tarian that have swung away from religion, will be seen to have 
swung out in a great circle which at last will bring man back, with 
wider life and larger heart, to God. Such a synthesis, indeed, does 
seem to be drawing nearer on the intellectual side ; being aided, from 
the one direction, by the Idealistic interpretation of science ; and from 
the other direction, by the historical study of the Bible a study 
which, by setting the mind of Christ in its place of supremacy, makes 
it possible for virtually every genuine power of human nature and of 
the world to reconcile itself to God and find its fitting place and its 
true being in the one world-work of God. But on the social side, if 
one confine one s self to actual achievement as distinct from beliefs 
and ideals, one has to say that the struggle is as yet more in evidence 
than the synthesis; in some regards, indeed, though happily not in 
all, the gulfs between class and class, interest and interest, seem, if 
possible, to be growing deeper. 

But we must return to the special point here in question. Whether 
the fact be regarded with hope and therefore resolutely accepted and 
even welcomed, or whether it be judged with grief and anger, the fact 
itself remains that when, through the triumphant advance of the 
scientific point of view, the time of intellectual crisis came to modern 

45 



THE STUDY OF NATUKE 

men, the theologians had neither the requisite equipment of ideas, nor 
the requisite intellectual vision of God, to enable them to perform the 
function which at such a time they owe the world. It was not in 
them to receive the modern scientific movement, to view its results 
sub specie quadam aeternitatis, and thus to give them, so far as is 
possible to the human intellect, their " divine interpretation." In 
this situation some of us were able to trust stubbornly to our own 
hearts and to the religion from which our fathers had drawn their 
heroic strength; and so were able to steer straight on through the 
intellectual chaos. Others of us, who could not rest in a division of 
the heart from the intelligence, obeyed an inward call and made a 
journey perilous and beneficent, as all true journeys are to far-off 
schools; and there; from the Kantians or from Plato, gained the 
insights to which those who taught us with authority ought to have 
brought us. But those are exceptional cases. The important thing 
is to notice the effect upon the general modern mind. It came to 
this: that when men of science, whose, work compelled us to respect 
them, drew from their indisputable acquaintance with nature the con 
clusion that the religious view of man and of life and of the world could 
no longer stand, we were in a position where we could not fairly resist 
them; in a sense their battle was won before they began the attack. 
For, in so far as the most of us had a reasoned view of the world at 
all, a reasoned outlook upon the nature and structure of the cosmos 
in which we live, a reasoned apprehension of the character of that 
continuity which runs like fate through its entire history and all its 
processes, it was precisely from those men of science that we had 
received it. Who else was there to give it to us? And that was not 
all. We not only received it from them, but we received it in. their 
sense, and from the point of view of their sciences ; for there was no 
higher interpretation which showed a genuinely scientific spirit and 
could therefore be convincing to an age of scientific mind. 1 

i The wisdom which leads on the ages is greater than our dreams, and we may trust 
that even in its sternness it is kindlier than our fairest imaginations ; else it might be 
permissible for a man to dream how well it would have been for us all, if, in the day when 
the sciences of nature were coming forward, those who guided the thought of the church 
had been men of Origen s spirit. 

46 



AND THE VISION OF GOD 

(ft) 

But if in the realm of thought there has come to be a gulf between 
the science that knows the earth and the faith that looks to heaven, 
much more does the separation of earth and heaven find place in the 
practical conduct of life. There is to be found the true " modern 
Materialism." We have become materialised in our ambitions and 
ideals; the ultimate and controlling purpose of life is too little the 
promotion of a good which is eternal and common to all, too much 
the attaining of that material good which passes rapidly away and the 
possession of which by one man frequently involves the exclusion of 
others from it. To state the case more broadly, we have fallen into 
bondage to what older men were wont to call " the spirit of the 
world" the spirit which always is individualistic and selfish, and 
usually is earthly and mercenary. It was pointed out above that 
mediaeval religion, precisely because it set men high above the earth, 
gave them a spirit of comprehensive unity in dealing with the things 
of the earth; led them to the idea of the unity, in a divine order, of 
the whole social organisation of life. But the spirit of the world 
exerts just the opposite influence. It begins by setting each man 
upon the search after his own individual good; and ends by leaving 
him incapable of devoting himself to any good save that which is 
earthly and material. 

One of the instances of this dominance of practical materialism 
and of the spirit of the world the instance that must stand here as 
representative of all the rest is perhaps the saddest thing in modern 
life. Because the leaders of modern industrial society make material^ 
interests supreme in their lives, great masses of other men are com 
pelled to make material considerations, in their most elementary and 
most brutal form, supreme in their lives. For while the modern 
manner of living is more humane than the mediaeval, yet, in the 
modern industrial organisation of society, the gaining of the liveli 
hood itself is, for whole classes of the people, a harder, a more pre 
carious, in many cases a more absolutely hopeless, matter than it was 
in mediaeval society, and precisely for that reason claims all the 
energies of life, leaving none for higher things. 

47 



THE STUDY OF NATUKE 

Such the modern position has come to be. In the realm of 
thought, indeed, as already has been indicated, the last quarter of a 
century has brought a great improvement. We are looking with wiser 
eyes upon the sciences of nature because we ourselves have become 
more scientific; and because, in growing more scientific, we have 
found that the spirit of Christ and the spirit of science go naturally 
together, like love and light. In that sense, the first intensity of the 
intellectual conflict is past. And one of the signs of this calls for 
special notice. Of the ways in which the mind of the church has 
become more scientific, and in becoming so has apprehended the kin 
ship of the spirit of Christ and the spirit of science, the most impor 
tant (leaving aside the general fact of an increasing spaciousness in 
thought and therefore in intellectual sympathy) lies in the growth 
of that scientific study known as Biblical Theology. Biblical Theol 
ogy arose when the scientific spirit, by its own natural and legitimate 
advance, entered into the church and took possession of the key to the 
whole theological situation namely, of the sources. And this means 
that it is from the scientific spirit that modern theology has received 
its greatest benefaction the restoration to it of Christ as He actually 
was, and of His mind as it actually was manifested. It is a thing 
full of hope for both the church and the world that in theology the 
dominance of invented systems with their proof-texts systems which 
were the expressions and the symbols of schools, and sects, and par 
ties, or even of individuals is slowly passing away, and the mind 
of Jesus, as gathered from His recorded teaching and action, and 
from the Christian consciousness, is more and more becoming 
determinative. 1 

But while the first intensity of the conflict is thus past on the 
intellectual side, the conflict itself is not yet over. Not only for many 
individual minds, thinking honestly their own thoughts and seeking as 
best they can the light necessary to life, but also for many influential 
groups of teachers and of learners, the two sides are still in antithesis. 
On the one side religion, not by any commendation of the theologians 

i In all such discussions concerning theology and the mind which is desirable as the 
mind of the chairch, it is of course to be remembered that, important as theology is, it is 
not the supreme thing ; the chosen dwelling-place of the spirit of Christ always has been, 
always will be, in pure and simple hearts which love Him and live in that love. 

48 



AND THE VISION OF GOD 

but by intrinsic power of its own, makes still the appeal which twice 
at least has mastered the world; and the former wisdom, the wisdom 
mediaeval and Platonic, whose knowledge was of the soul and whose 
vision was of the home of the soul, finds still to be its prophets men 
over whom the spirit of the time has no dominion, a Wordsworth or 
a Newman. But on the other side the scientific mind and the science 
which is its work stand over against religion and over against the 
older wisdom as unreconciled powers, equally resolute, equally mas 
terful, and to many minds greater in power of immediate and con 
vincing verification. It is a great conflict; and yet it is the lesser 
half of the spiritual struggle into which every modern man is born; 
over against it stands its greater counterpart, the conflict in the realm 
of practice, where, in opposition to the spirit of the cross, there stand 
the spirit of the world, and that far-reaching materialisation of life 
which the spirit of the world, working with mightier instruments than 
ever before, has effected. 

III. 

Men who are in earnest about their citizenship in the world, when 
they find themselves in the thick of the struggle just referred to, 
soon learn one thing : the only power that can overcome the spirit of 
the world is something as practical as itself; is the spirit which has 
seen and chosen the better part, and lives in the world "not to be 
ministered unto, but to minister " the spirit of those who have looked 
upon their Lord and serve Him by more than speech. So that the 
only value that can be ascribed to discussion and argument is a sec-\ 
ondary value. But that value, though secondary, is by no means 
slight. For we must remember that thought and practice do not 
stand apart; they are related as soul and body. And in particular, 
the practical spirit of religion needs clear eyes. There is no 
religion no religion such as can change the world without vision; 
to choose the better part men must look beyond the earth and apprehend 
heavenly realities. And though such apprehension need not be dis 
tinctly intellectual in form, yet, in at least some of the members of 
every society, it ought to rise to the form of that penetrating and 

5 49 



THE STUDY OF NATURE 

systematic thought which is able to look upon the world and assure 
itself what the reality of the world actually is whether it is a mate 
rialistic or a spiritual order, whether it is good, or simply indifferent 
to good, or an eternal dualism of good and evil. And what has 
already been said will show that in our day the problem for such 
thought the problem for " philosophy " has been brought to a very 
pointed form : What is the ultimate meaning for life and religion of 
scientific knowledge of nature? 
To the apparent conflict, then, between the science which knows 
nature and the religion which has as its inner impulse a vision of 
God, we must now turn. The first thing to be noticed is that such 
a conflict is scarcely a case of truth against falsehood. It is rather 
a case of divided knowledge and divided insight; a case of truth 
against truth. Men placed in such circumstances are sure to have 
recourse to many " working solutions " ; to the faith that dares, or 
to the stubborn manliness that clings to ancient morality or religion 
in spite of intellectual confusion. These are measures of war, 
inevitable upon an obscure and troubled battlefield ; and the men who 
adopt them often serve greatly their day and society. But the fact 
remains that such attitudes afe not adequate solutions. And what is 
necessary to such an adequate solution is equally clear. In a division 
of the sort now in question, where one side is based upon a certain 
order of science, the only solution which can be finally satisfactory 
consists in more or higher science; consists, that is to say, in gaining 
by a genuinely scientific method a point of view high enough to give 
a comprehensive outlook over both the warring sides and over the 
territory upon which their warfare is waged. For it is unjust to 
take your stand within one side, as within a closed circle, and then 
from within that closed circle to pass judgment upon positions which 
lie outside and are based upon a different order of principles. That 
is to say, it is unjust to take one s stand within the " natural science 
consciousness " and in its name summarily to brush aside the con 
sciousness of which Wordsworth is in one way, and Newman in another 
way, a type. And it is equally unjust to call for the flat supersession 
of the scientific consciousness, on the ground that some other con 
sciousnesspoetic, moral, religious has the right of way. Neither 

50 



AND THE VISION OF GOD 

of these procedures constitutes a solution of the problem. In neither 
can a thoughtful and honest mind rest permanently or take up its 
ultimate abode. The first is the hasty occasionally the contemp 
tuous evasion of the problem by refusing to recognise the existence 
and weight of one of the two sides ; and such a procedure contradicts 
that very spirit of science in the name of which it is undertaken. 
The second is the makeshift of spiritual desperation. 1 By this it is 
riot meant that poetic intuition and religious vision have no place in 
man s life. On the contrary, his ordinary life in its whole range of 
daily thought and daily work, is a pitiable thing without them. And 
even in conflicts such as are here in question, men have more than 
once or twice done great and genuine service by taking their stand 
upon poetic intuition and religious vision, and in their name defying 
both the scientific and the commercial consciousness. How this can 
be so, we shall a little farther on be in better position to see. In the 
meantime, what we have to notice is that such an attitude is not a 
permanent solution. To settle down permanently into^uch an atti 
tude worse still, to speak authoritatively to the thinking men of 
your generation and have nothing but such an attitude to commend 
to them is simply to set one closed circle against another closed 
circle; is simply to solidify the opposed ranks in their opposition. 
What is required for a permanent solution is that the critical and /* 
disinterested reason, walking in the way of science and in the spirit 
of science, should strive forward toward its goal; that is to say, 
toward a view of the world as one. Such a view, if only it could be 
gained (and as we shall see it can be gained) would enable us to 
do both of the things which are necessary to an adequate solution. It 
would enable us, first, to recognise whatever truth there may be on 
each side; nay, to do more, to give that truth a deeper meaning and 
a fuller interpretation by setting it in its place in a system of wider 
truth. And how much this latter consideration means may be seen 
by remembering one thing : if each side has its truth, if loth of the 
opposed sides are really elements in one truth and one life, each having 

i And when employed as a method of theology, is something worse ; is a makeshift of 
desperation on the part of men who ought to be the masters and kings of the whole V 
intellectual situation, but have allowed themselves to be driven to bay in a corner of their 
own realm. 

51 



THE STUDY OF NATUKE 

its own great place and great right, then we may be sure that each 
can also contribute to the power and breadth of the other; for great 
truths are not self-contained; they answer to one another and con 
tribute to one another. Secondly, it would enable us to understand 
the limitations under which each of the sides apprehended and 
envisaged its own truth limitations which shut each side away from 
the other and made each accuse the other of blindness or even of 
falsehood. And understanding these limitations means (as Hegel so 
steadily insisted) a very great deal more than merely stating the 
fact of their existence. It means understanding how they came to 
be; how they are inevitably bound up with certain special points of 
view, so that the men who live habitually at these points of view are 
subject to the corresponding limitations of outlook upon the world. 
Such a method would enable us to recognise truth wherever there is 
truth to be recognised; and not merely to recognise it, but (what is 
more difficult) to do justice to it. In particular it would enable us 
to leave the established laws and principles of natural and physical 
science standing in .their full inner integrity and at the same time 
to take them up as harmonious elements in a system of truth wider 
than themselves; a system in whose wider light their ultimate sig 
nificance for life and for the meaning of life would become manifest. 
And that would put us in position to correct precisely the order of 
mistakes with which we are here concerned; not mistakes in matters 
of fact (a sort of mistakes which scientific men are not given to 
making) ; but mistakes in interpretation, mistakes in applying the 
principles and the points of view of the special sciences to life and to 
the problem of the meaning of life. 

Indeed, the demand for such a solution might be stated wholly 
from the side of science itself. For it is the presupposition of all 
science and of all endeavour after science it is the presupposition of 
every step in every scientific investigation that the world is one, a 
single system of interrelated facts; and that therefore knowledge is 
one, a single system of related insights. Hence the ultimate truth 
about any one part of the world, or about the scientific principles 
employed in the study of it, becomes manifest only from the centre ; 
only from a point of view which commands the whole field and which 

52 



AND THE VISION OF GOD 

is gained, not so much by the study of fact after fact in detail as by 
apprehending the inner nature of the total system. And it is pre 
cisely when truths appear to conflict that it is most important to 
remember this; most important of all when the conflict is such as 
that between the "natural science consciousness" and the religious 
consciousness, where the two sides appear to stand so far apart, and 
yet each is so deeply rooted in existing reality. 

The task, then, which faces the man who has taken into his heart 
that for which Wordsworth and Newman stand, and who at the same 
time finds himself compelled whether he will or no to be an intel 
lectual citizen of the modern world, may be summed up thus. First 
he has to attempt to comprehend the ultimate significance for the v 
problem of the meaning of life, of the modern scientific knowledge 
of nature. Secondly, to do this he must seek to gain a point of view 
from which, in some genuine sense of the words, the world can be 
seen as one, life viewed as a whole, facts comprehended sub specie 
quadam aeternitatis. Thirdly, the quest of that point of view must v 
be carried on in a genuinely scientific temper. Rebuke of science; 
evasion of the demands of the scientific spirit ; the " flat supersession 
of the scientific consciousness " in the name of the religious conscious 
ness ; the attempt to follow some by-path or "short cut " upon which 
one hopes to get past the scientific position without the danger of 
being taken prisoner : all these are ab initio forbidden. 1 In a word, 

i One of these attempts to "get past the scientific position " is so fundamentally bad 
as to deserve special mention the endeavour to justify belief in God by seeking to find 
gaps in the continuity of nature. It is true that a God thus made manifest made mani 
fest not by the greatness and harmony of nature, not by its abiding law and continuous 
order, but by its rents and gaps would be no worthy object of religious devotion. But 
that is only the beginning of the matter. Once you shatter the continuity of nature, you 
shatter Imore than Materialism. You shatter the possibility of all science whatever. 
You open up the gulf of universal scepticism, and Materialism disappears in it, it is true, 
but along with it disappear Theism and theology and the rational basis for every sort of 
religion except two, between which men will continue to choose according to their 
individual dispositions Stoicism (as a practical temper, not as a philosophy) and 
Epicureanism. 

In a word, in insisting upon the continuity of nature, men of science have been better 
theologians than the theologians themselves. If God exists at all, He is the God of all 
nature and of every natural law. There are no gaps in His workmanship, no breaches of 
continuity in His activity. All nature is an activity of His, and every natural law a 
principle of that activity. If the theologians would be true to theology, what they have 
to do is to protest, not against the principle of continuity, but against too narrow a 
reading of it and too narrow an application of it to reality. The principle of continuity is 

53 



THE STUDY OF NATUKE 

the attempt to discover the ultimate significance for life of our knowl 
edge of nature should be carried through with fidelity to the scientific 
spirit; and the view finally gained of the ultimate meaning of our 
science of nature should be, in a genuine sense of the words, a farther 
stage of science itself. 

IV. 

But in approaching this task one is approaching no new or purely 
modern task. To gain insight into the significance, for the problem 
of the meaning of life, of the fact that man has science of nature; 
and so to gain that insight that it shall be a farther stage of the same 
science : upon this attempt, or upon a greater which includes it, has 
been directed the longest and most continuous of all the labours of the 
human mind. Each intellectual era has come to the problem in its 
own way; in its own way has stated the problem, in its own way 
attempted the solution; and the struggle upward through inadequate 
categories has been slow and stubborn. Hence the special pleader or 
the hasty critic can easily arrange a clever argument for the charge 
that the imagined insight of each age stands in contradiction to that 
of the others, and that therefore the wholo history establishes nothing. 
But as a matter of fact that history has the unity which arises from 
a central and catholic line of development. And the man who is 
willing, and who is able, by historical study, to repeat that develop 
ment in his own thinking and live it over again in his own soul 
the man who illuminates his soul with the wisdom of the ages, and 
grows into that illumination as the ages themselves grew into it is 
the man who, when the problem here at issue falls upon him, can 
conduct most intelligently his own, wrestle with it, and can best be 
a guide to others. 

For what the great men of thought who in their succession con 
stitute that " central and catholic line " have seen, is precisely that 

unworthily treated if it is limited to certain physical and chemical processes. The true 
field of the principle of continuity is the total history in time, the total evolution, of the 
universe. And as so viewed, it is simply one way of apprehending the essential ration 
ality of God and of the divine action in nature and in history. In this and I think only 
in this lies the basis for a worthy constructive doctrine of miracle. (See the acute 
discussion in Mr. Balfour s Foundations of Belief, 1897, p. 316 seq.) 

54 



AND THE VISION OF GOD 

such a farther stage of science as was referred to above is possible. 
And not only that it is possible, but also that the human intellect 
must seek after it unless the human intellect is to live in treason 
against the scientific spirit. They have seen, in the first place, that 
man s knowledge of the material order implies a greater whole of 
knowledge, from whose point of view the world is seen as a whole and 
man s life in its true meaning; and in the second place, that that 
greater whole of knowledge is a fulfilment of man s knowledge of 
nature, not a revolt against it, nor a contradiction of it. 

The age-long labour in which the " masters of them that know " 
endeavoured to fulfil the scientific demand which they had thus appre 
hended, cannot, of course, be described or outlined here. But cer 
tain of the outstanding facts of its history, if noted at this point, 
will enable us to orient ourselves in the courts of philosophy, and to 
apprehend the nature of the tradition that has grown up there. 1 

That tradition*- entered, almost at its beginning, into conscious 
possession of its own true nature as an effort after the unity of life. 
For the mind which gave rise to philosophy and science, and presided 
over the beginnings of their tradition, and informed the construction 
of their first great monuments, was that of the Greeks; and the 
graver genius of that race-^even while its cities, by divisions without 
and within, were working out for themselves irremediable ruin- 
sought to rise above the divisions of thought and of practice ; sought 
to see life " steadily," to see it " whole," and to discover, at 
once for the individual and the state,, the true unity of life. That 
unity the Greek so far as the deeper genius of Hellas prevailed in him 
sought by proportion. He would bring life to unity, not by 
extirpating all interests save one driving out religion, for instance, 
in the name of science, or the good in the name of the beautiful, or 
the expert in government in the name of democracy but rather by 

i For the younger student of philosophy, the historical study that does this has, in 
addition to the value noted earlier in the text, this special value : it puts him in position 
to make with more intelligence his estimate of the present-day voices that claim hia 
attention. For in this as in every age, some of the writers in philosophy are so related to 
the traditional development that their own individual strength is at once rooted in and 
reinforced by the incalculable strength of the central and catholic past ; while others, who 
astonish their day with inventions of their own, represent in philosophy the merely 
individual and therefore the transient. 

55 



THE STUDY OF NATUKE 

giving to each legitimate interest and capability of the soul, its due 
and proportionate place primary or secondary, as the case might be 
in the single system of an harmoniously ordered life. The life 
which results when a single limited interest, or a single unbridled 
tendency of human nature, takes complete possession of a human 
soul and of a human body, he refused to call a human life; and 
any social order which would make such life inevitable to the 
various classes of enfranchised citizens he looked upon as essentially 
vicious. In the state, according to the ideal of it, each citizen was 
to perform freely and devotedly the function for which nature fitted 
him; and so the life, on the one hand of the state, on the other of 
each individual citizen in it, was to reach completeness both of 
development and of efficiency. Unity of life; completeness of life; 
and the securing of these by harmonious co-operation of natural powers 
in which each helps the others by doing with excellence its own work : 
this was at once his ideal of life and his principle for the organisation 
of the state. 

Furthermore, the Greek mind in its scientific workmanship was 
thoroughly disinterested. Greek men of science and Greek men of 
thought were wont to look upon the facts of life and the facts of the 
world with clear and direct eyes; they saw things just as they are 
and described them exactly as they found them. The notion that 
truth truth in the grave and deep sense of the word could have ill 
consequences in the practical life, had no place with them. By the 
very nature of the mind in them they were free from the vice of doing 
violence to the scientific conscience in order to conduct special plead 
ings for ethical and theological positions. Indeed, it is precisely for 
that reason that the Greek mind has contributed, as to the cause of 
science, so also, and even more profoundly, to the cause of goodness. 
For hostility to science, or even alienation from it, in the interest of 
morality or religion, is as injurious to these themselves as to science; 
nay, is even more injurious; for it works them a triple injury. It 
exposes their fundamental principles to suspicion as fearing the light. 
It shatters the unity and integrity of life ; and incompleteness of life 
means incompleteness of morality and of religion. And the deepest 
injury of all it steals away from them that which is at once their 

56 



AND THE VISION OF GOD 

eyesight,, their interpreter, and their intellectual soul, and thus leaves 
them to the mercy of the dogmatic and the priestly mind. 

These qualities of the Greek spirit made the interpretation of life 
which it wrought out a thing of supreme value for ever to the men 
who, for the business of living life, wish to clear their eyes and clear 
their intelligence. That interpretation took two main forms : a more 
literary, in the work of the tragedians, who in huge and majestic 
symbols of ancient legend expressed their sense of the operation in 
man s life of a necessity greater than man, so that the blind choices, 
the hasty movements of the individual will, bring in their train inex 
orable fate fate clad always in terror, but sometimes dimly seen to 
the poet s faith to be the form of a great righteousness; and a more 
scientific, in the work of certain great men of thought who carried 
farther than the poets the attempt to understand the nature of that 
necessity, and found it to be eternal, and, in the highest sense 
of the words, rational and righteous. By singular good fortune to 
humanity, this latter interpretation came to share, at its culmination 
in Plato, in one great feature of the former : came to add to its own 
intrinsic value as a guide of life a manner of expression fitted to win 
men s hearts. For while Plato had, in its very highest form, the 
disinterested scientific temper of the Greeks, and their clearness of 
intellectual vision, he was more than a great scientific intellect con 
templating life. He was one of the most human of men. He knew 
life by walking in its ways, by sharing in its greater struggles, by 
enduring its greater sorrows. Yet his vision was driven beyond the 
horizon of this world; alike by the discovery of his intellect 
and by the demand of his soul for a home truly appropriate to 
its nature, he was led to contemplate an eternity and a perfection, 
which are not of this world, though they are the truth of it and the 
standard for judging all its affairs. And in this ascent of his soul 
the characteristic genius of his race did not desert him, though its 
lighter elements were rebuked and fled. He remained a Greek seeking 
for integrity of life and delighting in the exercise of all the faculties 
of the soul; an artist, with the artist s instinct for apprehending and 
expressing beauty; a poet, able to find earthly words for realities 
unspeakable, and for the things of eternity a voice that passes into 

57 



THE STUDY OF NATUKE 

human hearts "with lightning and with music." So that when in 
Plato the graver spirit of Hellas entered into full and critical pos 
session of itself, and put into words that which it had learned con 
cerning the world and concerning life, the words went forth to later 
generations clad, in addition to their scientific truth, with a threefold 
power that of humanity, that of beauty, that of religious passion. 

But though Plato s words were at once the profoundest and the 
most human of all the words that have been spoken in the schools of 
philosophy, the two world-ages which followed did not take him as 
their teacher. The mediaeval world, indeed, might have seemed the 
very world for the reception of Plato. For the men of that world 
were actually achieving to them the supreme business of life was 
to achieve the very thing which had lain closest of all to Plato s 
heart, and which he had called for from the Greeks in vain : the sub 
jection of the sensuous world to the super sensuous, the making of the 
wh6le order of the state, the whole course of individual education, 
the whole structure and organisation of society, a " service of the 
invisible world." 1 But, for one thing, of the corpus of the Platonic 
writings little beyond the Timaeus was known. For another thing, 
the dominant party made religion inseparable from the church, and 
the men who laboured in the task of giving to the world its divine 
interpretation were churchmen. And these, when they required an 
intellectual organon for their immense endeavour, found in Aristotle 
a system remarkably well adapted to their needs. If it had somehow 
been possible for them to gain a comprehension of Plato as he truly 
is, they would probably have found him a very troublesome friend. 
For a spiritual power, incalculable, unfathomable, not to be fettered 
or led, is a thing which does not commend itself to the typical church 
man. And that is precisely what Plato is. For, in the first place, 
he is always a dialectician; and his dialectic allows your mind no 
rest except in ultimate and essential eternity. And in the second 
place, as we shall see later, 2 although he is not a Mystic, yet Mysticism 
can be learned from him; and Mysticism makes short work of 
external organisation, of material symbols, of churchly observances. 

i Windelband, Platon, 3te. Auflage, S. 169. 
2 Infra, pp. 214-232. 

58 



AND THE VISION OF GOD 

At the same time, there is in mediaeval thought much more Platonism 
than we usually fancy; partly because the mediaeval temper led inde 
pendently to it; partly because, in choosing Aristotle as their master, 
the mediaeval theologians chose, next to Plato himself, the best Pla- 
tonist in the world. And if Aristotle did not reach the height of the 
Platonic temper, his mediaeval pupils could contribute that directly 
from their own hearts. 

With the modern world the case has been different. It could 
know Plato if it would ; and from the Eenaissance onward it has had 
many ardent disciples of Plato. But its temper has in the main 
been un-Platonic; and in its science it began by breaking radically 
with the past. The world of Descartes and Bacon, in the extremity 
of its revolt against the mediaeval, would have nothing to do with 
any science but its own; would begin all over again the work of 
understanding the nature of the world; would fight its scientific 
battles altogether from its own beginning, altogether in its own 
fashion. The outcome was remarkable. When one penetrates to 
the great currents that beneath the troubled surface have driven for 
ward as steadily and as irresistibly as if Necessity herself were in 
them, 1 what one finds is an almost exact parallelism with the course 
of Greek thought. The Eleatic and the Sophist are accurately in 
their places ; the Eleatic (in Spinoza) with much of the old Par- 
menidean dignity; the Sophist with almost the old procedure in his 
scepticism. And at last the specifically modern way of approaching 
and stating the problem was set by a very un-Hellenic Socrates 
Immanuel Kant. 2 His work was that of a pioneer. It furnished 

1 As a matter of fact, necessity was in them ; the logical necessity which governs the/ 
dialectic evolution of the categories. 

2 Whether as a mere fact of history, or an instance of how the inner wisdom of history, 
working under the form of dialectic development, enlists the individual in its service, 
this parallelism between the course of Greek thought and that of modern, is very striking. 
Both began at the beginning ; or rather, Thales actually did, and Descartes tried- 
Both settled with stubborn resoluteness to the attempt to understand the world from the 
point of view of the category of substance. With the Greeks this culminated in Par. 
menides, with the moderns in Spinoza. Finally in each case the lesson was learned (being 
soundly emphasised by the rise of scepticism Gorgias and Protagoras and Hume) that an 
ontology cannot be constructed off-hand ; that a trustworthy theory of reality can be 
gained only through, and in, and as, a theory of knowledge. The learning of this lesson is 
connected in the one case with the name of Socrates, in the other with that of Kant. 
And in each case the learning of this lesson meant that philosophy entered auf den 
sichern Gang der Wissenschaft. With the Greeks Plato and Aristotle followed ; with us, 
the present period, in which every metaphysician who is in the main course of philosophy 
and not in some eddy or side-stream, proceeds from the point of departure set by Kant. 

59 



THE STUDY OF NATUKE 

little more than a beginning. And in Kant s own writings even that 
beginning was sadly obscured. It was loaded down with masses of 
alien material and with needless dualisms; and it suffered especially 

> because Kant dropped his own fundamental insight half-way, and so 
drew from it almost the opposite of its legitimate conclusions. 
Indeed, something like this was to be expected; for that insight was 
the gain of Kant s old age, the long-delayed reward of a lifetime in 
which that acute and penetrating intellect worked through the dog 
matic and empirical and sceptical and sentimental philosophies of 
the day and found rest in none of them. But, under whatever weight 
of alien and obscuring matter, the beginning was there. And the 
task set for the modern mind by it has been accepted and pushed 
resolutely through. The carrying of the Kantian beginning if you 
will, of the Kantian suggestion forward to its legitimate conclusion 

.>has been the special task of metaphysic in the period of philosophy 
in which we now live. 

In Germany this was done by a succession of men of thought, the 

/ last and greatest of whom was Hegel. Of him it is sufficient to say 
that each of the great intellectual ages has given to the world an 
encyclopaedic philosopher a man who, so far as was possible to the 
human mind, gathered into himself all the science of his day, and 
interpreted it from the point of view of an insight into the ultimate 
nature of reality, and so made it in the true sense of the word a 
system: the Greek age gave Aristotle; the mediaeval, Aquinas; the 
modern, Hegel. 

But though Hegel s is the one name that ranks with Aristotle s 
and with that of Aquinas; and though he has written very deeply 
upon many of the more capacious minds of the day his own great 
conviction that God actually is at work in His world, and that the 
divine reasonableness actually is present in the structure of the uni 
verse, in the laws of nature, in the course of history; yet he is likely 
never to become a great and familiar teacher of the human race, such 
as Aristotle and Aquinas have been and are and will be. In par 
ticular and this is what specially concerns ourselves he will never 
in any direct sense be the great teacher of what for want of some better 
name we must call Anglo-Saxondom. For one thing, his writings 

60 






AND THE VISION OF GOD. 

are often needlessly obscure and difficult; and the unhappy form in<. 
which it was necessary for his editors to issue a great part of them 
has not helped the matter. For another thing, there is a feature of 
his work which is peculiarly distasteful to the "Anglo-Saxon" or 
at any rate to the specifically English intellect : the technical appar 
atus, useful as it really is, is so enormous that sometimes it smothers 
the very content for whose expression it was devised; while at other 
times it carries Hegel, rather than Hegel it at which times the man 
of thought appears to be mounted upon a very high horse indeed. 1 

t At the same time many of us would bring to our work in the world a graver and 
more comprehensive wisdom if we could avoid one mistake : we let Hegel s high words, 
his masterful and comprehensive procedure, drive us into rebellion against him and all 
that he represents ; and so we are blinded to the fact that there are things which we need 
to learn and which his Idealism has to teach. 

An example will show what is meant. Lotze and Paulsen, the one in an earlier and 
more irreconcilable way, the other in a later and more moderate, fought the battle of the 
steady everyday consciousness against the thoroughgoing procedure and vast results of 
the "speculative philosophy." But in doing this they lost sight of the fact that the very 
thing needed in order to give coherence to their own philosophical construction is the 
Kantian epistemology as clarified and systematised by Hegel. In them philosophy was 
unnecessarily crippled ; not altogether, but to some extent, philosophy in them defeats 
itself; in the name of the ordinary consciousness and of everyday interests, of the "solid 
ground " and of "plain facts," they recoil from precisely those scientific insights which 
show us what those everyday interests and ordinary facts really are the body, namely, of 
an eternal reason, the media through which and in which an eternal purpose is being 
realised. 

But men such as these bring to their criticism of the " speculative philosophy " a fine 
and high temper. " Sit anima mea cum illo" one has to say of such a man even while 
arguing against him. But one occasionally meets a very different type of critic : the man 
who makes it part of his duty to pass in review the " masters of them that know " simply 
to find a flaw in each and then throw them all aside and return triumphantly within the 
circle of his own sectarian or individual theology. To such a man Hegel is usually 
the most special of all his bugbears. But with such an attitude the student who in 
dealing with the world of thought seeks its greater wisdom and its greater virtues and 
only he who is such a student to-day is worthy to be a leader of the intellect of the church 
to-morrow will have nothing to do. Reverently he will approach the world s masters in 
science and philosophy ; he will keep himself from the ingratitude that in the presence of 
the great workmen of the intellect seeks only to discover the imperfections of their work ; 
he will endeavour to make his way through transient, and often inappropriate, forms of 
expression.to the inner and abiding meanings, and to do justice to the truths that great 
men of old reached out after but were not able to grasp clearly and express happily; and 
so from each one still more from all of them viewed as forming one great history and 
one great development he will carry away for himself a worthy harvest of insight 
worthily gained. 

The fabt that in Germany itself there is no " Hegelian school " is often referred to, and 
various inferences adverse to " Hegelianism " drawn from it. But in the first place the 
Hegelian view of the world is not dead ; it has become part of that intellectual air which 
we all are breathing, and which without Hegel would have been a very different and a 
much poorer thing. And in the second place, one of the facts of German life should be 

61 



THE STUDY OF NATUKE 

Hence the most trustworthy of the men of thought who in Eng 
lish-speaking countries have bent to the work of carrying Kant s 
beginning forward to its conclusion, while they have learned much 
from Hegel and directly or indirectly are under profound debt to 
him, are not " Hegelians " ; are not followers of Hegel in the strict 
sense of discipleship. 1 From the point of departure which Kant set 
for us all, they have gone forward with the sober caution of their 
race, and have steadily avoided any such immense technical apparatus 

remembered. In Germany the " great masters "those upon whom the young men form 
their minds are usually living men ; you migrate from university to university, look 
upon their faces, hear them read. The advantages of this are instantly apparent. But it 
does not seem to be equally well understood that such a state of affairs has at least some 
disadvantages. These were never better summed up than once by the young man who 
later became Dr. Pusey : " There is probably no people among whom the mighty dead are 
so soon forgotten, or the great names of the present day so unduly exalted, as in Germany, 
and this because the knowledge of the mass of each generation is derived for the most 
part exclusively from living sources." (See Liddon s Life of Pusey, 1893, Vol. I., p. 230.) 

For young students it may not be a mistake to enter into Hegel s system by working 
backwards ; that is to say, by beginning with the Philosophy of History (which as 
Jowett remarked to Tennyson "is just the increasing purpose that through the ages 
runs buried under a heap of categories ") and the Philosophy of Right. Then, and all 
the better if with the help of Mr. Baillie s, and Mr. M Taggart s, valuable exposition 
and discussion the Logic can be attempted. Of introductory statements of Hegel s 
thought and of its significance, the best remains, and is likely long to remain, that by the 
Master of Balliol. The handbook by Professor Mackintosh couples with attractive points 
one grave defect. It is described in the preface as a handbook and evidently was intended 
to be such. But in a handbook one thing is essential : it must be an exposition, an expla 
nation, an interpretation, in the simplest and directest form possible, of the system in 
hand. To that one purpose all the writer s literary powers and virtues should be subordi 
nate and contributory. But Professor Mackintosh s discussion, while having any number 
of incidental virtues it is most interesting and suggestive, full of bright sayings and 
happy passages lacks precisely this essential quality of a handbook. One might almost 
say that so far from being primarily an exposition of Hegel and of the Hegelian view of 
the world, it is an exposition of its author s own opinions, and a somewhat unfair criticism 
of Hegel in the light of them. And the treatment is very unequal. At some points 
(whether in dealing with Hegel or with the British teachers called, not quite fairly, 
" Hegelians ") the author writes like a son of the house describing to the public the objects 
of a long and intimate knowledge ; at others, with a strange hardness and externality, 
almost (if the comparison may be pardoned) like a stranger who stands outside and throws 
stones at the windows. 

i With regard to this, Professor Mackintosh, in the handbook referred to in the 
preceding note, does not act quite as fairly as in this age, when party names mean so 
unjustly much, is desirable. To call men "Hegelians" who are Hegelians only in the 
same sense that they are Platonists and Aristotelians, is not an example of Professor 
Mackintosh s rule (op. cit. p. 86) that " a well-chosen class name is the first step to knowl 
edge." The story of Hegel s influence upon British thought might have been written 
without the application of a party name to men who lived above party. And the unfair 
ness is all the graver that the name is applied in the face of protests from the men 
themselves who are chiefly concerned. 

62 



AND THE VISION OP GOD 

as that of Hegel. This has involved, it is true, the loss of much that 
was possible to him; the great sweep of his system, his vast and 
orderly outlook upon history, upon nature, upon all the departments 
of man s life and society. But there has been a corresponding gain; 
and that no mean one; for the fundamental problems, at any rate, 
have been treated; and treated with a simplicity, an intellectual 
severity and self-control, which put the discussion within reach of 
many to whom Hegel himself is ein Buck mil sieben Siegeln. 

Among these men there are several toward whom the present 
writer cherishes an affectionate gratitude which grows deeper with 
every year that separates him from the days when he sat at their 
feet. But it is upon the name of a man whose face he has never 
seen that he desires at this point specially to dwell. The late Pro- 
fessor Green had not the special gifts of the men to whom reference 
has just been made: not the remarkable blending of profundity and 
subtle keenness which characterises one of them; not that union of 
philosophic insight with the whole breadth of humane learning which 
gives charm to all the work of another; not the vast and systematic 
range of thought which makes a third the representative of philosophy 
in its true greatness as a rationally articulated view of the world and 
of life. These things Green had not; for his life was weighted with 
labour and his day was short. But his life and his teaching had two 
features which make the mention of his name specially appropriate 
in the present connexion. In the first place, he cannot fairly be 
called the prophet of any " school." It is true, he approached the 
question of the meaning of life from the point which Kant has made 
inevitable for modern thought. But in the investigation itself, the 
considerations which he brings forward and the arguments which he 
employs are elementary, are primary and simple; and just for that 
reason are fundamental, and hold for all life under all circumstances. 
So that while in one sense the discussion is Kantian, yet in a still 
deeper sense to apply party names Kantian, Neo-Kantian, 
Hegelian to it, is as impossible as to apply party names to the first 
and elementary principles of any great science. And in the second 
place, while Green was, in life and character, English of the English, 
and by that character and life spoke with Englishmen heart to heart, 

63 



THE STUDY OF NATUKE 

yet there was operative in him precisely the most valuable tendency 
of the Greek mind its tendency toward unity and integrity of life. 
The fragments of writing that he left behind him give, if read intelli 
gently, a systematic outlook upon life they contain both a system of 
fundamental principles and an application of these to the under 
standing of nature and of history. But that is the lesser side of 
the matter; if he did not, in any finished or technical sense, write 
a system of philosophy, he lived one. What his biographer has to 
record is, as Mr. Nettleship so well says, 1 " a fact which has never 
been common and which is especially rare in England, the fact of a 
life in which philosophy was reconciled with religion on the one side 
and politics on the other ; the life of a man to whom reason was faith 
made articulate, and for whom both faith and reason found their 
highest expression in good citizenship." It is in men such as this 
that philosophy is most clearly seen doing the work that it ought to 
do in every age, but specially in an age like our own; for in such men 
philosophy becomes the philosophic mind, and the philosophic mind 
leads to a life and a work in which the contending elements and 
warring truths of the age are seen reconciled and working with 
united power. 

V. 

The great argument which thus, from its clear beginnings in 
Hellas, passed onward through the ages with all those turns and 
retreats, and yet with that very real continuity of development, cannot 
be presented in a few pages. Its full meaning can be gathered only 
by living through, in one s own soul, the long course of the history 
in which it struggled into possession of its many insights. But a 
sense of its import can be conveyed, and an indication of its procedure 
and conclusions given, by a brief outline of its modern form the 
form which it has taken in the school of Kant, but which nevertheless 
is so simple and elementary as to stand above party affiliations. In 
attempting to draw up such a statement, one of Green s writings is 
specially useful ; the ensuing outline was suggested by, and in places 

i In the Memoir prefixed to Vol. III. of the Collected Works, p. xi. 
64 



AND THE VISION OF GOD 

follows quite closely, the argument worked out with great simplicity 
but also with great thoroughness in the Prolegomena to Ethics. 

We must begin with something which, as already has been noticed, 1 
was to the greater masters of philosophy at once a first insight and 
an impulse to farther insight. In order that our experience of every 
day things may be what it actually is, reality must be greater than in 
our everyday experience it seems to be. 2 Or, to put this into the 
narrower and more modern form which exactly meets the problem 
now before us, the natural and physical sciences, by the very fact of 
their existence, imply and call for a whole of knowledge wider than 
themselves. For all science is a tracing out of the relations of the 
facts and events of the world to one another. The laws of nature 
which men of science formulate are statements of those abiding rela 
tions ; and the total system of such relations is the order of the world. 
But suppose the natural and physical sciences to have fully accom 
plished their work. There would still remain a relation to be investi 
gated the relation of all those facts and events to the knowing 
intelligence. Every thing, every event, every relation, which a man 
of science investigates, enters by the very fact of being known and 
investigated into a relation with intelligence into that organic union 
with intelligence which from the side of the intelligence itself is 
called knowledge or science. To say that such a thing as natural 
and physical science exists, is to say that mind and the world, subject 
and object, have entered into organic connexion; the knowing intel 
ligence has gone out into the world, has traversed it, penetrated it, 
made itself at home in it and in doing so has realised and fulfilled 
its own nature as intelligence ; or putting it in another way, has taken 
the world, or parts and beginnings of the world, into itself, and that 
not as a mere outside article drawn into an empty container, but as 
an organic part of its own structure. This relation everything in the 
world that is or ever can be an object of scientific investigation, sus 
tains or is capable of sustaining; and to say this, is to say that science 
must advance to the investigation of the relation in question. For 

1 Supra, pp. 54, 55. 

2 I have tried to work this out more fully in the paper on Plato, infra, pp. 203-247 
(especially pp. 208-214). 

6 65 



THE STUDY OF NATURE 

if science be the tracing out of the relations which the constituent 
parts or factors of the world bear to one another, then it is the flattest 
of treasons against the scientific spirit to say, "We will investigate 
certain classes of the relations which make up the world s order; but 
with the relations that fall outside those classes we will have nothing 
to do." The existence of science is the existence of this relation 
this relation of things to intelligence, of object to subject and the 
capacity for this relation is part of the nature of things. And a 
relation which thus exists and is of the nature of things must be 
investigated. To refuse to investigate it would be a turning of 
science aside from its regular and legitimate path of advance in 
knowing the world ; would be as genuinely a crime against the spirit 
of science as to refuse to investigate the laws of the tides, or of the 
planetary orbits, or of the development of organic types. 

The relation, then, involved in that organic connexion of objects 
and intelligence which is science, must be investigated. And the 
question with which to begin the investigation is a very simple one: 
How is such a relation possible ? 

First of all, let us see what as mere matter of fact the relation 
amounts to. All science and all endeavour after science presuppose, 
as already has been pointed out, that the world is one, a single system 
of facts and relations. Furthermore, scientific statements, once they 
are truly and adequately formulated, are timelessly valid ; can be 
handed on from generation to generation, and stand firm independently 
of time and the passage of time. This implies that the ultimate order 
of that cosmos which it is the business of science to know is an eternal 
or timeless order, a single system of fixed and unalterable relations. 
The upbuilding of science is a process wherein man " enters into " or 
"makes himself at home in" or, more accurately still, "reproduces 
in and as his own thought," that system of related facts which we 
call " the world," that system of eternal or timeless relations which 
we call " the order of the world." And in doing this, man acts the 
part of a permanent subject who (1) holds many diverse facts in 
orderly relation in the unity of a single conscious grasp, and (2) in 
so doing distinguishes himself from the various facts which he thus 
presents to himself distinguishes himself from those facts in the 

66 



AND THE VISION OF GOD 

very activity of at once distinguishing them from, one another and yet 
relating them all together in the unity of one scientific view. And 
must so distinguish himself from them; for to carry on such an 
activity at all to hold, in and as one conscious experience, a vast 
variety of facts, keeping each one in its own distinctness, and yet 
relating them all together with a continually growing accuracy the 
subject must, in a certain genuine sense, be above each and every one 
of the particular facts present to him ; must, to use a metaphor which 
is not the truth but hints at the truth, be both the judge to whom, 
and the court in which, they are all present. 

With this the question we began with is seen to have two sides. 
First, how is such a world possible ? Secondly, how are we to account 
for the subject who knows that world the self-conscious subject, able 
(partially, indeed, and discursively, but still with ever-growing com-*/ 
pleteness) to reproduce that order of nature in his own thought? 

First, then, how is such a world possible? The world that men 
of science investigate is, as every step of their work presupposes and 
implies, "one connected world." It is a single system. But what 
does that mean ? It means two things : in the first place each of the 
facts or constituent parts of the world is related to every other the 
total system of those relations being the " order of the world " ; in 
the second place, each fact or part is maintained in the distinctness 
and integrity of its own existence, no one of them being in the order 
of nature fused or confounded with any other. But how can that 
be? In the first place, can it be explained by supposing that each of 
the ultimate constituent parts of the world atom, monad, or what 
ever it is institutes and maintains the total system of its relations 
with every other part? Here, indeed, there is no space to discuss 
such a theory at length. But it is not necessary. Let a man get 
clear to his mind all that such a theory means each atom (or elec 
tron, or monad, or whatever the ultimate constituent part is supposed 
to be) from eternity an independent and omniscient consciousness 
which at each instant (1) knows the movements (or other activities) 
of all the other atoms in the universe and knows exactly what it should 
do to adjust itself to those movements, and (2) upon its own initia 
tive and in its own power executes the adjustment let a man get this 

67 



THE STUDY OF NATUKE 

clear to his mind and he is not likely to continue to hold the theory. 
The solution given by such a theory has no relation to the problem 
which is being solved : it seeks to solve the problem of " the Many 
and the One " (or rather the Many in the One) by giving us a Many 
without a One at all. The theory which brings to this problem of 
the " one connected world " a solution that really does solve, and 
therefore must be accepted, lies in the other direction. We must 
hold, that is to say, that the existence of such a thing as a " connected 
world " implies a " principle of union " which does two things. It 
links all the facts together into the unity of one system. But at the 
same time and by the same activity it maintains each of them in its 
distinctness, not fusing or confounding them together. And to do 
this it must distinguish itself from each and all of those facts or 
events or elements which it thus both relates together and keeps dis 
tinct. To it they all are present: and since it is only through that 
presence to it that they have their places in the one system and so are 
what they are, it may be said on the one hand that their presence to 
it is their reality; and on the other hand that it is the source and 
home alike of them and of their relations to one another. 1 

But can science find anything of which it dare assert such an 
activity? Are we acquainted, in the whole circle of our experience, 
with anything which can exercise such an activity and so can be such 
a "principle of union"? The answer is that we are. Intelligence, 
r self-consciousness, spirit, or whatever other name you may wish to 
apply to that which the man of science himself essentially is is pre 
cisely such a principle of union and exercises precisely such an 
activity. To hold many facts, many elements, together in the unity 
of one grasp, to relate them together and yet to keep each in its dis 
tinctness this is precisely what it is the essential nature of self- 
conscious spirit to do. But in applying this principle to the solution 
of our problem we must remember that in us men self-consciousness 
or spirit exercises its power of synthesis only imperfectly. Our 
knowledge is fragmentary; our minds in their advance, though not 

i This problem of the " one connected world " is, in some form or other, the problem of 
all metaphysicians even of David Hume. But it is interesting to note with what special 
clearness, and how early, it came forward in Greek thought, as the problem of the Many 
and the One. 

68 



AND THE VISION OF GOD 

in their essential function, discursive. Our world is, in one sense, 
a world given to us, and in apprehending it we pass from fact to 
fact; in mastering one part of it we have to leave other parts out of 
sight. But self-conscious spirit, as the principle of union of the 
world, cannot be fragmentary or discursive. It must be a single 
eternal spirit, to which the total system of things is present in one 
eternally complete grasp ; x and present, not as given to it, but as con 
stituted by it constituted by it in an activity in which it acts alto 
gether from itself. 

So, then, the case thus far stands. We came face to face with a 
problem : How can such a thing as a connected world exist ? Of the 
two roads along which a solution can be sought we found ourselves 
absolutely shut up to one that which demands a "principle of 
union." And something which by its very nature can act as such a 
principle we found ourselves to be acquainted with. We have, then, 
a problem ; we have a principle adequate to its solution ; and we have 
but one such principle. To the straightforward scientific intellect,- 
when it faces such a -situation, there is but one course : to accept the 
principle and proceed with its farther application. 

We must say, then, that the world, as a single system of facts, is 
the activity of a single eternal spirit, which by one and the same 
activity maintains the facts in their distinctness and links them 
together in one system; and which, to do this, must distinguish 
itself from each and all of the facts which it thus constitutes being 
thus the source and home of the whole order of the world, or (to use 
the technical language of philosophy), in the sense already indicated 
the subject of the world. 

But, as we saw, in order to explain how science is possible more 
is necessary than an account of how the objective world is possible. 
For science is the coming together of the soul and the world; is the 
organic union of subject and object. The world, we have been forced 
to say, is a system of facts present to an eternal spirit; it is the 
thought or activity of an eternal spirit. What then can man be, who 
in his science reproduces as his own thought that thinking of the 
eternal spirit? Here, again, there is no space to do justice to the 

1 Totum si mul, as mediaeval men of thought were wont to say. 
69 



THE STUDY OF NATURE 

argument. All that is possible is to sum up in the briefest form 
its conclusion. The knowing subject cannot be accounted for by 
reference to any of those objects, of whose very existence as objects 
of scientific study its own synthetic activity is a necessary condition. 
NOT can it be " derived " from any of the elements of its own experi 
ence (such as feelings or sensations) ; for of the very existence of 
these as elements of a human experience, its synthetic activity is, once 
more, a necessary condition. It can be accounted for only upon the 
view that the eternal subject of the world has reproduced itself or 
let us rather say, Himself 1 in and as the human subject; has repro 
duced Himself in such a way that, under whatever limitations, 2 the 
constitutive principles of our minds correspond to the constitutive 

i With regard to this verbal usage, it is perhaps worth while to say one thing : the 
important matter is not what pronoun a man chooses, but what he really means. When a 
writer (1) expresses the conclusion that the supreme principle of the world is an eternal 
spirit a single self-conscious and self -determining spirit, the eternal subject of the world, 
perfect in intelligence and reason ; (2) indicates that that eternal subject constitutes the 
whole order of nature, and that, in order to constitute any fact at all, it must distinguish 
itself from each and all of the facts which it constitutes ; (3) makes clear that he derives 
that conception, which for him illuminates the world, from a consideration of the nature 
and essential activity of spirit as found in man ; (4) points out that that spirit is present 
among men, is active in the whole of history, winning human hearts to itself, and through 
them leading the race of men onward to an ultimate issue of divine love and divine 
righteousness : at such a writer both the Manichsean and the Materialist, each from his 
own point of view, may have cause to feel enraged ; but the theologian who is a Theist 
surely should recognise in him a friend, and more than a friend. It is a great pity that 
men who really are agreed in the principles that lie at the basis both of their thought and 
of their conduct, should stand apart because they do not understand one another s speech 
some using a dogmatic dialect which loves ancient usages of Schools and Councils, 
others a tongue which has grown up in the atmosphere of science and seeks above all things 
(often with too violent a forgetfulness of the past) for accuracy. When we are so unhappy 
as to have to work by words rather than by action and affection, we ought, for the sake 
both of one another and of the truth, to do two things : we ought to set down our concep 
tions with clearness, articulating them definitely into their constituent elements so as to 
bring to light those subconscious meanings which we all hold and which shape our con 
clusions (and our lives) much more than we think ; and we ought to remember that most 
words have had histories the word person, for instance, has taken on technical and sharply 
limited meanings in two great developments, that of Roman Law, and that of the 
theological doctrine of the Trinity or to take another instance, the word substance 
expresses the category which has revealed itself in history as of all categories the one 
specially consecrated to Pantheism. Our Lord s was the better way, when, in speaking of 
the nature of God, He used the word Spirit, and in speaking of the relation of God to 
men, the word Father. 

2 Limitations whose character may be suggested by pointing out, for instance, that we 
live in time; that an animal body is organic to the process of the development of our 
spirits; that the appointed conditions of that process of development are such that we 
enter only by hard labour, and by struggles and sorrows which go beyond all hardness of 
labour, into our inheritance of knowledge and of character. 

70 



AND THE VISION OF GOD 

principles of that thought or activity of His which is the world. For 
that reason, and only for that reason, are we men able to make our 
selves at home in the nature which He constitutes, whether when, as 
children, we played amongst its flowers, or when we investigate it 
scientifically, or when, in times of happiness and still more in times 
of trouble and of loss, we find in it a companion and stay of our 
spirits: just as a reader is able to study a book, and gradually to 
enter into its meaning, and gradually to have his mind strengthened 
and uplifted by it, because, and only because, the constitutive prin 
ciples of his mind and being are in their essential character the same 
as those of the writer of the book. 

Such, then, is the account which must be given, on the one hand 
of the world which is known, on the other hand of the soul which 
knows. But the two questions to which these are answers were the 
two sides of the one question: How is knowledge possible? And it 
is when we come back to that question in its unity, and put our two 
answers together as the answer to it, that we see the deepest strength 
of the whole argument and of the conclusion to which it leads. Man 
is able to know nature to have science of nature only because there 
is an essential likeness between man and nature. The soul is able to 
go out into the world and make itself intellectually at home in the 
world is able to take the world into itself and reproduce in and as 
its own thought that system of facts and laws which is nature 
because, and only because, nature is really what the soul is, a spiritual 
existence; because, and only because, nature is the thought of God 
and man is the child of God, able, no matter how imperfectly and 
gradually, to think his Father s thoughts after Him. 1 

That insight has never been better stated than in words which 
tradition ascribes to a man of science. Kepler, seeing that the power 
which carried on the stellar movements was acquainted with, and 
acted in the most exact accordance with, those mathematical prin 
ciples which he himself had worked out in the council-chamber of his 
own pure reason, turned, it is said, from his telescope with the 
exclamation, " I think Thy thoughts after Thee, God/ Cases of 

i This is often expressed by saying that science is spirit finding itself in nature ; and 
that spirit can find itself in nature, only because nature itself is spirit. 

71 



THE STUDY OF NATURE 

this sort, which nowadays occur ever more frequently cases in which 
men of science come to conclusions mathematically (i.e., by the way 
of the pure reason), and then, turning to the telescope or to the labor 
atory, find that these conclusions are true of nature are very marked 
instances of the community of the intelligence which is nature with 
the intelligence which is man. But the same view of the world and 
of the soul which is needed to explain the possibility of these, is 
needed to explain any knowledge of nature by man at all, even though 
it be but the little child s knowledge of the flowers among which it 
plays, or the primitive shepherd s rough acquaintance with the laws of 
wind and weather or the ways of plant and animal life. 

What we have seen so far we may, then, sum up in this way : ( 1 ) 
The system or process of nature is a divine activity; is, if you will, 
part of the divine thought. (2) Our sciences of nature are the 
thinking of the thoughts of One who is invisible a thinking of God s 
thoughts after Him. The growth of these sciences may be described, 
from our side, as our gradual entering into, or comprehending of, or 
making ourselves at home in, the content of the divine mind; and 
from the divine side, as God s gradual impartation of His thought 
to us. (3) And this process of thinking God s thoughts after Him, 
of reading the book which He has written the book whose syllables 
are the growth of the flowers, and the ordered march of the stars, and 
the age-long development of animal organisms is possible to us 
because, and only because, God has reproduced Himself in us; 
because, and only because, we are His children, made, intellectually, 
in His likeness, having our essential cognitive principles the same as 
the principles of the divine intelligence; because, and only because, 
to use an accurate but easily misunderstood expression, the human 
mind is potentially the divine mind. 

So, then, even if we stopped, at this point of the metaphysician s 
regress upon the conditions of experience, we could affirm at least this 
much : In every step and at every stage both of the nature which is 
known and of man s activity in knowing it, the presence and activity 
of the Eternal is implied. The whole process of the building up of 
the natural and physical sciences is a co-working of man with God, 
of the human mind with the divine mind. It is a participation of 

72 



AND THE VISION OF GOD 

man in the Eternal Reason; is, for him who is willing to see the 
meaning of his own endeavours after science, part of the process 
whereby God becomes our dwelling-place and the home of our spirits. 
So that, even while the movement of history and the growth of mind 
are stripping away from cleric and priest and altar something of their 
awful splendour and long-asserted, compelling power, the sciences of 
nature have a sanctity which is immediate and cannot by any move 
ment of history or change of institutions be shaken. For the courts 
of science, whether the men who labour in them recognise it or no, 
are sacred with the most immediate presence of the ultimate God. 
And their sanctity is but part of a wider sanctity. To him who is 
able to see the meaning and significance of science, every ray of light 
that the man of science flashes from his mirror, every minutest 
animal cell that he examines under his microscope, together with his 
own power of knowing these objects, is a witness that the world he v 
dwells in is at once the activity and the temple of the Most High God. 
Newman to some extent apprehended this. " Every breath of 
air," he somewhere says, " and ray of light and heat, every beautiful 
prospect, is, as it were, the skirts of their garments, the waving of 
the robes of those whose faces see God." But this is rather the word 
of the preacher catching a momentary glimpse of the glory of his 
God revealed in alien realms, than any assured and thoroughgoing 
vision of the real being of nature. For, in the first place, Newman 
the churchman (using that word for a moment as Newman himself 
would have used it) loyal to the very letter of the dogma of his 
church, could scarcely look otherwise than askance upon nature, and 
upon the sciences of nature, and upon the independent endeavour of 
philosophy to penetrate to the ultimate meaning both of nature and 
of man s knowledge of nature. And secondly a worthier reason- 
he felt so acutely the revelation of God in conscience and in man s 
inner heart, 1 that he tended to overlook the revelation of God in 
nature, and to have no eyes for the fact that all knowledge of nature 
is in ultimate analysis knowledge of God, and is possible to man only 
through and as God s impartation of Himself to man. 

i See his description of his early religious feelings on p. 4 of the new edition of the 
Apologia: . . . "making me rest in the thought of two and two only absolute and 
luminously self-evident beings, myself and my Creator, j 

73 



THE STUDY OF NATUKE 

But in Wordsworth we find both adequate vision I had almost 
said, adequate comprehension and adequate expression. The per 
ception of what nature truly is; and the companion perception of 
what the true strength of our human life is : these are the ani 
mating and informing soul of his poetry. 1 That the contemplation 
of nature, the love of nature, the companionship with nature, is a 
companionship in which we lay aside our mortality, a companionship 
in which God imparts his mind to man and man s mind comes to 
dwell in its own proper home, its home in God : this is the essential 
principle of Wordsworth s vision of nature. It is in this companion 
ship with nature that we become living souls and see into the life of 
things, and the burthen of the mystery, the heavy and the weary 
weight of all this unintelligible world, is lightened, and we become 
aware of a deeper presence than before we had known, something 
far more deeply interfused than our first rapturous acquaintance with 
nature, our first delight in her glory of sound and colour, had taught 
us 

Something far more deeply interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ; 
A motion and a spirit, that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things. 

And it is Wordsworth s special crown of glory that with him this 
vision of the divinity of nature became also a vision of the sacredness 
of the ordinary life of man with its natural relationships, its natural 
duties, its natural charities. For him the heavenly light rested, as 
upon the lakes and silent hills, so also upon the elemental constituents 
of the life of man. The two together formed the one object of his 
work as a poet. For these as for those, he sought not to bring a 
consecration of poetic light from without but to penetrate to, and 
interpret, the heavenly nature which is their genuine being. 

i Perhaps one ought rather to say that these are the light of his poetry, the truth and 
insight which his poetry expresses ; while its warmth, the restrained but immense power 
that is in it, comes from his own English heart a heart most affectionate, and trained 
(like Plato s) by long discipline of tragic passion and deep peace. 

74 



AND THE VISION OF _ GOD 

Upon this it is worth while to pause a moment longer. For it 
explains a fact most significant in itself and, to men of the church, 
full of instruction. It may appear remarkable in the extreme that 
men, for religions sake, should take refuge from a prophet with a 
poet. And yet, when Newman is the prophet and Wordsworth the 
poet, that is what, to a certain extent and in a certain regard, we 
ordinary men living the ordinary life have to do. For (even leaving 
aside the fact that Newman, with all the intensity of his vision of the 
divine, came at last to look upon a single narrowly defined institu 
tion as the one thing in this world directly and distinctly of divine 
foundation), the very intensity of his vision of the unity of this life 
with the life to come dimmed his eyes to the unity of man with 
nature, and to the value of nature and of the natural man to God. 
But the unity of man with nature, and the unity of nature with God, 
Wordsworth saw with the clear vision of a daily and affectionate 
friendship. 

Hence it is, too, that while we are still young Newman s lesson is 
the easier to learn and is the one that specially wins us ; but when we 
grow older it is more and more to Wordsworth that we turn both for 
illumination and support. When we are young, and our hearts beat 
high, and the burden of the daily life has not fully come upon us, 
it is easy for us to despise the vanities of the world. It is easy to 
turn away from the noises of the earth, and from the littlenesses of 
the " practical life/ and to enter upon that short and direct road to 
the heavenly glory which consists in repudiating the earth and all 
its ways. But when we grow older, and life itself puts us in our 
places, and we are grappling day by day with the tasks of the 
ordinary life, and either in them or not at all must fulfil the vocation 
which we have from God; then we learn with a continually deepen 
ing gratitude to receive Wordsworth s lesson of the essential sacred- 
ness of the natural relationships, of the natural charities and affec 
tions, of the natural surroundings, of our daily life. It is not that 
Newman ever loses his high spiritual majesty in the eyes of any man 
who has once apprehended it; it is that Wordsworth comes nearer to 
us, and dwells with us in our daily cares, and illuminates our daily 
and natural life with divine and eternal light, showing us nature 

75 



THE STUDY OF NATURE 

and natural affection as a work of the grace of God and as a medium 
for the farther impartation of that grace to us. 

But we must return to the argument itself. For the point 
reached a moment ago was one at which we cannot stop. The insight 
so far gained compels us to take a further step. And to that step 
we are driven whether we view the matter from the divine or from 
the human side. 

First from the divine side. We have seen that the order of the 
world in accordance with which the world s history proceeds, is con 
stituted by an eternal spirit who is the subject of the world; in a 
^word, we have seen that the world is the thought or activity of God. 
But spirit, in any activity which has the form of time, proceeds 
teleologically. It "sees the end from the beginning," and in 
view of that end it arranges the beginning, arranges the essential 
conditions, the informing order and constitution of the whole process. 
It is involved, then, in the position already reached nay, it is involved 
in anything that can be called Theism that that whole activity of God 
in which Tie constitutes the order of the world and maintains the world, 
proceeds in view of an end or r*Ao<r. 

Or if we start from the human side we come to precisely the same 
point and almost by the same road. For man s life, so far at any rate 
as he enters into his moral and intellectual heritage, is a process of 
development ; nature itself, which is at once the beginning, the home, 
and the stubborn material, of our life, being a medium which God 
uses in what may be described indifferently as the communication of 
His mind to us, or as the development of our own minds. And so 
there arises the question : In a world-order which is rational, which 
is constituted by an eternal and self-conscious Reason, what can be 
the significance of such a possibility of human development? what 
can be the meaning of the fact that the form into which our life is 
cast is the form of development ? Here also the position already 
reached leaves us but one possible answer. The eternal subject of the 
world, who does not act wantonly or blindly or irrationally, who does 
not make experiments, and to whom it is impossible to institute a 
beginning that forgets its end, has constituted the world, with its 

76 



AOT) THE VISION OF GOD 

possibility of human development, in view of a rAos which would 
be a true and genuine fulfilment of the beings and the capacities that 
are the subjects of the development. 

From both sides, then, we are brought to the conception of an end 
or Tt\os in view of which God proceeds in that activity by which the^ 
order of the world is constituted and the process of the world s history 
made possible. And the next step of the argument whose course and 
whose conclusions are being noted here, is an attempt to understand 
more particularly what that rtkos can be. Since the order of the 
world in which we now live is constituted in view of that rAo?, cer 
tain conclusions concerning the latter are possible from a considera 
tion of the former. Two of these may in the briefest possible form 
be indicated here. In the first place, that "far-off divine event" 
consists in a perfect society, a fully realised "kingdom of God/ in 
which the capabilities of men, moral, intellectual, artistic, developed 
only in part often scarcely at all, and sometimes worse than not at - 
all in this world, reach their true and full development; and in 
which one person does not enter into his good at the expense of 
another ; but on the contrary the good of all is the good which each one 
seeks, and therefore the attainment of his good by any individual " 
means to that extent the attainment of the good by all. In the 
second place, the perfection of personal character which is implied in 
the perfection of that society, is not only present to the divine mind 
as an idea; it exists, fully and eternally realised, in the divine char- 
art or. In moral character, God Himself is, in eternal completeness, 
that toward which it is the vocation of the sons of God to grow ; such 
is the End which is at once the promise of our life, and the measure 
of its genuine value, and the standard which sets in a light more awful 
than that of any day of wrath its present distance from its goal. So 
that science, in the last saying which it makes possible, places us 
among those multitudes of men who, with a sorrow upon which a 
great hope is dawning, listen to that other saying which is at once the 
judgment and the inspiration of their lives: "Ye shall be perfect," 
even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." 

This then is, from the divine side, the rf Ao? of the world; from 
the human side, it is man s eternal vocation. And the way of the ful- 

77 



THE STUDY OF NATIJEE 

filment of that vocation is the way of the cross; the way, as the 
greatest of modern metaphysicians so steadily insisted, of " dying in 
order to live"; the way of that self -surrender in which men yield 
themselves up to be the organs of the eternal purpose, and become, if 
one may thus express it, subordinate centres of the activity of the 
divine will, realising their own true freedom and coming genuinely 
" to have life in themselves " precisely in the measure that they appre 
hend the divine purpose, and obey the vocation which the very 
existence of that purpose constitutes for man. 

With this latter insight the insight that men come truly to be 
themselves, that they realise their true freedom and come genuinely 
to have life in themselves, only as they implicitly or explicitly appre 
hend the divine purpose and obey the vocation which the existence of 
such a purpose constitutes the broad and general argument whose 
course we have in this section been following, comes full circle. 
From a problem of human life it began, and now it returns upon 
human life. On the field of human history which in the last 
analysis means on the field of man s daily life the eternal subject 
of the world is operating toward the realisation of His purpose; 1 but 
not by iron assertion and enforcement of sovereignty ; nor by mechan 
ical action of the divine will or the divine grace upon man, such as 
in the common conception of things a physical force exercises upon 
a physical object. Rather the divine mind operates in human history 
toward the realisation of its purpose, by imparting to the human mind 
ideas and strivings which, however imperfect, are in a certain genuine 
sense "representatives to man" of the eternal ideal, and which, 
becoming operative powers in men s lives, lead human history on 
toward its goal. The historical process of the realisation of the divine 
idea is worked out, that is to say, neither by mechanical action nor by 
"mere sovereignty" on God s part, but in and through that which 
when viewed from man s side, is "man s devotion to the highest 
ideal that he knows," and which when viewed from God s side may 
be described as " God reconciling the world to Himself." 2 In other 

1 1 am stating this from the point of view of philosophy and in the language of 
philosophy ; and am so stating it because it is a conclusion of philosophy. But it may not 
be amiss to refer to such passages of Scripture as John v. 17. 

2 Cf. (under the qualification mentioned in the last note) Col. i. 20 ; 2 Cor. v. 18, 19. 

78 



AND THE VISION OF GOD 

words, the divine idea realises itself in history by an impartation of 
itself in which it wins men as free spirits to its service. By impulses 
planted in man s nature; by the appeal that suffering makes, and by 
all the efforts undertaken to alleviate it; by natural affection and 
all "the charities of father, son, and brother"; by the institutions, 
the needs, the opportunities, of society and social life; by prophetic 
energies aroused in solitary and burning hearts; by the ideals that 
under the pressure of some great need arise in men s minds, and 
move upon the face of a people s life, and win to their service its suc 
cessive generations; in a word, in all that can be described as the 
natural development of morality and the natural growth of society; 
and in that in which divine revelation culminates the character and 
action of Jesus, wherein the ideal for human life, and the constitutive 
principle, the eternal and ultimate law, of the whole order of the 
universe, 1 stand revealed in absolute simplicity for all men s appre 
hension: in all this the divine idea has been at work, and is at 
work, winning to itself all men that can be won, and through them 
leading onward the course of history and introducing into time the 
principles and the powers of eternity. 2 

1 Cf. Col. i. 16, 17 (R.V.). 

2 I may perhaps be allowed a single historical reference. The great deterministic 
theologies (one hesitates to use party names like " Calvinistic " or " Augustinian ") tended 
to make the divine purpose execute itself in almost the same way as the force which 
drives a machine fulfils itself through the various parts of the machine, none of which 
have " life in themselves " or any will of their own or any energy different from the energy 
of the one total machine of which they are parts. Against these deterministic theologies, 
which were really great one-sided philosophies, Arminianism was a protest, not so much 
of the philosophic intellect of man as of his outraged moral nature. And, as such a 
protest, it never worked out adequately the great truth which it had felt keenly rather 
than apprehended rationally. Indeed, it has been almost ostentatiously non-philosophical 
seeking for practice without seeking for the reason of practice, and being historically 
less able to secure that very practice than its grim but convinced opponent. But the 
philosophy of the matter is clear. And it is one in which Calvinist and Arminian may 
very well unite. God is certainly supreme in His world ; the divine plan certainly supreme 
in history. In its resolute and unflinching affirmation of that, Augustinian and Calvin 
istic theology had its hands upon a great truth ; and in that fact lies the explanation of its 
immense practical power and efficiency. But, understood truly, that divine plan prevails, 
not as the sovereignty of an iron machine over its parts, but by " reconciling men to 
itself " ; by winning to itself the hearts and wills of men so that they devote themselves 
to it to be its organs, and it has in them the spontaneous and yet subordinate centres of its 
work of realising itself. 

But the men whose thoughts have lived with the past struggles of the human mind to 
understand the ways of God, even while under the leadership of a modern metaphysician 

70 



THE STUDY OF NATUKE 
VI. 

Such, then, is the point of view of that " greater whole of knowl 
edge " which the natural and physical sciences by their very existence 
imply and call for. What is gained from that point of view is an 
insight, not into the complete detail of the system of the world, but 
into its essential and ultimate nature : in that sense it is a " knowledge 
of the world as a whole/ And such a knowledge of the world as a 
whole is an interpretation of the meaning of life; for it is an account 
of the true character of that order of the world by which the condi 
tions of our life are set. Whether this knowledge be called theology 
(as finding the truth of the world in God), or philosophy of nature, 
or philosophy of mind, matters little. For man is the son of God; 
and nature is that thought of God which is God s medium in com 
municating His mind to man, and thus developing in man man s own 
mind. So that to know nature, God and man must be known ; and to 
know man, God and nature must be known. Any one of the three 
theology; philosophy of mind; philosophy of nature in order to be 
itself must be the other two; and to the extent that it is not, it 

they point out that those antithetic views can be unified in a more comprehensive truth, 
know that the schools of theology themselves have something better to show than one 
sided systems. Among those who have inquired concerning the relation of the world s 
history the relation of the wills, the characters, the fates, of individuals and societies 
to the divine nature, there is a greater than either Augustine or the Remonstrant against 
Augustine. If we are to be disciples in the schools of theology at all, the minds that are 
deepest and the hearts that most love God and live most in that love, will go back, it 
seems to me, past both these men of the West to that great and undying light which was 
the soul of Origen. If the word theology be taken in its strict sense as the human 
scientific wisdom which seeks to know God and to interpret the facts of the world in the 
light of that knowledge, Origen is the greatest of theologians. Greatest because he saw 
two things : that the conception of the divine nature is the supreme principle in theology ; 
and that the divine nature is love. He was not subject to that habit to which the Western 
mind continually (and very naturally) gave way; the habit of confining God s love, and 
all the communicative and disciplinary energies of that love, within th.e barriers of 
artificial legal requirement. To apprehend the meaning for theology of the love of God, 
one must one s self live in that love ; and live in it with width of heart and spaciousness 
of mind. And to say that is precisely to describe Origen. In contrast with the spirit of 
Origen, the tragedy of Western theology lies in the fact that it has been too much the 
work of the political and legal (indeed of the positively lawyer-like) mind, which in 
theology tends to view the rectifying of the relation of the sinful human race to God as a 
matter of mere transactions ; transactions carried through by steps which are not ethical 
realities but rather are forensic conventions, external, artificial, unreal. Not that the 
West has been without hearts that have lived in the love of God. That which is deepest 
and most vital in the life of the West has been brought into being precisely by such 

80 



AND THE VISION OF GOD 

ceases to have the form of science and becomes the voice of authority. 
For the world is one; the ultimate order of the world is one; the 
knowledge of that ultimate order is one; and that one knowledge is 
at once theology and philosophy of mind and philosophy of nature. 
With the emphasis at one point, it is theology (in the sense noted a 
moment ago) ; with the emphasis at another point, it is philosophy 
of mind (which, in the only useful or respectable sense of the term, 
means philosophy of history and of society, with all that history and 
society include of moral and intellectual endeavour) ; with the 
emphasis at still another point, it is philosophy of nature. 

And this knowledge, by whatever name it is called, is made pos 
sible to us by the fact that the " masters of them that know," in their 
long endeavour to understand nature, have steadily refused to stop 
half-way in the knowledge of nature; have refused to be contented 
with a study of the detailed facts of nature as mere facts ; have stub 
bornly endeavoured to penetrate to the true character of nature as 
an order or system ; and have found that the scientific gateway to this v 
knowledge is the gateway of epistemology. For to the insight into 
the ultimate character of nature they made their way by considering 
the fact that nature is knowable to man; by dealing (to put the same 

hearts. But they have been mystics, or saints, or laborious parish priests, or sisters of 
mercy, or, better still, laymen and laywomen living in the daily round and the common 
task as "friends of God" and therefore as friends of man seldom theologians as 
theologians. 

As one contemplates this history one cannot but wish that its sundered elements had 
somehow been united : the Western church, the Eastern theology ; the Teutonic races, 
the Greek mind. But with whatever regret one looks upon the past, one must still 
remember that in its course is a hidden wisdom greater than our own. And though 
Origen s intellect was one of the most spacious that ever has existed upon the earth ; 
though he loved much, and his heart was pure, and his theology also was therefore pure 
not tainted by human hatreds nor sophisticated by the use of legal conventions ; yet the 
history decided that the future was to be not with him but with the great African who 
was passionate in sin, passionate in piety, passionate in devotion to the church, passionate 
in maintaining the many diverse positions to which his subtle intellect was led, and who 
mastered the mind of the Western generations to whom it was not given to respond to the 
unflawed saintliness which was the character of Origen nor to the untroubled and con 
sistent light which was his mind. 

But if the theologians of the past are to be of real service to us and they can be 
we must walk with them as their companions, not as their slaves. Hence it is not the 
need of the day that Origen should be set on Augustine s disputed throne. In theology 
there has already been too much of human masters and of their schools. The world of 
to-day ought to be occupying itself and is coming more and more to occupy itself 
with the New Testament, and with that Son of man and of God, of whom, and of whose 
work upon human hearts, it is the value of the New Testament to be a record. 

7 81 



THE STUDY OF NATUKE 

thing in other words) with the question, raised naively by Socrates, 
almost solved by Plato, reinstated for modern thinking by Kant, 
" How is knowledge possible ?" 

But when this point of view is reached, and this insight into the 
essential character of the world s order gained, the endeavour of 
reason to know the world is still not at its end. For what we have 
done is this: we have found man partly possessing, partly striving 
to possess, science of the detailed facts and laws of the world ; and by 
inquiring how such science is possible we have gained an insight into 
the true character of the world and of its order. But that at once 
puts upon the scientific reason the obligation to turn back to the details 
of the world and to endeavour to give them, in the light and under the 
guidance of the insight just referred to, their higher and further 
interpretation. In other words, if you have seen that there is a divine 
plan of the world, logically you cannot stop. You have to go on to ask 
- what that plan is : which involves nothing less than to ask what the 
place is, in that plan, of each of the particular parts of the total 
system ; of each law of nature ; of each determining condition of man s 
life; of each great era and decisive event in history; nay, even of 
each decisive feature and event in each man s individual life. 

To put it epigrammatically, when philosophy reaches its goal its 
work is still not finished. The movement so far described, the 
movement from the multiplicity of the facts of the world to the 
eternal nature and eternal constitution of the world, might be called 
a movement from the circumference to the centre. But when the 
centre is gained, philosophy, whether as pure science or as a prac 
tical temper, cannot cease from its labour. From the centre it must 
return to the circumference, but bearing with it the light gained at 
the centre, and seeking by the aid of that light to comprehend more 
truly the details of the circumference. It must attempt, that is to 
say, to give to the particular facts of the world, the particular facts 
of nature and of history, their " divine interpretation " ; must 
attempt to view them not only as facts to be described and classified, 
but also as elements or factors in a divine and rational plan. To 
use an ancient terminology, the first movement of philosophy is 

82 



AND THE VISION OP GOD 

along the upward way the 6<5os arco but as soon as this move 
ment has gained a vision of its goal, philosophy must turn to the 
downward way theotfos narcso and return to the world, but bring 
ing with it a new light for the understanding of the world. 1 

And this demand is intensified from another side. Do not 
human history and human society themselves contradict this account 
of the essential constitution of the world and this view of man s his-/- 
tory as a process in which an eternal purpose, divine and divinely 
rational, is being realised? When human society and human history 
are what they are, so wasteful of life, so filled with oppression of the 
weak by the strong, so tainted with mean and hideous vices, so con 
fused and doubtful in the whole struggle of good with evil, how can 
they be interpreted as a process in which a divine purpose is being 
realised and a city of God built up: a city of God, in which each 
member becomes all that he has it in him, in virtue of his divine 
origin, to be; and in which the achieving of the good by one con 
tributes to (or rather, in its measure ts) the achieving of it by all? 

It is obvious that within the limits of an essay nothing more can 
be done than to indicate in the most summary fashion the general 
situation in which the intellect finds itself when it confronts this 
immense nay, this infinite field. 2 Such an indication, may be 
given by considering three points. 

(A) To begin with the simplest matter, it may be noted that the 
main divisions of the field are fairly well marked out. On the one 
side stands philosophy of nature; not simply in the sense of an 

1 Such a demand for the return of philosophy or theology from God to the world, is 
binding upon that Idealistic type of philosophy whose central argument was indicated in the 
preceding section . And it is thus binding because that philosophy, setting out to understand 
the world, finds in God and in a divine plan at once the explanation of the world and the 
truth of the world. But the other type of philosophy with which we are concerned in 
this book the philosophy (or theology, or religion, for it is all three) of the via negativa 
is, it will be understood, not subject in the same sense to this demand. For the essence 
of its method is, that it proceeds from the world to God, not by the synthetic movement 
of Idealism, but by denying the world altogether. Hence for it there can be no return 
from God to the world in the sense indicated above, but only the ineffable mystic rest in 
God. (Cf . supra, pp. 9, 10, and infra, pp. 116-150 ; 215 seq. ; 274 seq.) 

2 But it should be understood at the outset that both the intellectual obligation to this 
task, and the pressure of the cruel problems which intensify it, fall, not merely upon some 
special type of philosophy, but upon everything that can be called Theism. 

83 



THE STUDY OF NATUKE 

inquiry into the ultimate and essential character of the physical 
order; 1 but in the extended sense of an attempt to give to the details 
of that order their " divine interpretation " their interpretation as 
A parts or elements in the total divine plan. On the other side stands 
philosophy of history. And here also the inquiry is not in the simple, 
but in the extended, sense. That is to say, the question at issue is 
not simply the question how history is possible; is not simply the 
question how that process is possible in which man, an intelligent 
and active spirit, lives in organic union with the material order and 
its laws, and yet devotes himself through his generations to the 
realising of spiritual and social ideals, and so makes history. 2 It is 
rather the endeavour to see the stages and events of man s past history 
in their true meaning and their true light as steps in the divine plan 
of the world. 

Each of the two may be said to begin with broad and general 
problems and to advance from these to particular problems. The 
general problems are closely allied to the elementary and primary 
argument outlined in the preceding section; and can be pursued by 
the human intellect with some degree of scientific success and profit. 
But the particular problems require for their solution a minute knowl 
edge of the details of the divine plan, not attainable in any such 
experience as that of man upon the earth. In the philosophy of 
nature, for instance, the first and easiest of the more general prob 
lems arises from that character of the physical order which more than 
any other has impressed the modern mind: the unbroken orderliness 
which prevails in it, the unchangeableness and inviolability of its 
laws. This problem indeed takes us only a step beyond the general 
Idealistic argument already outlined; the conclusions reached in that 
argument suggest at once both the rational necessity of this "con 
tinuity " of the material order, and the possible limitations of it. And 
that from whichever side one views the spatial world : whether (a) as 
an expression of the divine nature, or (ft) as one of the media by 
which God communicates to man, and develops in man, man s own 

1 For that inquiry would be simply a special application of the general and elementary 
argument outlined above in V. 

2 For that, once more, would involve simply the argument of V. 

84 



AND THE VISION OF GOD 

mind. From the former point of view, the spatial order is regarded 
with reference to its source; and appears as necessarily sharing in 
the absolute orderliness and rationality of that source. From the 
latter point of view it is regarded with reference to its end. That 
end is the development of reason in man; and the medium by which 
reason is communicated must itself have rationality and the orderli 
ness of rationality. The source is reason; the end is the develop 
ment of reason ; any medium employed by such a source toward such 
an end can scarcely be other than a systematic embodiment of reason. 
It is perfectly true that we men in our best endeavours struggle 
toward ends imperfectly conceived ; perfectly true that the best means 
we can fashion for ourselves do not fully express even those imperfect 
conceptions; for we have to work upon materials of which we are 
not as yet fully (or even approximately) masters. But God is under 
neither limitation. The divine ends and the divine media and instru 
ments., when known as they truly are, are all alike expressions of the 
divine nature. There is a limitation indeed. But it is not in God. 
It is in the minds of us men who are seeking to apprehend God. 

In the philosophy of nature, then, general problems of this sort 
are not hopeless. But beyond them lies that which is almost hope 
less: the endless range of particular problems; the task of compre 
hending the place and meaning, in the divine plan, of each particular 
law of nature and each particular stage and event of natural being. 
In this (for a reason presently to be stated), little is possible to us 
except conjecture. Such conjectures have indeed been made from 
Aristotle s day to Schelling s ; and often they have been both brilliant 
and happy. But they are always to be ranked as probability or as 
prophecy, and not as assured insight gained in the court of the 
philosophic reason by methods appropriate to that court. 

And so in the philosophy of history. We have already seen 1 how 
upon the field of history the divine mind operates upon and in and 
through the human mind; how to the human mind the divine mind 
imparts ideas and energies which are in some genuine sense repre 
sentatives of the T&OS eternally present to God; how these become 
operative powers in human history and lead forward upon its way, 

i V, ad fin. 
85 



THE STUDY OF NATURE 

in religion and morality, in art and science, in society and the state, 
the spiritual development of mankind. The human intellect may 
? work with some success (in Hegel has worked with some success) 
in tracing broadly this growing impartation of divine ideas through 
the main stages of history Oriental, Greek, Roman, Mediaeval, 
Renaissance and Reformation, eighteenth century, French Revolu 
tion and its era. But when we pass on to ask the exact " divine 
interpretation" of each particular event, it must be said (again for 
a reason to be stated presently) that we are going beyond the limits 
of the knowledge that is possible upon the earth. In such matters 
7 we must be content for the present to live by faith, and by that illu 
mination, poetic or prophetic, which to men of faith is not denied. 

(B) But when this statement has been made, it is necessary as 
a matter of fairness to remind ourselves of the fact which was stated 
near the beginning of the present section : namely, that the endeavour 
itself is a legitimate endeavour of the scientific reason. And that 
not merely in the sense that its problem can be stated without 
absurdity or self-contradiction; but in the sense that science must 
advance to it or remain radically incomplete. It lies directly upon 
the road along which science advances to the knowledge of the world; 
it not only forms an integral stage of the journey of science, it is the 
last and culminating stage. It is absolutely necessary to the com 
pleteness of the scientific knowledge of the world, absolutely necessary 
to that penetrating and thoroughly articulated knowledge of the world 
which it is part of the business of reason to acquire. And this last and 
culminating stage the scientific intellect must somewhere and some 
time enter upon, unless it is to turn aside from its work of knowing 
the world as the world truly is. Nay, more than this must be said. 
Not the scientific intellect merely, but the total soul of man must 
sometime and somewhere enter upon (or at any rate progress for ever 
toward) an experience of this type, unless it is to turn away from its 
true goal that union with reality, that union with God, in which 
faith becomes one with reason, and perfect activity is guided by 
perfect science. 

And however remote such a consideration as that may appear, 
any philosophical writer whose speech is English ought resolutely to 

86 



AND THE VISION OF GOD 

insist upon it. For, at the point now in question, the sober and prac 
tical genius of the Anglo-Saxon race turns instinctively away froim/ 
the further investigations of philosophy to the practical life. 
" Enough," the men of that race instinctively say, " of this too proud 
and too daring journeying of the reason into eternity. Once we are 
assured that modern science of nature does not take away from us 
the vision of God and of the ( far-off divine event which is His pur 
pose, but on the contrary confirms by its very existence that vision, 
we will turn again to the field to which we properly belong, to the 
practical life." This is the native and characteristic attitude toward 
philosophy of the genius of England, as it speaks through those of 
her sons who, for the solution of the intellectual difficulties that beset 
their moral and religious devotion, have found themselves compelled 
to go to the schools of philosophy. In one sense, indeed, the men 
who embody that genius have no philosophy; their traditional 
" school," the school of Locke and the Mills, stands, as a philosophy, 
at no great remove from being the sorriest thing under heaven. But { 
in a greater sense, they have philosophy: they have the philosophic 
mind the feeling for eternity, the sense for the reasonableness of 
things and for ordering life in accordance with that reasonableness. 
But this philosophic mind they have expressed in their own way: 
not in technical writings, nor in system-making; but in something 
better, in customs and institutions, in the concrete deed rather than 
in the abstract word. The majestic, yet reserved and moderate, eleva 
tion of the prayers of their great church; the ancient peace of their 
churchyards ; the mingled dignity and simplicity of their family life ; 
their mighty works of war 4ind of peace, of commerce and of justice, 
done throughout all the world: these are the works of their 
philosophy. 

Such a national character is not a thing to be lamented. On the 
contrary, no man can live his life with integrity the inchoate integ 
rity possible upon the earth without to a very great degree turning 
in that fashion from those " further investigations of philosophy." 
Yet such a national character makes it all the more necessary to 
insist upon the statement just made, that whether with reference to 
the scientific intellect merely, or to the whole nature of man, that 

87 



THE STUDY OP NATUKE 

further stage of philosophy must somewhere and sometime be entered 
upon. For while the English are right in feeling that reason 

^embodied in institutions is a greater thing than rational insight 
expressed in words, yet if for the moment a Canadian may lay aside 
the restraint due from him and speak with the freedom of an Eng 
lishman at home they run a double danger. In the first place, they 
are in continual danger of sinning against the spirit of science. 
And no power upon the earth whether it be the genius and charac 
teristic temper of a great people, or the proud spirit of ecclesiastical 
theology can, without self-destruction, permanently repudiate the 
scientific spirit, or permanently oppose it, or permanently draw a 
line and say that thus far it shall come and no further. 1 But in the 
second place, they are exposed to a still greater danger in the very 
field of their strength the field of the practical life. Alike in their 
institutions and in their conduct, obstinate unreason and authority 
without intelligence too easily secure a footing; even when they are 
saved by the stubborn and half-instinctive devotion to righteousness 
which is their better angel, they are almost lost again for lack of 
devotion to wisdom. They labour hard in all quarters of the earth, 
performing the tasks laid upon them by that wisdom of the world 
which compels all the peoples to its service. But they labour blindly, 
in obedience rather to practical instincts and to their tenacious and 
masterful hearts, than to clear visions of the enlightened intelligence ; 
and so they achieve great things, but in their greatest works make 
themselves often the fools of fate rather than its intelligent servants. 
They load upon their shoulders burdens from all the ends of the 

. earth, and so accomplish the works of the world-spirit; but seldom is 
any vision of its purpose in their eyes, seldom the joy of its free 
service in their hearts. Doggedly and masterfully and blindly they 
struggle forward, animated by a spirit that is mixing itself with time 
and leading the centuries to a goal beyond the horizon; but even in 
thus playing their part and fulfilling their great vocation, they too 
often forget to be the sons of the hidden wisdom and remain only its 
strong slaves. They serve God, but " know it not " ; they work His 

i The intellectual spirit that England needs, if her genius is to do justice to itself, is 
the intellectual spirit of Origen or of her own forgotten son, Cudworth. 

88 



AND THE VISION OF GOD 

works, but look not upon His face. God fulfils Himself through 
their labours; but they themselves stand in constant danger of being 
exiles from God. 

(C) But, this being once for all understood, we can return with 
clear consciences to the fact with which we are at this point specially 
concerned: namely, that the achievement of this ultimate goal of 
science is beyond our present powers, and beyond the horizon of our 
present life. If achieved by us at all, it must be through some such 
development of our capacities of reason as only a life to come can 
afford. Why this is, and what the loss or gain of it for us men is, 
may be seen by considering two points. 

(1) The inquiry whose course was outlined in the preceding sec 
tion was an inquiry into the ultimate nature, the true character, of 
the world. The conclusion was that the " material order " is 
really a spiritual system, or rather a factor in a spiritual system; 
that the world has its source in a divine and eternal reason; that 
there is a divine plan of the world. That conclusion was gained by 
the reason moving easily and securely through an elementary and 
absolutely simple argument. So that it is a conclusion both easy and 
safe ; no man who has once really comprehended the facts and argu 
ments which lead to it can well cease from holding it in some form. 
But what we have now come face to face with is something very 
different. It is no longer the question, What is the true nature of 
the world ? It is rather the question, The truth of the world con 
sisting in a divine plan, how are we to interpret each of the facts and 
events of our present world as elements in that plan? And that is a 
problem as difficult to the human intellect in its present condition 
as the other is easy. For let it be considered what it involves to state 
the exact place and meaning of any one element of a great system in 
the total plan of that system. It involves knowing the system in all 
the completeness of its detail. Only so can you exactly estimate the 
place of any one detail among all the others. And to the extent that 
your knowledge falls short of that kind of completeness, to that 
extent is your interpretation of the place and meaning of particular 
facts and events conjecture rather then science, faith rather than 
knowledge. It may be most brilliant and most happy conjecture; 

89 



THE STUDY OF NATURE 

the soul of man may apprehend the meaning of the soul of the world, 
even as some most fragmentary mirror in the remotest of the stellar 
spaces may receive and reflect the ray of the central sun; and so the 
conjecture may even rise to the level of such a faith, of such a 
prophetic interpretation of history, as a wise and good man might 
very rightly be willing to build his life upon. But for all that, to the 
extent to which the total plan in the particularity of its detail is not 
known, such interpretation of particular facts remains, as was said, 
probability rather than certainty, conjecture rather than science, faith 
rather than knowledge. And the extent to which, upon the earth, 
we are thus ignorant of the " total plan in the particularity of its 
detail," may be seen by considering a single fact : in the present life 
we move among beginnings; that which is to come after, only in the 
light of which can these beginnings be seen in their full significance, 
is hidden from our direct acquaintance. 

But if this is so, what ought we to do with regard to philosophy of 
nature and philosophy of history in this more extended sense? Shall 
we throw them summarily overboard as endeavours merely and simply 
hopeless? To a question of this sort many will give, instantly and 
decidedly, an affirmative reply. But the men whose opinion in such 
a matter is best worth having will be held back from that summary 
procedure by one consideration. It is well for the human race to be 
kept mindful how great a thing its endeavour to know the world 
really is. Hence it is well that in each great intellectual era there 
should be men leading the forlorn hope of science into the field now 
in question; men great enough to compel respect for themselves and 
their work. Indeed, each of the three great intellectual eras has had 
such men. In particular, the three men whose names have already 
been mentioned together Aristotle, Aquinas, Hegel were such men. 
Each worked his way to ultimate principles, and then in the light of 
those principles proceeded to survey all the provinces of experience; 
and thus attempted to form all the science of his day into its " encyclo 
paedia." And in connection with this there is one specially notable 
point. One of the three Aquinas was no solitary prophet of the 
comprehensive spirit of philosophy to a gainsaying age. He was a 
philosopher because of his age, and in his philosophy reflected the 

90 



AND THE VISION OF GOD 

temper of it. And the instructive thing is that the same compre 
hensive and organising spirit which led the thinking of the age to its 
culmination in an encyclopaedic philosophy, led to something equally 
great on the practical side. It led to a partial success partial of 
necessity, but probably greater than at any time since has been 
achieved in dealing with that practical problem with which the 
whole life of humanity upon the earth is a wrestle; the problem, 
namely, of working out a social order in which every man has a place 
a definite station with definite duties. Just because from this 
questing of the intellect into eternity we are about to turn back to the 
" every-day practical life," we ought all the more keenly to remember 
that the age in which men walked most confidently in those fields of 
philosophy from which we are here turning away, was an age in 
several most important respects greater than our own in this very 
matter of practical achievement. 

(2) But, in the second place, if reason enters here upon a field 
where for most of us the footing is precarious and where only an 
elect few can do work which compels respect ; if the work of philosophy 
changes at this point from the gaining of assured insight by an argu 
ment of absolute simplicity, to the laborious and uncertain work of 
interpreting details whose total scheme is not open to our vision : so 
also at this point does man s need of rational insight change. If we 
may believe that there is a divine plan of the world, a plan rational^ 
and righteous, then it is no long step and no illogical step to the 
belief that if we organise our lives according to the best reason and 
the best righteousness open to our vision upon the earth, we shall be 
putting ourselves upon a pathway whose end will be the organisation 
of our lives according to the reason and the righteousness of the city 
" whose pattern is laid up in heaven." For, as already we have seen, 
the divine idea does not dwell apart from human history. The 
supreme principle of the divine mind is, and must be, the supreme 
law of that whole activity of God which is the world and the history 
of the world. But that divine idea, as also we have seen, does not 
act upon human history like a mechanical power upon material bodies. 
It acts by imparting itself to men, and shaping their spirits, and 
winning them to itself; thus it becomes at once the source and the 

91 



THE STUDY OF JSTATUKE 

nourishment of all development of reason among men and of all 
human effort after righteousness. And so the reason and the 
righteousness that men have so far been able to grow into must be 
looked upon as at once the result of, and the representative of, and 
the pathway toward, the reason and the righteousness that are perfect 
and eternal. And if this be true, we need not mourn greatly that the 
exact " divine interpretation " of the particular events of history and 
the particular facts of nature is hidden from us. The life of faith is 
justified. " Assure us," so we may say, " assure us that there is a 
divine plan of the world; that over all things rules, and through all 
history operates supremely, an eternal spirit who is living reason and 
living righteousness. Assure us that the ultimate power of the world 
is the perfection of that goodness after which we struggle so imper 
fectly; and that, therefore, the goodness which is to us a goal far-off 
and dimly understood is in truth both the ultimate reality of the 
world and the immanent law and hidden wisdom 9 of the world s 
process a ( wisdom which may indeed be veiled under forms hard 
in the extreme for such a creature as man to read, and may indeed, 
in its clashes with the creative will ?l of man, seem cruel to its own 
servants, but none the less is working effectually and lovingly toward 
its goal. Assure us that the world is not in its real constitution a 
non-moral order which cares nothing for moral and rational ends and 
awaits with nature s stern patience the day when we men shall have 
perished and all things shall be once more as if we and all the 
labours of our morality and of our religion never had been ; but that, 
on the contrary, the eternal power which constitutes the conditions of 
our life is more interested than even we ourselves can be in the causes 
of human goodness ; so that when a man sets himself about that work 
to which the present state of the human race incessantly calls everyone 
who is willing to hear the work of saving men from the evils 
without them and within them, and of rousing in their hearts devotion 
to the causes of goodness he is not dashing himself against an 
eternal and hopeless barrier, either in God or in nature, but rather is 
in line with the supreme power, the supreme law, the supreme pur 
pose, of the world. Assure us of these things and we will fight the 

i T. H. Green, Works, Vol. III., p. 278. 
92 



AND THE VISION OF GOD 

battle of life, if not in the strength of complete knowledge, at any 
rate in the strength of hope and of faith. We will not lament that 
after a certain point the journeying of the reason into eternity 
becomes perilous or even impossible. At whatever point the check 
comes, we have at any rate learned enough to enable us to labour in 
faith, devoting ourselves to the causes of present-day reason and 
present-day righteousness, and trusting that in so doing we are making 
ourselves organs and instruments nay, sons and fellow-workers of 
the eternal righteousness. It matters little at any rate it will not 
drive us to rebellion or to despair that concerning the exact and 
eternal meaning of each detail we are for the present in the dark. 
We are willing enough to fight for a time in the dark, or on a border- 
ground between light and dark, if only we can assuredly believe that 
the order of the world which sets all these conditions of our life is 
in ultimate analysis a reasonable order, and that the supreme power 
of the world is really favourable to us in our struggle after the good 
ness of ourselves and of our fellows. If only we can know that 
nature and history have a divine interpretation/ we will turn back 
to the labours and the battles of the practical life, willing enough that 
the full details of that interpretation should for a time be hidden 
from our eyes." 

VII. 

Such, then, in a brief outline of its elements, are the stages and 
conclusions of the greatest and safest argument which man has been 
able to work out concerning the nature of the world and the meaning 
of his life in it; an argument which had for the first of its world- 
prophets Plato, but owes its specifically modern formulation and con 
duct to an insight won partially and laboriously in old age by 
Immanuel Kant. The ultimate explanation of the world and of our 
life (so it finds) is an eternal spirit and an idea or purpose the 
Good which that spirit is realising in the process of the world. 
Eeality the universe is a society of spirits; that eternal spirit and 
the lesser spirits in whom the eternal spirit reproduces himself. The 
existence of " material " objects means their being present to that 

93 



THE STUDY OF NATUKE 

eternal self-consciousness and their having a place in the system of 
that divine thought. Our sciences of nature, with the mathematical 
and physical sciences which logically precede the "natural sciences/ 
are, when viewed from below, an entry of ours into the content of 
the eternal mind; when viewed from above, an impartation of that 
mind to us, by which our own minds are developed ; are, in one word, 
a divine impartation meeting a human effort. Morality, in the true 
form of its idea, is the devotion of us men to the service of that divine 
idea or purpose which is being realised in the history of the world, 
but which, as we have seen, makes its way toward its own realisation 
not by acting mechanically upon men, but by winning them as free 
spirits to its service. And religion, when it becomes truly itself, is 
the greater whole of which such morality is a part ; is the eif ort after 
unity, in affection, in character, in activity, with the eternal spirit 
who is the subject of the world. So that the history in time of the 
universe, when seen as it truly is, is a process in which an eternal 
spirit realises an eternal purpose by imparting himself : reproducing 
himself in spirits that are finite, and free in so far as their finitude 
permits; and winning those spirits to himself; and communicating 
himself to them both intellectually and morally, not only through 
the visions of poets and prophets, but also through every effort of the 
man of science after knowledge and of the good man after goodness; 
and so making possible the attainment of that City of God which is 
the r^Aos" of all his action and therefore the supreme law and imma 
nent principle of the whole process. 1 

These are conclusions of philosophy; and therefore, in stating 
them the language of philosophy has been used. But it, like all tech 
nical language, has a certain reticence ; so that it may be advisable to 
re-state in one or two sentences of more familiar tone, the conclusion 
which has just been summed up. To say, then, that the universe is 
a society of spirits, an eternal spirit and the lesser spirits in whom 
he has under limitations reproduced himself, is to say that the 

i This might be summed up technically by saying that one and the same thing is the 
supreme principle alike of Being, and of Knowledge, and of Morality and Religion. It is 
his clear insight into this and his steady insistence upon it, that make Plato the greatest 
teacher in the schools of philosophy ; and the one most salutary to the divided and dis 
tracted modern mind. (Cf. Philosophical Lectures and Remains of Richard Lewis 
Nettleship, 1st ed., Vol. II., p. 218 seq.) 

94 



AND THE VISION OF GOD 

universe is a family, and that the relation between its members and 
the eternal spirit who is at once their source and their home is the 
relation of sonship and fatherhood. And that Father is not merely 
has, but is all rational and moral perfection. That is to say, reason, 
righteousness, and love, are at the heart of things; are the immanent 
law both of the constitution of the world and of the process of the 
world. And the reason, the righteousness, and the love, which are 
thus at the heart of the world, are one thing and not three things ; for 
each in order to be itself has to be the other two. Eeason without 
love and righteousness would be merely a hard logic. Eighteousness 
devoid of reason and love would be but an arbitrary and iron-clad 
law, such as would intensify all evil and thus defeat its own aim/ And 
love without righteousness and reason would be no love at all, but some 
thing quite contrary to love a weak and foolish indulgence working 
continual injury to its own object. In God reason, righteousness, and 
love, are one thing ; x and in their undivided unity they are at once the 

i When one has apprehended this, it is at first with anger, but presently when the 
long upward struggle of humanity through many different levels of thinking toward the 
light, has made its appeal to one s heart with a feeling very different from anger, that 
one remembers the way in which Western theology, after the Reformation as well as 
before, frequently dealt with the divine attributes. That theology was developed in a 
legal and political atmosphere. Naturally enough it took for granted the legal view of 
the relation of God to the world ; it used many specific legal conceptions, taken from 
Roman or Teutonic law ; what is still more, in thinking about God it retained the habits 
of the lawyer s mind its acuteness, its argumentativeness, its delight in convenient but 
unreal distinctions, its tendency to rely upon serviceable arbitrary conventions instead of 
seeking pure truth for its own sake. Hence it was easy for this theology to rend apart the 
unity of the divine nature ; easy for it almost to view the divine nature as a battle-ground 
of conflicting attributes separating sharply the righteousness from the love of God, 
then virtually hypostatising these abstractions, so as to set them over against each other 
and thus make an opening for a forensic theory of atonement. But theology, so far as it 
imprisons itself in this framework of abstractions, does not know God ; though the men 
who made the theology may have loved Him. To come at the matter from another angle 
one very relevant to the mind of the church at the present hour such theology, though 
it held the Bible in great reverence, did not know the Bible. It was, in the correct though 
not in the sectarian use of the term, un-Evangelical ; it did not know, and was not based 
upon, the mind of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels. For in the Gospels what Jesus 
continually insists upon, throughout His work of revealing and establishing the Kingdom of 
God, whose King is a Father, is His own unity with the Father. In His whole mission to 
the world, He is one with the Father ; that mission and that work, therefore, express the 
mind and attitude of the Father ; they are not a forensic expedient for changing that 
mind and attitude. Jesus, to use St. John s great expression, is the Word, in whom the 
character of God and His mind toward man are spoken forth : and that puts out of court 
for ever the idea that the mission of Jesus to the world either represented or made possible 
a change in the mind of the Father toward men. Hence it is, that as Biblical Theology 

95 



THE STUDY OF NATUKE 

nature of God and the law of every divine act; and therefore the 
immanent principle of that order of the universe which the divine 
activity constitutes. 

These conclusions and the argument which leads to them have in 
the preceding sections been stated as matters that belong simply to the 
courts of the reflective reason. As such, they represent what any 
scientific inquiry represents the intellect of man at its legitimate 
work of trying to understand the world it lives in. And that attempt 
needs no special defense or apology. To the endeavour to understand 
his world man is called by the laws and powers of his own nature ; so 
that the effort itself is not merely a legitimate one, but is an integral 
and essential part of that activity by which man develops his own 
being, and comes truly to be man, and so fulfils his divine vocation. 

But the greatest of all the masters who have worked in those 
courts of the reflective reason would not have left the matter upon 
that footing. To Plato, as his whole life and the whole body of his 
writings at every point make manifest, philosophy meant a temper 
and a character as well as an activity of the scientific intelligence. 
And it meant these three, not as standing apart, but as joined 
together in that indissoluble unity in which each shares the nature 
of the others and each contributes to the perfection of the others. It 
meant a life in which philosophy, as an activity and a vision of the 
intellect, has passed over into the " philosophic mind," and that mind 
has become the guide of conduct. Whether with Greeks or with 
moderns, the sounder any man is in character, the more unwilling he 
is that truth and life should stand apart. The integrity of his charac 
ter compels him to seek for unity in his life ; compels him, if he has 
apprehended a profound view of life, to seek to transmute that view of 
life into life itself. 1 

the science which studies the types of Biblical teaching from their own point of view and 
upon their own scale of internal proportion makes its way in the thought of the church, 
and compels the church more and more to return to the mind of its Founder, those 
forensic structures which it was the delight of the political and legal mind of the West to 
build in the courts of theology cease to be either the home or the prison-house of the souls 
that seek to enter upon their true relationship to God. 

i In this no name can rank with Plato s. Yet we men of the West ought with piety to 
recall the name of one who helped to found philosophy among ourselves the brave 
Roman to whom philosophy meant not only knowledge, but uprightness in action and 



AND THE VISION OF GOD 

And not only is this essential to integrity of personal character. 
It is demanded also by the nature of truth simply as truth. Here, 
indeed, we are brought to a point about which misapprehensions 
cluster ; misapprehensions so passionate that it is advisable to set down 
both sides of the question. (1) Philosophy does not create life. For 
philosophy is primarily science. It is an effort to understand. It no 
more professes to create the world whose ultimate nature it seeks to 
apprehend, or the life whose meaning it inquires after, than (for 
instance) chemistry professes to create those elements and those rela 
tions of elements which are the object of its investigations. The soul 
of man is by its original nature scientific, artistic, practical; and in 
its practice capable of morality and religion. Hence the life of man 
is a life scientific, a life artistic, a life practical, a life moral, a life 
religious. This is the given object, and what philosophy does is to 
attempt to understand it ; is to attempt to apprehend the meaning of 
that life, and the nature of the world in which it is lived and by 
which its conditions are set. The man who urges that philosophy 
cannot create religion, and then finds in that the ground for an 
habitual dislike of philosophy or a passionate warfare against it, 
simply misapprehends the whole situation. And such a misappre 
hension, it ought to be understood, is a revelation of the man himself. 
But (2) philosophy can be of use in guiding life where life already 
exists. For truth, simply by being itself, has power over the soul. 
To make truth merely cold and dead; to deny that the visions of 
reason can afford any awakening or inspiration to the moral and 
religious nature; to regard light as nothing and heat as everything; 
to set science and life, knowledge and goodness, truth and religion, 
radically apart : this is to shiver man s nature into blind and crippled 

fortitude in affliction, and who handed on his lesson to be a consolation to many a saddened 
heart in the troubled West. Philosophy, so Boethius learned and taught, is the love and 
pursuit of that wisdom which is the quickening mind and primeval principle of things ; 
is in some sort a fellowship with it, so that the intelligent mind is at once illuminated by 
it and drawn back into it. So that philosophy, in being the pursuit of wisdom, is a pursuit 
of divinity. For that wisdom which is the eternal principle of the world imposes the 
worthiness of its own divinity upon all the souls that occupy themselves with it, and 
brings them to the force and purity of their own true nature ; and thus arises not only 
a truth of speculations and thoughts, but also a holy chastity of acts. (See the finely 
sympathetic account, and specially the analysis of the De Consolatione, in Maurice. The 
foregoing sentences are from Maurice s statement of the conception of philosophy found 
in the first dialogue In Porphyrium. ) 

8 97 



THE STUDY OF NATURE 

fragments, instead of recognising that the true power and perfection 
of that nature consist in a unity in which each part contributes to all 
the others. The man who habitually does it, and imagines that he is 
serving religion thereby, may mean well. But it ought to be pointed 
out to him that, to the extent to which this tendency dominates him 
and is not counteracted by other and sounder things in his work, to 
that extent he is making himself really a valuable servant to only one 
kind of religion that which, having no truth in it, wishes to have 
nothing to do with truth. 1 

We can see then, to return to a statement of a moment ago, how 
from both sides from philosophy as intellectual truth, from the 
integrity of character which forbids men to let truth and life stand 
apart there is a compulsion to the attempt " to transmute one s 
* view of life into life itself." Indeed it is only for the men who 
recognise that compulsion, or rather it is only in such men, that 
philosophy does its true and full work. And to attempt to gain some 
hint or glimpse of how in such men philosophy turns, through the 
" philosophic mind," back into life, is the last thing that we have here 
to do. 

It can, indeed, be only a glimpse. But it is worth while to try to 
gain even a glimpse. For what the philosophic mind brings to our 
life, is the habit of regarding and valuing the goods of life from the 
point of view of that eternal purpose which man s life is intended to 
realise. And never was the need of that habit so great, whether on 
the part of the leaders of society or on the part of the general body 
of its members, as now. For the resources of society, both intellectu 
ally and still more in the subjection of natural powers to man s use, 
are greater than ever before. But owing to the assertion, throughout 
>the whole of society, of the individual in his private and selfish 
interests, those resources are most wastefully used. A few specially 

i Of course, in thinking of truth as a guide of life and an inspiration for life, the fact 
noted in the introduction must be kept in mind. There is a tendency in us all to overlook 
the radically important distinction between abstract and concrete truth. A man of 
science, for instance, who deals with some one aspect of reality in strict isolation from the 
others, easily forgets the abstract-ness of his own special science ; easily is tempted to 
think that its principles give the final account of the world and of our life. Thus we get 
those " premature and hasty " world-views of which Materialism and the mechanical 
view of the world are examples. (Cf. supra, pp. 4, 5.) 

98 



AND THE VISION OF GOD 

skilful or fortunate men possess them frequently to their own inner 
evil in large measures; while to many they are only very scantily 
available, or not at all. And the solutions so far wrought out are 
tainted by the evil itself which they seek to cure; for they are only 
those partial and bitter solutions which separately organised classes 
are able to win and to maintain at the point of the sword. 

In the first place, then, the men in whom philosophy has become 
the philosophic mind have learned the first and most fundamental of 
all practical lessons. They have learned what the true business of 
life is. Stated on its positive side, it is the winning of men s hearts 
to those causes of goodness (goodness as including " all science, all 
art, every virtue and all perfection") which are the causes of God, 
and in the service of which men at one and the same time fulfil their 
divine vocation and come to be truly themselves. It is only as taking 
its appropriate place in that endeavour that any resource of nature 
which man has mastered, or any power of his own mind or heart or 
hand, is rightly used. 

But secondly, in what they have learned concerning the world, such 
men have not only an illumination with regard to what the business 
of life is. They have also in it certain great sources of strength and 
of steadiness as they turn to the actual performance of that business 
of life. To begin with, they have what for want of some better name 
one must call the strength of hope the strength of a faith which 
reason justifies. For they have learned that however Manichsean the 
present appearance of our life may be, there is no Manichseism at the 
eternal heart of things. They have learned that there is no eternal 
moral dualism in the universe, such as can set to the endeavour of 
good men after goodness (not their own individual goodness merely, 
but the goodness of all their race) a hopeless limit or a final defeat. 
For what they have seen is this : that the legitimate and inevitable 
onward course of the scientific reason, the legitimate and inevitable 
onward course of that attempt to know the world, of which physical 
and natural science is one stage, ethical and social science another 
stage, brings us at last to the vision of a God who is over all and in 
all, and by union with whom men may enter upon courses of minis 
tration to their fellows, which shall be checked by no eternal limit 

99 



THE STUDY OF JSTATUBE 

nor defeated by any eternal barrier. For to Him goodness is of 
absolute value; it is the end for which He constituted and keeps in 
existence all His worlds. And as His end can be defeated by no other 
god greater than He, still less can it be defeated by any change in 
Himself or in His attitude toward men. At no point whether in 
this world or in any world, can He either forget the end for which 
He made the world, or lay aside the character which makes Him love 
and welcome the effort of His creature after goodness. He cannot 
at any point lay aside the character in which reason and righteousness 
and love are one; cannot at any point turn away for ever from good 
men in their struggle for the world s goodness, and thenceforward 
return to them for ever the answer : Hitherto shall you come, but no 
further; and here shall all power of self-sacrifice, and all passionate 
striving of love, and all devotion to the extension of the Kingdom of 
God and of good, eternally be stayed. On the contrary, it is His very 
nature, as the source and home and end and ultimate power of the 
world, at once to make possible and to respond to for ever, that 
prayer which not only ascends from the depths of man s sin and from 
his extremities of conflict and of defeat, but is also the normal and 
habitual " human cry " : 

Cast me not away from thy presence; 
And take not thy holy spirit from me. 

So that these men go forward into life into life as life is, with its 
anguish of burdened and fragmentary and broken labours, its still 
profounder anguish of evil triumphant and good causes beaten back 
knowing that even if the worst come to the worst the ultimate truth 
of the world still forbids any paralysis of despair. They have that 
same source of unfathomable strength which the Stoics and the men 
of Geneva had : they know that they are devoted to the cause which in 
all history is supreme and final, that they are in line with the ultimate 
law, the eternal and present purpose, of the world; so that even 
though they seem to the view of this world to be defeated and to 
perish, yet really the universe is with them and the stars in their 
courses are fighting for them. 1 And in addition to this, they have 

i As Wordsworth knew ; and the knowledge was part of his poetical being. The 
sonnet to Toussaint L Ouverture brings it to very pointed expression ; but it is always in 
Wordsworth s mind. 

100 



AND THE VISION OF GOD 

what the Stoics had only in part and the men of Geneva scarcely 
allowed themselves at all a vision of the essential rationality of the 
supreme power. And with essential rationality, essential kindliness; 
for while eternal reason may seem to us men an austere thing, 
teaching by the discipline of changeless laws, and bringing without 
fail to every human soul the consequences of its own deeds, yet in the 
ultimate truth of things such reason is with love, and love with such 
reason, interchangeable; and the form of their co-operant action is 
righteousness. 

And so these men, in so far as they are able to make their way of 
life respond to what they know about the world, bring to the battle of 
life a certain grave and unyielding courage, a certain patient steadi 
ness. They have looked upon eternal ideas, which are greater realities 
than all the " hard facts " and all the " actualities " of to-day, and 
which are at last to subdue to themselves these facts, and all facts, 
and to make them obedient servants in a realm where the eternal ideal 
is at once the real and the soul of all reality. Men who have seen such 
things, and are able to rejoice in them, are not likely to be cowards. 
And eyes that gaze habitually into eternity are wont to be steady eyes 
and to impart to the soul behind them the steadiness of the eternal 
objects upon which habitually they are fixed. " God is patient," so a 
great saying runs, " because He is eternal." The things that drive us 
to the edge of despair the good that we see so clearly, but cannot 
bring to pass ; the warfare of the brute facts of the world against that 
in us and in our fellows which is gentlest and touched most with 
heavenly light; the strange failures and defeats that here shatter a 
good cause or yonder blast into deformity an individual life; the 
unspeakable meannesses and cruelties that are practised by the strong 
and the fortunate against the weak and the defenseless meannesses 
and cruelties of which the world is full, and in presence of which a 
man s indignation scarcely can keep itself from falling to wild anger ; 
above all, the lives that are born in evil, and pass to the life to come 
never having known anything but evil: these things do not mean 
that God and the good have a power over against them able to defeat 
them. Nor do they mean that God is absent from the world, and 
that we must give up the ancient teaching that " God worketh until 

101 



THE STUDY OF NATURE 

now." They mean the patience of a vast design. In presence of them 
the man who is devoted to goodness has to remember that in all such 
things there is ultimately but one question; it is not a question of 
death or of time; it is a question of God. And with God there is no 
failure ; it would be easier for the heavens and the earth to pass away 
and all things to come to nothingness, than for any single act, done 
in any age for righteousness sake or for love s, to fail of its due 
result. 

Such a " philosophic mind " is not the first power of life. Love 
and devotion are the first powers of life and the last. And love and 
devotion can work in the dark ; with blind eyes they have done their 
most heroic deeds. But soon or late their very nature leads them to 
this calmness and patience of minds that see present things in the light 
of the eternal. For soon or late their nature leads them to look upon 
God; and, looking upon Him, they learn to see things under the 
form of eternity. And then their " last enemy " is overcome ; for 
from the point of view of eternity our enemies and our tyrants are 
seen to be our friends. But the best way to understand this is to 
state it in the terms of a more ancient conception. Our life is a 
wrestle with a power not ourselves ; a stern and unfailing power that 
with no shadow of weakness goes straight onward in its way, over 
the hearts of men, over the plans of men, over the prayers of men. 
Men of science are content nowadays to call it Law, but in their older 
language they called it Necessity; ancient poets called it Fate. To 
human life it is present in many forms : sometimes as an iron limita 
tion ; sometimes as a foundation to be built upon ; sometimes as a task 
master bringing to men labours that they would not have chosen and 
responsibilities such as appall the soul; always as a law to be obeyed 
and fulfilling itself with absolute exactness upon the disobedient. It 
can never be evaded : nor can any man overcome it save by submitting 
to it and taking it as the law of his own being. But such unity of the 
individual soul with the necessity that operates in the world and in 
the history of the race, is doubly difficult to attain. The very capaci 
ties that make us human set us beyond that easy and perfect obedience 
to necessity which is within the power of the leaf or the tide or the 
star; and furthermore, however willing our hearts might be, its 

102 



AND THE VISION OF GOD 

operation in history proceeds with so vast a movement that as it 
works upon the individual life it manifests rather its crushing power 
than its law or its goal. And so we dash ourselves against it with that 
pain, that blind and hopeless agony, that mad indignation as against a 
fundamental injustice in things, which has made its cry heard in 
human literature from the beginning until now. 1 

But in so far as a man is able to see the world and our life " under 
the aspect, as it were, of eternity," he looks upon necessity at its 
source; and looking upon it there, sees it in its true nature. It is 
eternal and rational and righteous ; for it is the earthward aspect of the 
divine reason, the form which the divine action takes on to eyes that 
are not yet able to read it clearly. Unfailingly and unfalteringly it 
" reaches from end to end, sweetly and strongly ordering all things." 
Only when viewed from below does it appear mechanical and without 
a soul. Its vast plan we cannot, indeed, grasp in detail. But we can 
know its nature; we can know that Fate is the wisest of all things, 
and that in that " history of the world " which is " the world s court 
of judgment " the decisions which ultimately are given need no 
reversal. 

And the man who knows this, knows that necessity is the disciplin 
arian of the soul, and is therefore his friend. He knows that necessity 
is the source at once of the greatness, the difficulty, and the security, 
of the good man s life. It is the source of the difficulty of that life; 
for it brings the soul to desperate passes it makes its journey long 
and stern and its conversion a lifelong process in which each upward 
step leads to the unveiling of greater issues and the opening of wider 
struggles. It is the source of the greatness of that life; for it 
is by his long struggle with necessity the struggle in which 
victory is won only by apprehending the wisdom behind that inexorable 
face, and submitting to it, or rather growing up into it that man 
comes to be man, that the greater powers of his nature are developed, 
the greater achievements of his spirit wrought out. For it is upon a 
system of necessity which no individual will can break down or throw 
into confusion, that all orderly labour, mental or physical, is based; 
of such necessity literature, in its higher forms, strives to picture the 

i Cf., for instance, Butcher, Some Aspects of the Greek Genius, 2nd ed., p. 145 seq. 

103 



THE STUDY OF NATUKE 

incidence upon life ; science is a study of its ways in nature, philosophy 
an attempt to penetrate to its real character ; the theology which does 
not deal with it may indeed be happy, but is happy because it is still 
a child. The necessity which lies beyond the control of the individual 
will and is " the hidden wisdom of the world " is, in fact, the form 
which the love that works throughout the whole process of the universe 
assumes in order to become the schoolmaster of the human soul. 1 And 
as necessity is thus the source of the difficulty and the greatness of 
the good man s life, so is it also the source of its security. For it is the 
last law and the first of necessity, that ultimately the fate of every 
soul shall be an absolutely righteous and rational fate righteous and 
rational as righteousness and reason are in God. In the end no soul 
that lives will have anything of which it can rightly complain ; without 
possibility of error every man will come at last to his own place. 

And in addition to the necessity which thus is present in nature 
and history, and shapes for the individual the unchangeable conditions 
of his life, there acts upon the good man a necessity of a different 
order. It is that moral necessity which arises out of the very char 
acter of human life. We are citizens in a temporal and earthly order. 
But our vocation has its home in eternity, and in its demands knows 
nothing of the limitations of time. So that to the good man to 
every man who is not a coward, evading the demands of the world 
upon him life itself is a continual call to the bearing of a burden 
impossible to be borne, to the performance of duties that are beyond 
man s power. What ought to be done, again and again we cannot do, 
or more often can do only in part; and we come down to the grave 
weary men who have struggled hard and at the last are but unprofitable 
servants. But the insight into the nature of that other necessity sets 
this also in the true light ; like the other, it is in its very sternness and 
oppression the ally of the man whose soul is turned toward goodness. 
Here, as there, when we enter into the heart of what seemed a power 
inexorable and indifferent, what we find is the deep heart of a friend 
a friend too wise to make any mistake, too kind to admit even the 
slightest particle of weakness or indulgence into that system of things 

i One cannot pass on without referring to the noblest of the modern expressions of 
this that contained in Tennyson s In Memoriam. 

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AND THE VISION OF GOD 

which is the framework of our life. If man s vocation goes beyond 
his opportunities, if his " ought " stretches on infinitely beyond his 
powers, so that after a long struggle he finds himself still an unprofit 
able servant, there is even in this no cause for lament or for complaint 
of injustice. That life should be an endeavour to overtake a vocation 
which runs beyond human powers and human opportunities is better 
for us, is infinitely more worthy both of God and of man, than that 
we should remain untroubled children for ever, with only such duties 
laid upon us as our powers are adequate to perform. Only through a 
life so constituted and through such struggle can children of time and 
of the earth rise out of their childhood, and enter upon their inherit 
ance and their true being as citizens of eternity; and better the 
breaking of the heart than failure from that citizenship. 

So that, in the presence of evil and of necessity, the men who have 
passed from philosophy to the philosophic mind are like soldiers who, 
in the midst of some long struggle, have looked through the struggle 
and have seen behind it eternal powers and eternal destiny. And with 
that, so far as their character responds to their knowledge, their 
courage takes on a new character; to the old stubborn tenacity which 
out of mere manliness could not yield, there comes a lofty intellectual 
soul of vision and of hope. 

But this new order of courage in the presence of evil and of 
necessity is only a single aspect of what the soul comes to be, as truth 
and life become one. Along with it goes another quality of the soul ; 
a quality less stern and therefore apparently less high. But really it 
is both higher and more difficult. For it is one of those virtues of 
comprehension which always are harder of attainment than the virtues 
of conflict. It is what may be called the virtue of catholicity; the 
strength and steadiness which catholicity of mind gives to a man in 
presence of the contending parties, contending interests, contending 
solicitations, of the world. For let us remember once more what the 
philosophy here in question has to teach us, both about the business of 
our lives, and about the world we are living in. The constitutive 
principle of reality so it teaches and therefore the condition of all 
knowledge and the regulative principle for all conduct, is the good. 
And the good is one ; it consists in a perfect society, a civitas Dei, the 

105 



THE STUDY OF NATURE 

7 character of whose individual members is that character which is 
already and eternally real in God. Furthermore, it is (as the ultimate 
principle of the divine activity) at once the animating purpose and 
the inner unity and the " hidden wisdom " of the world. The 
troubled process which is life and history is a field wherein it wins 
men to itself, and, by imparting itself to them and so making them 
truly men, works out its own realisation. So that there is in all life 
and in all history one supreme object for the devotion of all men. 
It is only as being a stage in the realisation of that divine idea, it is 

/ only as being a step toward the bringing into being of that civitas Dei, 
that any duty is a duty at all, or any labour worthy of being done, or 
any cause deserving of support, or any institution worthy of loyalty. 
At all times and in all places and for all men that divine idea is the 
one determination of the path of duty. It therefore is the one object 
of endeavour that is truly catholic; the causes that make for it are 
the only truly catholic causes ; devotion to it and to those its causes is 
the one true catholicity; and the man to whom such devotion is the 
supreme and organising principle of life is the one true catholic. 

This does not mean any aloofness from life. Nor does it mean that 
life is to be reduced to a flat monotony of devotion to an indivisible 
One. On the contrary, as many as are the capabilities of human nature, 
so many are the pathways of the divine idea toward its realisation. 
But it does mean that there is eternally in God an end or good, as wide 
as life, which is at once the constitutive principle of the world s order, 

- and the true guide and goal of human action: and, as such, is the 
standard of judgment for all human causes and purposes and enthusi 
asms ; for all subjection of the immortal spirit to the body ; for all use 
of the resources of life in vain display ; for all sectarian divisions ; for 
all that political and social selfishness which puts individual interest 
before general welfare ; for all those ideals and passions and ambitions 
which set men apart from one another, and break the unity of society 
in church and state, and lead to the oppression of man by man or 
class by class. 

Something, then, such as this, is what philosophy means when it 
becomes the philosophic mind. But what has been said is only a hint. 

106 



AND THE VISION OF GOD 

Other qualities of that mind might have been spoken of; its willing 
ness, for instance, to recognise the presence of God in nature, in the 
movement of history, in those great lay activities and virtues which 
sometimes the religious despise. But in particular one thing and 
that the most important of all which might have been dwelt upon, 
has not been dwelt upon. We saw that the universe is really a great 
family a society composed of an eternal spirit and the lesser spirits 
in whom the eternal spirit reproduces himself, for whom he sets a 
vocation, and to whom, in science and in art, in morality and in 
religion, he more and more imparts himself, reconciling them to 
himself, winning their hearts back to himself, and by that 
reconcilement and that impartation enabling them to become 
truly themselves. But such a view of the universe is a call to 
personal affection and personal devotion, and to all the energies and 
powers, to all the passion and all the achievement, of such devotion 
and such affection. And if that view of the universe be philosophy, i 
the philosophic mind must in the true form of its idea be the same as 
the religious mind the mind which in the activities and energies of 
a supreme affection seeks to become more and more at one with God 
and with that purpose of God which is the ultimate law alike of the 
world and of man s being. But of that no mention has been made, in 
the attempt to give the reader some glimpse of what philosophy is 
when it passes over into the philosophic mind, and transmutes itself 
into life and temper and character, and so does its full work. And 
for that silence there was a reason. It is only in some world to come, 
when the philosophic mind, and the moral mind, and the religious 
mind, have all risen to the true form of their idea, that we shall be 
able to see them as one and the same. For our present world the fact 
stands that such affection as is here in question is commonly roused 
in men in a way which does not begin in intellectual vision. Speaking 
broadly and allowing for a few striking exceptions, the work of 
philosophy in this respect has been, not so much to rouse in men the 
love of God, as to do a certain work for those who already, and by 
other of the divine agencies of reconciliation, have been led to make 
that love the supreme principle of the practical life: namely, to 
clear their eyes, and to give an intellectual soul to the vision of their 

107 



THE STUDY OF NATUKE 

faith, and to cast upon their world and upon their path through it a 
broad illumination of rational light. 

We must say, then, that philosophy, in its greater and clearer 
forms, leads us to see that the love of God should be the supreme 
principle of life. But we must also say that philosophy in those 
greater and clearer forms is the possession of a few. What is needed 
for the whole wide race is something that in human form and human 
affection can lie close at man s heart, that can illuminate with personal 
example all the events and relations of his life, that can be received 
by the simplest and the weakest, in a way not possible to that which is 
primarily an endeavour of the intellect and a construction of the 
scientific reason. 

And in this connexion there is in the history of philosophy a most 
remarkable fact. There came an age in which, for many high and 
pure souls, philosophy had no choice but to undertake the guidance of 
life ; in fact the need was so profound that philosophy, for the sake of 
the practical life, had even to set about the task of purifying religion. 1 
In the greatest of her masters philosophy rose to meet the call. The 
intellectual and moral splendour with which the task was discharged, 
they most admire who know the story best. Indeed the man must be 
very narrow in sympathies, or very ungrateful, who can look with 
merely fault-finding eyes upon what philosophy was, and upon what 
philosophy did, as she tried to meet that awful need of the spirit 
which already in Plato s day was descending over Greece. But pre 
cisely in that day, precisely when philosophy, called to bear a burden 
too great for her, summoned all her powers and rose to her most starry 
splendour, with the genius of prophecy, the genius of art, the genius 
of science, labouring together in her courts and at her command 
precisely then it was that her spokesmen wrote in her records a double 
cry : the cry for a revelation beyond his own ; and the high resolve of 
the natural soul to make the best of the stern situation, so long as that 
higher revelation was denied by heaven to men. " I will tell you my 
difficulty/ so Plato makes Simmias to speak in the Phaedo 2 " and 
Cebes will tell you his. I feel myself (and I daresay that you have 

i Cf. Republic, 377 E seq. 
2 85 C. (tr. Jowett). Socrates, it will be remembered, is about to die. 

108 



AND THE VISION OF GOD 

the same feeling) how hard or rather impossible is the attainment of 
any certainty about questions such as these in the present life. And 
yet I should deem him a coward who did not prove what is said about 
them to the uttermost, or whose heart failed him before he had 
examined them on every side. For he should persevere until he has 
achieved one of two things : either he should discover, or be taught the 
truth about them ; or, if this be impossible I would have him take the 
best and most irrefragable of human theories, and let this be the raft 
upon which he sails through life not without risk, as I admit, if he 
cannot find some word of God which will more surely and safely carry 
him." 

Plato did not know that for the desire of which he had been a 
prophet, there was to come a fulfilment more genuine than he had 
dreamed : not in a great argument, sounding onward in a voyage that 
few could follow; but in a life that had dwelled where Plato desired 
the philosophic soul to dwell in the bosom of eternity and came to 
man with a kindliness, with a simplicity and directness of humanity, 
with a " loveliness of perfect deeds," which every burdened man, and 
every little child, 

And those wild eyes that watch the wave 
In roarings round the coral reef, 

can apprehend. And Plato did not know that, soon after that life 
passed from among men, He who had lived it was to be apprehended 
" under the form as it were of eternity " by two great masters of 
life and of thought. The one declared that in Him the universe 
consists; that He is the supreme law of the whole history of man 
and of the whole system and process of the world. The other, using 
the same word that Plato had used, declared that He was the Word, 
the divine Word, which reveals the eternal to men and gives them 
such vision as man needs of that divine idea which is at once the law 
of the world s order, and the condition of all knowledge, and the good 
for all human endeavour. He is the manifestation of the ultimate 
God; and in Him is summed up the law of the world; for these two 
things are one, each involving the other. But these great offices He 
discharged upon the earth, not in the form of some blinding 

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THE STUDY OF NATURE AND THE VISION OF GOD 

majesty which could have taught us only our own nothingness, but as 
a man, who in purity of heart and in simplicity lived for others ; lived 
for us all, and from the Galilaean fields and from His cross speaks 
still to the hearts of those for whom He lived. And as His appeal 
comes to us, some of us look upon Him early, and love Him, and 
walk in His way. But others of us go out proudly and in strength 
to our work, and suddenly, we know not how, are in the grasp of 
powers greater than ourselves, and come to the end of the day broken 
men; and beneath the gathering shadow, with the house of life in 
ruins about us, turn to Him, and receive from Him hope that rises 
above the scene of our defeat, and the gift of peace, and power at last 
to overcome the world. 



110 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA. 
I. 

IN our effort to apprehend that reality of things which is also the 
truth of our life, new insights come but slowly to full possession of 
themselves. A new method, a new category, a new point of view, 
seldom comes to its right in a single man or a single generation. 
Through many men a school labours toward a goal not clearly appre 
hended at the beginning; a goal from which the founders, could they 
have seen it, might have turned in dismay. But the method more and 
more does justice to itself; the tendency enters more and more fully 
into its own meaning; and at last the man arises in whom the school 
finds at once its culmination and its end. The system of thought 
which such a man leaves behind him has more than the purely 
scientific interest. It marks a finished stage in one great side of that 
human pilgrimage through time which is history; it takes on the 
dignity, the grave and moving interest, of a concluded chapter of 
human fate. A given tendency in man s long endeavour to know 
himself for the thing he is and to shape his life according to that 
knowledge, has been carried to its utmost limit; a given method 
employed to its utmost power. All that this tendency, all that this 
method, can do, it has done. It began as best it could. It worked 
its way forward through its stages, clarifying itself and learning to 
be true to itself as it advanced. And now it has assumed its final 
shape; has made manifest at last the meaning which was in it. 
Henceforward, in that " history of the world " which is " the world s 
court of judgment," it abides, an achieved fact, standing face to face 
with its opponents and awaiting verdict. 

There have been three chief instances of this in modern thought. 
One stands strangely in the midst of its school. David Hume carried 
to their logical conclusion the point of view and the method of 

9 113 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

English empiricism; and by doing so showed their hopeless inade 
quacy to the task of understanding how our experience can be what 
it actually is. But Hume, with all his acuteness of intelligence, did 
his work as a man whose first love was fame, not as a man who had 
devoted himself to the service of ultimate truth; and after his day 
the school, unable to learn the lesson that looks out from his pages, 
went on with the old watchwords, the old point of view, the old 
method. The second instance is a work vaster in design, nobler in 
spirit. In his encyclopedic view of the embodied reason which is the 
structure and the history of the world, Hegel carried forward to its 
due use as a world-principle that synthetic character and activity of 
intelligence which Kant in his own rigid and cramped way had 
brought forward in inquiring into the possibility of human knowl 
edge. But the third earliest of the three in time and moving in 
the atmosphere of a more primitive type of thought was in many 
respects the most striking of all. Once in the history of the Western 
world, and once only, the leaders in thought and science broke delib 
erately through the continuity that links together the successive 
generations, and turned with disgust and anger from the results 
accumulated by the labour of the ages gone. In dealing with the 
highest problem of science, they would return to the very beginning 
and by the use of a new method would comprehend nature and pene 
trate to the truth concerning man. 1 Such was the Cartesian attempt. 
But the full significance of the Cartesian method and the Cartesian 
categories was not worked out by Descartes himself. Geulincx, and 
the great name of Malebranche, mark further stages in the process 
by which the endeavour initiated by Descartes entered into possession 
of its own meaning. But the man to whom it was given to complete 
this process the man who spoke the last word of this philosophical 
school, and made clear to the world for ever the final outcome and 
meaning of the Cartesian way of attacking the ultimate problems of 
science was Benedict de Spinoza, a solitary man who was pure in 
heart and cared nothing for wealth, or social position, or fame, but 
loved truth, and for its sake was willing to be driven from his 
father s house and to earn a sternly simple fare by grinding lenses. 

i Cf. supra, p. 59. 
114 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

It is true that the Cartesians were not aware of this relation of 
Spinoza to their school ; true that Spinoza himself was scarcely aware 
of it. Malebranche is ready to anathematise Spinoza; and Spinoza 
occasionally protests in very sharp terms against this or that particu 
lar doctrine of Descartes. But that does not alter the case. All 
these men of thought were seized, as Kuno Fischer so aptly reminds 
us, " by the powers of whom it is said nolentem trahunt " ; though 
they themselves did not know it, they were all labouring at a single 
task, and moving through the different stages of a single journey. 

f; \ II. 

This lonely man it was, then, who spoke the last word of that type 
of thinking with which the modern world began when it revolted 
from the mediaeval and proceeded to build anew the house of life and 
of thought. That last word he spoke so resolutely that the world was 
enabled or rather compelled to pass on to those other thoughts in 
the midst of which we men of to-day live. So that Spinoza is one of 
the founders of the present-day world ; and yet he stands far from our 
daily companionship. He helped to make us what we are; and yet 
to most of us he seems unspeakably remote, a solitary and monu 
mental name, a vast but far-off power. 

But there is another interest, if possible one still deeper, connected 
with the name of Spinoza. In thought and in life there is, as 
already we have seen, 1 a division profounder than that into historical 
stages and schools; there is a distinction of fundamental tendencies, 
an antithesis, simple, radical, primitive, which at once underlies, 
and expresses itself through, the differences of the schools; the dis 
tinction, namely, between the thought (and the religion) which in 
finding God finds the light and truth of the world, and that which, to 
find God, leaves the world behind. And what gives to Spinoza this 
second and profounder interest is a twofold relation which he bears 
to that elemental and radical antithesis. On the one hand, he is the 
last of the very few supremely great voices through whom that side 
of the antithesis for which the modern world thinks it has no place 

i Supra, p. 7 seq. 
115 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

has found express, and at the same time orginal, 1 formulation for 
itself. But, on the other hand, while the tendency in question secures 
in him this express and unmistakable utterance for itself, he is forced 
to go beyond it, and so in his system it is seen standing face to face 
with its great and age-long opponents. 

Such is the historical position of Spinoza. Of the two relations 
which make up that position the relation to the Cartesian philoso 
phy, the relation to Mysticism the one mentioned last is logically 
the first, in the sense that that elemental antithesis is deeper than 
the division into historical periods and schools. So that, in seeking 
to view Spinoza in his historical position, it is to that fundamental 
distinction that we must turn first. And to understand it as it appears 
in Spinoza, we must first endeavour to understand it as it is in itself 
and for its own sake. To do that, we must consider two things : first 
how it arises; secondly, its chief appearances in history. 



III. 

In attempting to understand how that distinction arises we have 
to consider, first what the fundamental instinct and presupposition 
of all scientific work is, secondly the two ways in which that instinct 
may fulfil itself when science reaches its final or metaphysical stage. 
First, then, the endeavour of any particular " special science " is to 
find unity of principle in the phenomena with which it deals. And 
the endeavour of science as a whole or, in the words just used, the 
endeavour of science in its metaphysical stage is to see the world 
as one. It is true that in this, its last and highest task, science some 
times falls by the way; and falls with so decided a motion that it 
remains fixed where it has fallen. That is to say, certain meta 
physicians and certain schools of metaphysic, regard their work as 

i Original, not as standing out of relation to earlier men of thought that were to deny 
what has just been affirmed but as being the outcome of the independent working of 
Spinoza s own mind upon the material furnished to it, whether by previous thinkers or by 
his own experience of life. The word is inserted to exclude teachers such as Schopenhauer, 
whose formulation of this same tendency can scarcely be called an original movement, 
but is rather a revival of an ancient system and a delivering over of the Kantian episte- 
mology to it to be its handmaid. 

116 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

completed before they have reached a One at all. They remain to 
the end with a multitude of eternal " distinct existences " on their 
hands. It is true, too, that systems formed in this way monad- 
ologies, sensationalisms, atomisms have taken a very great place 
in the history of philosophy. And still farther, they have been very 
useful there. But the true nature of that usefulness should be recog 
nised. The man who understands that the search of science, from 
its lowest stage to its highest, is a search after unity, will also 
understand what the genuine significance is, of a pluralistic termina 
tion of the scientific endeavour; namely, that the science which so 
terminates has taken as a highest and ultimate category some 
principle which is not powerful enough to link together the stubbornly 
diverse factors of the world. That is to say, the pluralistic systems 
are reductiones ad absurdum of the methods which have produced 
them. And it is for this very reason that the usefulness of these 
systems in the history of philosophy has been so great. They have 
been stages on the way to insight. At certain times they have made 
clear to those who could understand the inadequacy and inner 
hollowness of some popular school or of some trusted method. At 
other times they have deepened the problem for some too hasty 
monism, setting over against its thesis a stubborn and resolute 
antithesis. In a word, they have been steps, worked out often with 
great keenness and acuteness, in that long dialectic process which is 
the history of philosophy. 

But, as already has been noted, the very nature of the attempt of 
science the very nature of such a thing as a search after law in the 
diversities of the world involves that, unless that scientific attempt 
is to be false to itself, its last and highest view of the world must be 
a view in which the world is seen as one. So that, granting to the 
full the usefulness of the pluralistic systems in the dialectic develop 
ment of philosophical insight, it remains that in them, as was said 
above, the scientific endeavour is seen " falling by the way and 
remaining fixed where it falls." But the radical and elemental dis 
tinction which we are now concerned to understand, is a distinction 
between the systems of philosophy which, with all their errors, have 
not erred in that fashion, but have pushed their way through to a 

117 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

unitary view of the world. And the distinction consists precisely in 
the way in which they do thus push their way through to a One. 

For both sides take their rise in a profound discontent sometimes 
almost purely intellectual, sometimes moral or religious as well with 
the manifoldness, the changeableness, the dividedness, the imperfec 
tion and disorder, of our everyday experience. But the one side 
proceeds from the unsatisfactory Many to a One whose distinctive 
character is simply this that it is not the Many. While the other 
side proceeds from the unsatisfactory Many to a One which is the 
Many over again but the Many as truly or adequately known, and 
in the light of that adequate interpretation seen to be no longer 
unsatisfactory. On the former view, manifoldness and dividedness 
are inconsistent with the One; on the latter, they are necessary to it. 
To the former, the infinite excludes finitude ; to the latter, it mediates 
itself through finitude is an infinity of determinations. To the 
former, again, the eternal is no home of change and of time; to the 
latter, it is at once the home and the law and the informing spirit of 
time and of the changing things of time. To the former, God is all 
in all ; the world can be only a shadow, from which the wise man will 
set himself free in order that in God he may become at one with 
reality. But to the latter, the world is the process of the realisation of 
divine ends, and thus is in organic connexion with God and is a true 
field of labour to the sons of God. 

Philosophy, in a word, is the apprehension of the unity and 
eternity of all true existence. But men differ in the way in which 
they pass from the diverse and changing elements of their daily 
experience to their vision of that unity. To some it is a One which 
is not the world, and in whose presence the world fades away. To 
others it is a One which fulfils itself through the whole system of 
the changes and diversities of the world; it is the light and the life 
of men, and of the whole universe of experience. In both cases the 
effort of man is to see truly; and to see truly by seeing under the 
form of eternity. But upon the one view, the things of to-day and 
to-morrow cannot endure the light of eternity; they vanish as dreams 
vanish, when the soul is aroused from troubled sleep and the delusions 
of the night fall from it and are gone. While to the other view the 

118 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

things and interests of time lose indeed their fleeting and self-centred 
individuality; but only to be seen in their truth as elements of 
eternity. They die, but in dying find a life over which death has no 
power; for now they live not unto themselves, but in the eternal and 
unto the eternal. To this type of philosophy, the particular things 
and interests of our experience, so far from being mere appearances 
professing a reality to which they have no claim, are in truth more 
real even than they seem to be. So that this philosophy is a 
philosophy humane and kindly. It is hospitable to all forms of being 
though it has its sternness in insisting that each shall recognise 
its place and devote itself to its own function. Every lineament in 
the face of nature is dear to it; but its special delight is with man 
and his history. The labour of man, the achievement of man, the 
glory and the tragedy which are never far from any man s heart it 
is never weary of attempting to set these in the light of eternity and 
to show them transfigured by that light. But the philosophy which 
stands over against this can give no such welcome to all the half- 
earthly half-heavenly content of our life. Not that it does not love 
men. In its greater historical forms it has loved men with the 
profoundest and most passionate of all the forms of love that over 
whelmed with the sense of tragedy ; its love being not that of delight, 
but that of a great pity for the hapless creature whom it saw losing 
himself in things which, not being Gpd, are nothing and worse than 
nothing. But the very principle which gave such passion to its love 
for man made it stand aloof from man s ordinary life. It made its 
home neither with his daily affairs, nor with the humanities, nor 
with nature. To pass from its great opponent to it is as if one passed 
from Athens from the thronged harbours of the Piraeus, from the 
voices of statesmen and sophists and tragedians, from the gatherings 
of men who delighted in life and in one another and in the exercise 
of all the powers that their natures included to some solemn temple 
of Lacedaemon, standing apart in grave strength and austere majesty, 
changeless from age to age, while in hollow Sparta the generations of 
mortal men hastened to death. 

This, then, is the deepest of those divisions that have sundered 

119 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

into diverse schools and tendencies the long attempt of man to under 
stand himself and his world. It is a first and fundamental distinction 
which the student must understand if he is to understand the history 
of philosophy at all. That history seems crowded with a multitude of 
structures; and the difference of these from one another seems as 
great as their internal complexity. But when the investigator digs 
down into them, what he comes upon at last is one or other more 
often both of the two great tendencies now before us. These are 
elemental in character, primitive, simple; and they are of immeasur 
able antiquity ; for they are as old as the dissatisfaction of the human 
soul with its imperfect being and with its momentary and transient 
experiences. Their opposition has moulded the whole dialectical 
evolution of man s endeavour to understand his life. From the 
beginnings alike of religion and of reflective thought they, like inner 
forces, have guided the main currents; and have determined the 
proportions of the greater systems. The history of their warfare 
and of their combinations with each other is, on its practical side, 
the history of the religious life; and, on its theoretical side, the 
history of philosophy. 

So long as we understand the essential movement of these two 
tendencies, it matters little what names we give them. Some designa 
tions, however, we must have, if only for convenience of reference. 
The broad contrast between the two, as tendencies or methods, may 
be indicated by the terms " abstract " and " concrete " ; or by the 
terms " analytic " and " synthetic " ; or we may borrow terms from 
the older theologians, and call the one the via negativa, the other the 
via affirmativa. To find names for the views of the world which arise 
from these tendencies is on the one side fairly easy, on the other some 
what difficult. The philosophy of the via negativa that which in 
moving toward the One denies the Many may, when it confines itself 
to pure theory, be called " abstract pantheism," or from another point 
of view " acosmism." 1 But when it goes beyond pure theory, and is 

i A term accurate in the sense of giving a negative name to a negative movement of 
thought. Yet (leaving aside Hegel s appropriate use of it in replying to those who accused 
Spinoza of Atheism) it jars upon one who rememhers how exceedingly positive is the 
impulse the impulse after reality out of which this negative movement of thought has 
so often arisen. 

120 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

at once a view of reality and a way of life, it is Mysticism the pan- 
theistische My stile of that saying of Eothe which Dr. Martineau put 
upon the title-page of his Spinoza, 

Der pantheistischen Mystik ist wirJclich Gott alles, 
Dem gemeinen Pantheismus ist alles Gott. 

And having the general name of Mysticism, we need scarcely, for our 
present purpose, concern ourselves with names for its various types. 
For while it is true that the points of departure from which men have 
proceeded to an abstract One are very various, yet the conclusion 
itself, when reached, can scarcely be said to have diverse forms. To 
that " lion s den " many paths may lead some purely theoretical, 
some religious but to all of them it is a lion s den. There are differ 
ent kinds of Mysticism only in the sense that men come to Mysticism 
along different ways, under different impulses, in different tempers. 
But on the other side the subdivisions are numerous and of the 
utmost importance. For here the Many are not lost in the One, but 
preserved in the One. The One is the source and constitutive 
principle of the world the principle of connexion which links its 
many factors and elements together into one orderly system. Hence, 
what the nature of that connexion is (and consequently what the 
nature of the world, and what the nature of our life in it) depends on 
the nature of the One. And that nature may be apprehended upon 
many different intellectual levels i.e., by many different categories. 
For reflective thought began with simple categories which could not 
do justice to the positive relation between the details of the world and 
their supreme and eternal principle ; and from these, advanced to cate 
gories more concrete and therefore at once more comprehensive and 
more penetrating. We thus get an ascending series of views, less or more 
adequate according as the category employed is less or more adequate 
to that which is to be apprehended. It may be broadly stated that the 
lower forms of these are dominated by the idea of necessity a tergo 
there is somehow a beginning, or cause, or substance, and from 
it things " follow " or " flow down," the course of the flow being abso 
lutely determined by the nature of the cause or source ; while the higher 
are dominated by the conception of spirit, and the consequent 

121 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

conceptions of teleology, and of a rational necessity union with which 
is true freedom. To those lower forms since in the last analysis they 
must regard all particular things as the modes which in their totality 
make up the eternal One we might apply Rothe s term, gemeiner 
Pantheismus; or we might use some such name as " naturalistic Pan 
theism." The higher forms are usually denoted by the name Ideal 
ism, in its greater sense as defined on a previous page; 1 though, as 
there noted, even in Idealism we have to remember the distinction 
between a more concrete form which believes that the eternal, rational 
spirit fulfils its purpose through the whole process of the world, and a 
more abstract form which can see God only in pure reason, and is 
obliged, therefore, to condemn the world of the senses. 2 With these 
subdivisions, however, we are not directly concerned at this point. 
What we must do here is to fix firmly in our minds the original and 
fundamental distinction itself between the tendency which is abstract 
and negative, and that which is affirmative and concrete. 

1 Supra, p. 11. Cf. infra, pp. 209, 210. 

2 To the student of " Logik "the science whose business it is (or was) to deal with the 
categories and hence to arrange the various types of philosophy in the order of their 
advance from abstractness toward concreteness this matter of classification will of 
course offer no difficulties. All these tendencies and types can be arranged as stages in a 
single process of logical evolution. The first the thorough carrying out of the via 
negativastand.s at the beginning where the categories employed are altogether abstract 
(the categories of pure Being). The third stands at the end, where a highest category has 
been gained which is altogether concrete (Absolute Idealism). While the remaining 
forms are the stages which constitute the long road between one of the most striking of 
these being that which, as its highest category, uses the conception of causation (whether 
physical or logical) in such a way as to give us a view of the universe as a great process of 
necessity a tergo. Those intermediate types have the common characteristic that they 
have not felt the pressure of the problem of the self ; they have not grasped the fact that 
" things " (extended things as much as any other) are objects existing for and through a 
self which holds together many "experiences" in the unity of one experience; to them, 
in other words, man is simply a part of nature ; whatever principles are adopted as 
explaining the things which seem to exist in their own right in space and time, are ipso 
facto adopted as explaining man. And it is when the pressure of the problem of the self 
(usually in a special form the problem of the possibility of knowledge) is felt, that 
philosophy passes upward from those intermediate types to the Idealistic. In the exam 
ination of human experience a synthetic principle, self-conscious, self-distinguishing, 
self-determining, is found ; and such a principle furnishes the key for the solution of the 
problem how the many facts and beings of the world, without losing their particularity, 
can be linked together into one reality. Self-distinguishing and self -determining spirit- 
so science finds at the end of its long ascent is the principle of unity-in-diversity which 
enables us to view the universe as one, without abstracting from, or condemning as 
illusion, that manifoldness of existence which is found, not only in the multiplex life of 
nature, but also in the divisions of the intellectual and moral and religious life of man. 

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XD. the thought of Spinoza both these tendencies are present. The 
former the tendency to the via negativa is not only present in him, 
but is that first and fundamental thing in his thinking with which 
the student must begin if he is* at all to understand Spinoza as Spinoza 
actually was. But in that large and sincere and open mind, the 
unquestioned domination of the negative tendency was impossible. To 
such forms of the other tendency as could enter his field of thought 
he gave fair hearing, and dealt as he was able with the problems which 
these forced upon him. Of this, the result was not so much the 
renunciation of the negative tendency, as the setting of the other beside 
it; or rather the setting of two forms of the other beside it. For, as 
we shall see,, he set beside it, in fully articulated form, what on the 
classification noted a moment ago would be called a lower type of the 
positive or synthetic view. But then in certain connexions he was 
driven even beyond that, and worked out doctrines which cannot 
indeed be called a system, but are prophetic hints and glimpses calling 
for the highest type of the concrete view, i.e., for Idealism. In order, 
then, to understand him as he was and to follow his thinking along 
the line of its own journey, we shall study first how he was led toward 
the negative or mystic conception of reality, and then his advance 
from it to the other points of view just spoken of. But as was noted 
a moment ago to study intelligently the negative tendency as it is in 
Spinoza, it will be wise first to study it on its own merits and for its 
own sake. And that can best be done historically. 

IV. 

In the age-long effort of man to find out what he is, and what his 
experience means, and what the true way of life for him is, this 
abstract or negative way of thinking has shown itself times innumer 
able. In some cases it has played the part of a Nemesis of thought, 
appearing unbidden in the systems of those who face with inadequate 
categories the ultimate problem of science. 1 But these cases need not 
be dwelt upon here. For, in the history of man, it has had a greater 

1 A remarkable instance is the case of the development from Sir William Hamilton 
through Dean Mansel to Mr. Spencer. 

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part than that to play. Strange as the fact may seem, this austere 
and abstract tendency, which has for its goal a formless Absolute and 
an eternity devoid of time, has not only dominated the thought, but 
has governed the life, of whole races and nations. Stranger still, it 
has at times regenerated religion, and broken up spiritual stagnation. 
It has even helped to shatter political tyrannies. And as one might 
conjecture beforehand, a tendency that has taken so great a place in 
the life of man has not wanted for expression in the works of the great 
masters of systematic thought. Sometimes it has ruled half the 
divided heart of a supreme teacher. Sometimes, on the other hand, 
from a method or a point of departure in which it lay latent, it has 
worked its way, with a logic as inevitable as the decrees of fate, to its 
full meaning ; and then has shown itself as the fundamental and con 
trolling factor in the thought of some great man, or some great school, 
or some remarkable age. 

The cases of the former kind are of the very deepest interest. 
They stand central in the historical development of philosophy; one 
might almost call them its great ganglia. Here, however, it is possible 
to refer only to two of these. The first is the greater. In the thought 
of Plato the negative tendency is present, confronting the affirmative ; 
and there, in the presence of its opponent, it takes on, more than ever 
before in the history of man and more than ever after, the characters 
which are native to it the solemnity, the unearthly splendour, the 
austere Lacedaemonian grace, appropriate to the vision of an eternal 
being in whose presence the weaker things of time pass away and are 
not. But while it is present, and knows itself, it cannot prevail. For 
in Plato, as in all the great cases of its occurrence, the negative tend 
ency takes its rise in that which is the genuine beginning and the 
genuine inspiration of all science, and of all philosophy, and in one 
sense of all religion; namely, in the instinctive search of the spirit 
which is man for the abiding and the unchangeable ; in the passion for 
the eternal. But of the men who are thus animated by the passion for 
the eternal the men who, as we are wont to say, are "not of this 
world " there are two classes. Some who are " not of this world " 
are so in the literal sense. So far as they can, they walk without 
transgression in the way of the negative theology. Their journey 

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toward their home in God, is a journey away from this world. But 
others, who are " not of this world," are for that very reason all the 
more truly citizens of this world. Their knowledge that their 
dwelling-place is in the eternal makes all the profounder and all the 
more genuine their citizenship in that temporal order which is " a 
moving image of eternity." 1 And as between these alternatives 
Plato s position was peculiar. A certain Dorian quality of soul 
struggled in him with an Ionian intellect and with Athenian training 
and tastes and interests. And the practical tragedy in his life 2 partly 
withdrew him from the world, partly made him all the more passion 
ately earnest about the reformation of the world within the forms of 
its present order. The negative tendency lay very close at his heart; 
yet, upon the whole, it is the other that prevails in his philosophy. 
The Ideas remain determinate forms and determinate rational forms. 
The One (i.e., the Idea of Good) does not by its presence condemn to 
unreality the lower Ideas in their individual distinctness; nor for the 
apprehension of it is a type of consciousness above the rational 
required. And even more than that can be said. Of the two inter 
pretations of Plato, that which sees the Ideas as in organic union with 
man s present world and present experience, is really more true to 
Plato than that which sees the Ideas as dwelling altogether apart from 
the world. What Mysticism does for Plato is, not to overcome him, 
but rather to give loftiness of soul, and a certain undernote of tragedy, 
to his Idealism. Indeed his thought as a whole is an example of the 
fact that a great and complex process often takes on a wider move 
ment, a new and higher order of power, when a negative element 
enters among its constituents. 

The other case lies close to ourselves. A negative movement of 
thought is present in the very system in which the metaphysic of the 
present day recognises its proximate fountain-head in the critical 
philosophy of Immanuel Kant. But, although more than twenty 
centuries had intervened some of them filled with hard thinking, 
others given to eager conquest of the world yet the negative tendency 
is in Kant far less aware than in Plato of its own true nature. 

i Timaeus, 37 DE. 2 See pp. 222, 223, infra. 

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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

Appearing first as a gulf between the categories and the materials given 
in sense and then going on through other dualisms to that final one 
between the phenomena given to the understanding, and the real world 
which is the field of the rational will it operates mainly as a potent 
source of difficulty and confusion ; and the first labour of the followers 
of Kant was to overcome it, so that Kant s synthetic view might be 
developed to its full significance. 

It is hard to turn away from a more detailed study of these two 
cases. But they do not give us exactly what we want here at the 
beginning. What we need here is to see the negative tendency, as far 
as possible, in the purity of its type ; to see it as it is in itself. What 
we must do is to turn to the other great class of its appearances those 
in which, from the method or the point of departure wherein it is 
latent, it advances with uninterrupted logic, moving with its own 
motion, working out its own dialectic, until, as one may say, it 
possesses the whole field. 

Of such cases there are three in particular, which (specially when 
compared with one another) show what this tendency is; show what 
that meaning is, which it has in it at its beginning and develops in its 
course. One of these is found in Greek thought before the problem of 
the self had come clearly to view. Here the tendency shows itself in a 
strictly theoretical form. It gives, as one may say, a sketch of itself 
in its purely logical outline. But it did not in that land and at that 
age, it could not enter upon the full work of a philosophy. It neither 
became a guide of life, nor faced the full weight and power of its own 
theoretical shortcoming. The second is* much earlier in date ; but 
much fuller in articulation. Among the Hindus the negative tendency 
not only works itself out with a singular completeness of logical 
development, but also undertakes what has just been called " the full 
work of a philosophy." It puts its shoulder to the wheel. It acts as 
a guide of life, and builds up an ethic and a philosophy of religion. 
While in the third case the Neo-Platonic it is seen at last recognis 
ing its great theoretical difficulty, and erecting, in the effort to over 
come that difficulty, a structure of almost monstrous vastness. And. as 
we shall see, there is a fourth case, which scarcely adds any new logical 
factor, but which so well sums up in itself the main features of the 

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three cases just mentioned, that it will be worth our while to take 
note of it as we pass from these historical references to the direct 
study of Spinoza. 

(a) 

What we are to see in the Greek case is the pure science, the pure 
logic, of the matter, given in a very brief and elementary form, but 
with perfect clearness. This case we shall best understand by consider 
ing the logical position in which men inevitably found themselves when 
they first attempted to be scientific in their thinking about the world. 
First, the instinct after unity, the sense of the oneness of all existence, 
is present ; present at the very beginning, for without it there could be 
no such beginning. It may be unrecognised and unrefiected upon ; but 
without its implicit operation there would be no such thing as the 
search after scientific explanation at all. The mind would simply rest 
each instant in the particulars of that instant. But, , secondly, the 
category that can affect the unification of this most complex world, 
must be a very complex and difficult category. But such a category is 
not present at the beginning. Or rather, it is present only potentially 
and shows itself only in flashes of prophetic intuition. As a clear 
instrument of the reason, employed in building up systematic and 
assured science, it is gained only as the result of a long dialectic labour 
in which category after category is entered upon, used to the utmost of 
its power, and finally taken up into a higher : until at last a category 
is reached by which the Many are shown as a One, with no rebels 
remaining outside to prove, by the very fact of their rebellion, the 
inadequacy of the category for its work of unification. 

So then, at the beginning the demand for unity is present. But 
the category by which the Many can be seen as One, is, in the sense just 
mentioned, not present. What almost inevitably results is a stage of 
.thinking in which the One runs away with the Many or to speak more 
decorously, in which the Many are lost in the One. This whelming of 
the Many in the One is likely, indeed, to take place near the beginning 
rather than at the beginning. Near the beginning; for there the 
categories are simple, abstract, inadequate. But not precisely at the 
beginning. For the denial of the manifold involves two things which 

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at the very beginning can scarcely be present; first, as we shall see 
presently, an unflinching, uninterrupted consistency in carrying a 
given category to its extreme and absolute application; and secondly, 
a high degree of speculative courage. But as soon as the scientific 
intellect has taken on some considerable impetus and has come to 
feel tolerably sure of itself, then we may look for such an affirmation 
of the unity of being as makes its manif oldness a mere illusion. 

Among the Greeks in whose early men of thought the pure 
intellect, serene and undistracted, enslaved neither by force from 
without nor by superstitious fears within, stood free to work its way 
without interruption through the dialectic of its categories this 
tendency came to the forefront just in the place indicated. The name 
connected with its clear and full emergence is the great name of 
Parmenides. 

If we consider the exact situation which Parmenides faced, we 
shall see both how clear his logic was, and how absolutely inevitable 
wa* the conclusion to which he came. He stood face to face with the 
particular things of the world, and these were not self-intelligible. 
Of this plant, this cloud, this cliff that the sea is wearing down, one 
has to say, " It is." But there was a time, and there will again be a 
time, when one, if present, would have to say, " It is not." But 
there is no rest for the intellect in such things. They do not stand 
upon their own feet. They are and they are not. What is wanted is 
something which will supply a footing to these things, and which at 
the same time will itself have at least two characters. First, it must 
be something of which you can in the fullest sense of the words say 
that it is : at no time, in no place, under no circumstances, must you 
be able to say that it is not. Secondly, it must be something which is 
one with itself. That is, it must always remain itself throughout all 
its work of making possible these particular and transient " things " 
and this changing order of "nature." If, for instance, it be some 
thing which condenses itself into these stones and rarifies itself into 
that vapour, it must still remain itself throughout all those trans 
formations. And this second character follows directly from the 
first; the "It remains itself," from the absolute "It is." 

The first Greek men of science faced this problem as well as they 

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could. They used such intellectual instruments, such categories, as 
they had. And the category which they had was the first and simplest 
of all our categories that of Being. This category they used in 
specific and very naive forms. But its essential character was always 
the same : Being is that of which you can simply affirm that it is. 
Soon, however, these men of science found themselves in difficulties 
of a most serious character. Their category turned a very unkindly 
and very uncompromising face toward the actual existences of the 
world. They were if the illustration be not too profane somewhat 
in the position of a man who has discovered that space is two-dimen 
sional. If you have found that space has but two dimensions that all 
spatial reality exists in a plane you must leave off tying sailors knots 
and must have nothing more to do with the various gymnastic feats 
which involve motion in the third dimension. And if you find your 
self still doing these things you must declare that really you do not do 
them; that in truth they are but illusions. For any motion is either 
in that plane, or out of it ; and if it is out of it, it is unreal. Just so 
it turned out to be with the category of Being. These things of time 
and of sense are continually changing, continually swaying back and 
forth between " is " and " is not." But Being is. In it there is no 
" is not." In a word, there is no place in it for change and for things 
that are subject to change. And if you try to escape the difficulty by 
making the conception of Being into the conception of Substance; if 
you try to keep both the Being and the things, by viewing the Being 
as the substrate of the things: you help yourself not one whit. The 
old difficulty simply recurs. Here is this particular thing. It either 
has Being or else it has not Being. If it has Being, then it cannot 
have any sort of " is not " about it for how can " is not " get into 
the pure and absolute " is " ? That is to say, it cannot, among other 
things, have any change in it. But it changes even while we are 
speaking about it. Therefore it has not Being. It is nothing at all. 
If you appeal to your sense-experience, your sense-experience must be 
declared to be at once an absurdity and an illusion. Nor can you be 
permitted to attempt an escape by setting up a distinction in the thing 
between Substance and Accidents. For precisely the same test 
banishes the Accidents into nothingness. 

10 129 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

So that when .these early men of science attempt to understand 
the world by means of the only categories they have securely grasped 
those of Being or of Substance the solution, as soon as its logic is 
worked out, swallows up the original problem. On the level of those 
categories, the assertion that Keality is, involves the assertion that it 
is One, and that the Many and the Finite and the Changeable are not. 

The foregoing is simply the argument of Parmenides stated in 
general terms; 1 and of course with this difference that Parmenides 
neither had, nor could be expected to have, any suspicion of the 
possible inadequacy of his categories. He used his categories in all 
good faith. He saw that from their point of view the disjunction of 
being and non-being, of " is " and " is not," is absolute. He saw that 
this again involved that reality is One, and its apparent manifoldness 
an illusion. And this he stated in a way which is not merely clear 
and convincing, but is absolutely final : 

. . . " One path only is left for us to speak of, namely, 
that It is. In it are very many tokens that what is, is uncreated and 
indestructible, alone, complete, immovable, and without end. Nor 
was it ever, nor will it be ; for now it is, all at once, a continuous one. 
For what kind of origin for it will you look for? In what way and 
from what source could it have drawn its increase? I shall not let 
thee say nor think that it came from what is not ; for it can neither be 
thought nor uttered that what is not is. And if it came from nothing 
what need could have made it arise later -rather than sooner ? There 
fore must it either be altogether or be not at all. Nor will the force of 
truth suffer aught to arise besides itself from that which in any way is. 
Wherefore, Justice does not loose her fetters and let anything come 
into being or pass away, but holds it fast. . . . How then 
can what is be going to be in the future ? Or how could it come into 
being? If it came into being, it is not; nor is it if it is going to be 
in the future. Thus is becoming extinguished and passing away 
not to be heard of. ... Nor is it divisible. . . . More 
over it is immovable. . . . without beginning and without end; 
since coming into being and passing away have been driven afar off, 
and true belief has cast them away. It is the same, and it rests in the 

i " In general terms "for Parmenides envisaged reality spatially. Cf. p. 131, note. 

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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

self-same place, abiding in itself. . . . And there is not, and 
never shall be, any time other than that which is present, since fate 
has chained it so as to be whole and immovable. Wherefore all these 
things are but the names which mortals have given, believing them to 
be true coming into being and passing away, being and not being, 
change of place and alteration of bright colour." 1 

"Being is One and is self-identical; the many are not." So 
stands the conclusion of Parmenides. But the important point for 
our purpose is to note how absolutely logical, how absolutely consist 
ent and consequent, is the argument by which he reaches this conclu 
sion. He stood within the science of his day and accepted its 
procedure. But he saw with thorough clearness what the ultimate 
meaning of that procedure was. And this he stated in a form 
impressive, complete, valid for ever. 2 Little was left for his younger 
followers to do, save to round out the system on its polemic side by 
showing into what absurd positions men get themselves when they 
hold to the reality of the Many, and to the truthfulness of the senses. 

Early in the course of Greek thought, then, the negative tendency 
stated itself with intellectual completeness and finality. And yet it 
did not do among the Greeks the full work of a philosophy. It did 
not enter upon the guidance of life. From the day of Parmenides 
onward one does not find the most earnest men among the Greeks 
being led by it to have done with the illusion of the Many, and to 
seek the true fulfilment of their being in a changeless and ineffable 
One. And the reason is plain. It consists partly in the fact that this 
philosophy, as a philosophy, was outgrown at last by the bringing 
forward of more adequate categories; and partly in the character of 

1 Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy (1892), pp. 185-187. 

2 The statement in the text deals with the abiding significance of Parmenides 
argument, as a purely intellectual form of the logic of Mysticism. Of course, with 
Parmenides, as with most men who stand early in great histories, we must distinguish 
between the atmosphere in which an argument moves, and the essential significance of 
the argument which moves in that atmosphere. The atmosphere in which Parmenides 
argument moved, was one of naive Realism ; he envisaged his One as a corporeal sphere ; 
and in doing so, did not quite carry out his own principle (v. Burnet,pp. 342, 343, 141). But 
his argument itself, in its use of categories, in its movement from conception to conception, 
goes beyond all naive Realism ; goes beyond all Realism of any sort, and leads straight 
toward Mysticism. 

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Greek life. In the life of the Hellenes, perfection of body and power 
of soul answered to fulness of opportunity. They lived under the 
clearest of skies. They were served generously by their land and by 
their sea. They had, among their inherited treasures, the "greatest 
births of time " in literature and in art, and they were engaged almost 
daily in placing beside these, companion-pieces that were worthy of 
them. Life they knew and the joy of life, and over its resources 
exercised a supreme and easy mastery. Nor did they esteem their 
life the less, that the Mede and the Canaanite had appeared among 
them, and Marathon and Salamis and Himera had become names 
for ever. Such a race, living such a life, was not likely, till its greater 
day was done, to furnish apt pupils for the lesson that the thronging 
interests of life are vanity and illusion, and that wisdom lies in with 
drawing from them and seeking rest in a reality which knows neither 
change nor manifold. 

But there was a race whose life had come to be burdened by the 
weight of an immeasurable and hopeless, pain. And there the thinking 
that walks in the via negativa entered upon the full function of a 
philosophy. It gave to the generations of a great race their theoretical 
view of reality; it shaped and it shapes their morality and their 
religion. Hegel, thinking of the spirits of the nations as existent and 
particular individuals, tells us that they stand around the throne of 
the universal spirit, the spirit of the world, as perfecters of its 
actuality and witnesses and ornaments of its splendour. 1 Each race, 
like an attendant spirit, fulfils by its intellectual and by its moral 
labours, its part in the one work of world-history. In this great 
division and delegation of the tasks of world-history, it would almost 
seem as if the one specially committed to the Hindu race was the full 
development through all its stages was the full articulation both as 
an intellectual and as a moral system of the philosophy of the 
negative way. The steps in that long labour of thought by which this 
was accomplished we have now to trace. 

i Philosophy of Eight, 352 ; cf. 340. 



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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

(ft) 

The first step takes us back to the very fountain-head of the 
science of the Aryan peoples. The Vedic poet stands where all orderly 
human science stood at its beginning. He stands face to face with 
the facts and forces of nature with sky and sun, storm-wind and 
dawn; and he feels that these, as he finds them, are not self -intelli 
gible ; he feels that, as they stand, they do not exist in their own right. 
And the first step which he takes in healing this unsatisfactoriness of 
the facts present to him, is one in which the scientific instinct and the 
religious instinct go hand in hand. He personifies those facts and 
gives to them, as thus personified, the attributes of deity. 

But in connexion with this, the Yedic poets did one of the most 
remarkable things in human history. What this was, can best 
be shown by contrasting the two great lines of thought that took their 
rise from the original homeland of the Aryans the Greek and the 
Vedic. The Greeks very early separated their gods from the natural 
phenomena of which they were personifications, and humanised them 
gave to them abiding individualities, clear, definite, characteristic, 
personal. 1 While this remains the case, the gods, whatever they may 
be to the religious consciousness, are of little value to the scientific or 
philosophic consciousness the consciousness which seeks to make 
the world intelligible and needs principles of explanation for doing 
so. If indeed an advance toward unity were to be made, by making 
some god supreme whether Zeus or AvdyKij or Erinys then there 
would be at least a possibility of the scientific consciousness finding 
the principle of unity that it needs. But such an advance the early 
Greeks can scarcely be said to have made. The consequence was that 
the scientific consciousness had to wait for long ages, and finally, 
with the Ionic physicists, to make an altogether new beginning on its 
own account. 

But when we turn back to the Vedic line, we find something quite 
different. It has been pointed out times innumerable that in the Vedic 
hymns whatsoever deity the poet addresses is viewed for the time 
being as God, supreme, unlimited, absolute ; and this even when other 

i E. Caird, Evolution of Religion (1893), vol. I., p. 264 seg. 
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

deities are being at the same time mentioned by name. Varuna, for 
instance, is addressed as Lord of all, Lord of heaven and earth, 
upholding the whole order of nature, and guardian too of the moral 
order of the world. The breaking of his laws is sin. The penitent 
sinner is to pray for mercy to him. But presently Indra or Agni is 
addressed in the same way. 

This fact is one of the commonplaces of present-day knowledge. 
But what has not always been made so clear is the mental condition 
out of which it arises. What it means is this : the Vedic poet, how 
ever religious he may be, has never ceased to have that in him which 
is nothing other than the genuine spirit of philosophy, nothing other 
than the genuine movement of the scientific consciousness. He feels, 
no matter how dimly, the oneness of nature. Some one principle, he 
feels, some one power, is expressing itself through all this variety of 
wonderful and appalling phenomena. But the only forms which he 
had at his command for purposes of scientific expression, were those 
forms which he had struck out for himself by personifying those very 
phenomena Indra and Agni and Varuna, Ushas and the Maruts, 
and the rest of Yagwavalkya s " three and three hundred, three and 
three thousand " gods. 1 But then comes the trouble that no one of all 
these forms is adequate to the expression of the principle or power 
which the Vedic thinker, dimly enough at first, but with a demand 
that grows continually clearer, is groping after. No one of them for 
it expresses itself in them all; of all of them it is the source. And 
so ihe first expedient is to use all those forms, now one, now another. 
A sage, Yaska by name, who lived many centuries later, puts the logic 
of the case into a sentence It is owing to the greatness of the deity 
that the Divine Self is celebrated as if it were many. 2 

But such a procedure has an almost inevitable logical outcome. 
As time goes by and reflective thought comes forward, while poetic 
intuition and poetic nature-worship recede, two things come into ever 

1 "How many gods are there?" asks Vidagdha Sakalya of Yaflwavalkya. The first 
answer is "three and three hundred, three and three thousand." But this number is 
steadily reduced to thirty-three to one and a half finally to one. This one is Brahman 
and his name is " That. " Brth. Upanishad, III. 9. 1-9. (Sacred -Books of the East, vol. 
XV., pp. 139-142.) 

2 Max Miiller, Three Lectures on the Veddnta Philosophy, (London, 1894), p. 27. 
Yaska lived circa 500 B.C. 

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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

clearer consciousness. First, that what is really being sought for is 
One. Secondly, that this One is not to be identified with any of the 
forms just referred to not with Varuna the Heaven, nor with Indra 
the giver of rain, nor with Agni the fire, nor with the appalling 
Maruts, the storm-winds. The oneness will be ever more strongly and 
clearly insisted upon. But to any definite determination or qualifica 
tion of it, the answer will come to be and did come to be " Neti, 
neti." 1 In a word, the goal that lay straight ahead was an abstract 
One and an illusory manifold. And to this goal the thinkers of India 
advanced with a logic that neither flinched nor failed. " Sir, tell me 
Brahman," said Vashkalin. Thereupon Bahva became quite still. 
When Vashkalin had asked a second and a third time, Bahva replied : 
"I am teaching you indeed, but you do not understand. Silent is 
that Self." 2 

Such was the first great step taken by the thought of India. Its 
inner movement is not greatly different from that which we met with 
in the case of Parmenides. Its search after the One moves in the 
logical region of the category of Being. And it does what on the level 
of that category is inevitable. It absolutely disjoins " is " and " is 
not." 3 And it is thereupon obliged to exclude from reality the deter 
minations which involve an element of " is not." But the next great 
step which the thought of India took, goes far beyond this, and is of 
incalculable importance. It builds the bridge which the metaphysic 
of the via negativa needs, to enable it to advance to the work of con 
structing an ethic and a theory of religion. In dealing with Par- 

1 " Neti "it is not thus. See Brih. Up. II. 3. 6. (Sacred Books of the East, vol. 
XV., p. 108): III. 9. 26 (ib. pp. 148, 149) : IV. 2. 4 (ib. p. 160) : IV. 4. 22 (ib. p. 180) : IV. 5. 15 (ib. 
p. 185). 

2 Sacred Books of the East, vol. XXXVIII., p. 157. Cf. Max Muller, Three Lectures 
on the Feddnta Philosophy, p. 84. 

3 " In the beginning, my dear, there was that only which is (TO ov) one only, without 
a second. Others say, in the beginning there was that only which is not (TO /LCT) 6i>) one 
only, without a second ; and from that which is not, that which is was born. 

But how could it be thus, my dear ? the father continued. How could that which is 
be born of that which is not ? No, my dear, only that which is, was in the beginning, one 
only, without a second. 

It thought, may I be many . . . " 

.KTiand. Up. VI. 2. 1, 2, 3. (Sacred Books of the East, vol. L, p. 93. Cf. Max Muller, 
Three Lectures on the Veddnta Philosophy, p. 35.) 

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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

menides two reasons were pointed out which prevented his philosophy 
from becoming to the Greek race a guide of life. Those were both, 
in a sense, external to his philosophy. They barred the way against 
it from without. But if these had both been absent, there was still 
a third reason, internal to the system of Parmenides, which would 
have tended to hold it back from becoming a guide of life. If I am 
convinced that the changing and the manifold are illusion ; and if by 
actual experience I have found the life which involves these to be very 
evil so evil that life and sorrow are one same thing; and if from 
that illusion and that evil I wish to be delivered by finding rest in the 
One; then, whether the logic of my philosophy allows it or not, I 
must believe in, some sort of organic connexion between myself and the 
One by withdrawal into which or absorption into which I am to find 
rest. But such a connexion Parmenides could not assert. For, as we 
have seen, the problem of the self simply did not exist for him at all. 
To the teachers of India, however, the problem of the self became a 
keen and pressing one. And so they were able to make the great 
advance which rendered possible the application of the negative 
metaphysic to the burdened life of India : they asserted a connexion, 
nay they asserted an identity, between the self in man and the One 
which is the true and only reality. 

The expedient by which this identification of the self of man with 
the One with Brahman was effected, was very violent. But it was 
closely in line with the general procedure of the negative meta 
physic. And not only that ; but when once a race of thinkers to whom 
the problem of the self is present, have taken the first great step in 
the via negativa have made the advance to an indeterminate One 
then this second step is demanded by an inexorable necessity. This 
necessity the clear-eyed dialecticians of India were neither unable to 
see, nor afraid to face. On the level of the categories which abso 
lutely disjoin "is" and "is not," Being must be One; no sort of 
exception or division could in any way be admitted. Yet the self had 
taken such a place in their thinking that it could not be summarily 
dismissed as this fleeting cloud, or that fading plant, could be dis 
missed namely, as illusion. So that the situation had come to be 
this. Being is One, without division. Yet the self in man cannot 

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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

be dismissed. Then what can that self be? It cannot be considered 
either as a part, or as a modification, of the One. That would be to 
attribute finitude and division to Brahman. Nor can the human self 
be anything different from Brahman ; for Brahman is all in all, " one 
without a second." In a word, there is no alternative but to identify 
the two. And that, moreover, not in the sense of calling the human 
self a part of Brahman; but in the sense of an absolute identification 
the whole of Brahman is the human self. 1 

But do not the manifest finitude and dividedness of our human 
experience recalcitrate against such an identification? Yet the 
identification must be made; and the thinkers who lead the way from 
Veda to Vedanta cut through the difficulty by a piece of that resolute 
surgery which the metaphysic of the via negativa knows so well how to 
practise. They conceive the soul as they conceive the ultimate and 
only reality with which it is to be identified namely, in an abstract 
way. The manifold experiences of the soul, its manifold activities of 
thought and of sense, of memory and of imagination these are but 
a veil, and behind this veil dwells the true self of which we can say 
nothing except that it is. The apparent dualism of the relation of 
subject and object, whether in sense-experience or in self-conscious 
ness, is ruled out altogether from the true Self. "... When 
the Self only is all this, how should he see another, how should he 
smell another, how should he taste another, how should he salute 
another, how should he hear another, how should he touch another, 
how should he know another? How should he know Him by whom 
he knows all this? That Self is to be described by No, no! He is 
incomprehensible for he cannot be comprehended; he is imperishable 
for he cannot perish ; he is unattached for he does not attach himself ; 
unfettered, he does not suffer, he does not fail. How, beloved, 
should he know the Knower?" 2 

This, too, was made all the easier by the very term which was used 
to denote the self or soul. The term atman which was used to denote 
the soul of man, had been originally, as Max Miiller tells us, " a mere 
pronoun free from any metaphorical taint, and asserting nothing 

i Max Miiller, Three Lectures on the Vedanta Philosophy, pp. 90-92. 
2 Brth. Up. IV. 6. 15. (Sacred Books of the East, vol. XV., p. 185.) 

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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

beyond existence or self-existence." It meant ipse, and as used to 
express the essence of man or of God, its idea was simply ipseitas. 
Man was Giv atman, the living, and God was Parama-atman, the 
highest ipse. And the absolute identity of these two abstract essences 
was not hard to affirm. 

Thus, then, the great identification was made, and the " Tat tvam 
asi" "Thou art it" and the "Aham brahmasmi" "I am Brah 
man " become the watchwords of this second main step in the logical 
evolution of the negative metaphysic in India. " . . . There 
fore now also, he who thus knows that he is Brahman, becomes all 
this, and even the Devas cannot prevent it, for he himself is their Self. 
Now if a man worships another deity [i.e., a Deity external to the 
Self in him] thinking the deity is one and he another, he does not 
know. 1 . . . He who perceives therein [in the " ancient, 
primeval Brahman"] any diversity, goes from death to death." 2 

And with this the way was prepared for the advance to ethics and 
to religion. A self which could be called God, but which could also 
be called man, was left standing. But the finite, the manifold, the 
changeable, were expelled from reality and cast into the limbo of 
vanity and nothingness. " In one half verse," says the Vedantist, " I 
shall tell you what has been told in thousands of volumes : Brahman 
is true, the world is false, man s soul is Brahman and nothing else. 
There is nothing worth gaining, there is nothing worth enjoying, 
there is nothing worth knowing but Brahman alone; for he who 
knows Brahman, is Brahman." 3 

With this, then, the thought of the Vedantists went forward on its 
great way, to be the guide of life and of religion, not to India alone 
but to lands even more populous. Upon that, however, as we are 
chiefly concerned with the inner logical movement of the metaphysic 
of the negative tendency, we cannot here dwell at any length. But a 
hint at the vast width of that guidance and at its profound signifi 
cance in human history, may be given by a brief reference to two 

1 Brfli. Up. I. 4. 10. (Sacred Books of the East, vol. XV., p. 88.) 

2 Brih. Up. IV. 4. 19 (cf. 18 Sacred Books of the East, vol. XV., p. 179). 

3 Max Miiller, Three Lectures on the Veddnta Philosophy, pp. 172, 173. Cf . the King s 
statement of the vanity of life, in the beginning of the Maitrayana-Brahmana- 
Upanishad. (Sacred Books of the East, vol. XV., p. 288 seq.) 

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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

things. The first of these is seen in the " Forest Schools " of Brah- 
manism. When a man s hair had become white and he saw his 
children s children, then he withdrew to the forest. The Vedic hymns 
which hitherto had been to him so absolutely sacred and so absolutely 
unquestioned, were replaced by the negative and abstract theology of 
the Upanishads. And instead of the careful ceremonial observances 
of his earlier life, and its performance of civic and domestic duties, 
he sought only to free himself from the personal and the individual, 
and thus to find his true self in the Eternal Self, in the One, in 
Brahman; 1 sought, in a word, to verify in life that which the 
Upanishads taught him as theory Tat tvam asi, thou art it. The 
second is seen in an ethical teaching which went far beyond the 
bounds of India. Gautama had been trained in the negative meta- 
physic of Hinduism. And though he spoke later like one who has 
repudiated all metaphysic, yet it is fair to say that his doctrine of 
Nirvana expresses the ultimate ethical implication of the metaphysic 
of the Vedanta. The very intensity of his compassion for a life 
which is essentially vain led him to make his moral teaching as abso 
lutely negative as a moral teaching inspired by compassion well can 
be. Indeed the morality whose goal is Nirvana is so negative that 
there is no place in it even for asceticism; or if there is, it is only 
as a means in subduing Trishna. 2 For the extirpation of Trishna is 
the cessation of the formation of Karma. And with that Nirvana is 
gained. 

/ 

Thus in India the negative tendency worked through the process 
of its logical evolution and entered upon the full work of a 
philosophy. It seems indeed a far cry from Veda to Yedanta. The 
brightness of the early Aryan hymns which rejoice to watch Indra 
" cleaning the mountains " or " rousing his strength in a moment like 
the whirlwind rushing along with thundering clouds," and are glad 
at the presence of the Dawn, " the mother of the morning clouds, 
clad in her garments of light," " shining on us like a young wife, rous- 

1 See Max Miiller, Origin and Growth of Religion, (Hibbert Lectures), p. 364 seq. 
Cf. Three Lectures on the Veddnta Philosophy, pp. 19, 20. 

2 Trishna desire, yearning, thirst ; whatever causes life to be a process of activity. 

139 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

ing every living being to go to his work," 1 this seems far separated 
from the grey, worn thought of the Upanishads. Yet we have seen 
that the process which led from the one to the other was a process of 
thorough logical continuity. When, in a Hindu family, the young 
son was being trained in the strictest Vedic orthodoxy while the 
grandfather dwelt apart in the forest meditating upon a theology in 
which the Vedic deities could find no place, this was not mere incon 
sistency or contradiction. It was the symbol of the connexion 
between the early and the late stages of a single development. 
Indeed the Vedantists and the Eleatics are alike proofs that in all 
the history of thought there are few logicians so consequent, few 
dialecticians so strict, as those whose fate it is to conduct from its 
premisses to its conclusion the ratiocination of the negative 
philosophy. 

And yet for Vedantist and Eleatic alike there remained a great 
problem. Each regarded reality from a given point of view that of 
the categories of Being. Each developed the ultimate consequence of 
that point of view: the Eleatic by a curt intellectual argument of 
incisive and summary completeness; the Vedantist by a vaster and 
more commanding process which touched the whole of life. Each 
came to the inevitable conclusion: reality is an indivisible and 
changeless One; the Many, an illusion. But that at once raises the 
question : " If reality is a changeless and indivisible One, how can it 
give rise to even an illusory appearance of a manifold?" 

And that question received no satisfactory answer from either 
school. Zeno, to whom the matter was a purely intellectual one, 
replies cheerfully enough : " Your experience of a manifold and of 
change must be an illusion; for, as I can show you, such an experi 
ence involves the most absurd contradictions." But that does not 
meet the case. Granted that my experience is an illusion, still how 
does even an illusory experience of change and of manifoldness come 
to be at all, when reality is a One, unchanging and indivisible ? 

i See the hymn to Indra, translated by Max Miiller, Origin and Growth of Religion 
(Hibbert Lectures), pp. 287-289; and the hymn to the Dawn in the second edition 
(London, 1868) of his Chips from a German Workshop, vol. I., pp. 36, 37. These may also 
be found in " The Hymns of the Rigveda translated with a popular commentary " by 
Ralph T. H. Griffith ; the hymn to Indra (R-V. IV. 17) in vol. II. (Benares, 1890), pp. 118, 
119 ; the hymn to the Dawn (R-V. VII. 77) in vol. III. (Benares, 1891), p. 97. 

140 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

Nor can the Vedantist find any satisfactory way of escape. 
" AJiam Irahmasmi" he says, " I am Brahman." But if so, whence 
come the limitations under which the self in man labours? The 
answer is, that they are due to the Upadhis the obstructions. 1 But 
whence come these? The answer is, once more, from Avidya, 
nescience. And Avidya comes to be conceived, not merely as 
personal ignorance, but a great independent cosmical power, which 
is able for a time to overshadow Brahman itself. 2 But how can 
Avidya thus affect Brahman, who is all in all, " one without a 
second," subject to nothing outside it, because there is nothing outside 
it? 3 The Vedantist can only answer that it is so. 4 And when 
pressed as to how such a thing can be so, he can only fall back on the 
plan of Zeno ; he can only attempt to involve his adversary in a self- 
contradiction. It is self -contradictory, he urges, to seek to know what 
Avidya is. It is as though a man should endeavour to see darkness by 
means of a far-shining torch. 5 

Here, then, is the great theoretical or scientific difficulty of the 
metaphysic of the via negativa. The world of manifoldness and 
change refuses to be driven out of court. Whether as real or as 
illusory, it demands to be accounted for. 

And this indicates to us what we must next do. We are attempt 
ing to see how this metaphysic has behaved in the field of the history 
of philosophy, in order that thereby we may get at its inner move 
ment and genuine significance. We must, then, turn next to some 
instance where it felt the full weight of the problem just noticed, 
and put forth its whole power in the endeavour to solve it. 

1 These are, as Deussen says (On the Philosophy of the Veddnta, Bombay, 1893, p. 12), 
"our whole psychological apparatus." Cf. the same author s System des Veddnta (Leip 
zig, 1883), S. 326 seq. 

2 Max Miiller, Three Lectures on the Veddnta Philosophy, p. 97. Avidya in this sense 
came later to be called May& (ibid. p. 128). 

3 Ibid. p. 97. 
* Ibid. p. 97. 

5 Ibid. p. 99. Cf. Deussen s "... bleibet nichts ubrig, als an die Negativitat de 
Begriffes der Avidya zu erinnern." Das System des Veddnta (Leipzig, 1883), S. 326. 



141 



THE MBTAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

(r) 

Such an instance we shall find by turning to one of those sad 
periods in our history, where the student, for the pity and the anger 
which gather at his heart, scarcely can keep his way. The great age 
of Greece was past. The work of the Greek race, as a race, had long been 
accomplished in East and in West. Rome herself was coming to the 
worst hours of her evil day. Life was a burden; a burden met by 
the few with the last wantonness of luxury, by the many with the 
dumb and hopeless patience which is the only refuge of the oppressed 
when the methods of revolutionary madness are not possible. The 
religious instinct was coming forward in its most negative form; 
namely, as a profound and passionate craving for deliverance from 
the evils and vicissitudes of life, from the perils and changes and 
agonies of the world. And along with this, science had entered upon 
a decrepid and decadent old age. Its instruments for carrying the 
manifold and the changing back into unity and eternity were as weak 
as the religious yearning for the One and the Eternal was strong. 
Under such circumstances it is no wonder that the metaphysic of the 
via negativa once more became dominant among men. 

But with all this there went another fact. The manifold world 
could scarcely be dismissed as Zeno and the Vedantists had dismissed 
it. For the period now in question was the old age of a great 
civilisation. Many generations of labour, of culture, of splendid 
achievement, of orderly polity and developing institutions, had fixed 
and confirmed the hold of the world upon the minds of men. And so 
it is just here, in thife troubled battle-ground upon the edge of dark 
ness, where the religion and the science of the ancient world were 
going down to death together, clad in monstrous garments of the 
East just here in the spiritual confusions which centred in Alexan 
dria and in Syria but whose echoes were heard even in Rome and in 
Athens that we shall find the negative philosophy in full struggle 
with its own great theoretical crux. This indeed is seen within the 
Christian Church as well as without it in the Gnostics as well as 
in the Neo-Platonists. But it is with the latter, whose thought is 
seen at its greatest in the system of Plotinus, that we shall find the 
logic of the situation most conveniently shown. 

142 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 



On the one hand, Plotinus holds firmly to the negative or 
abstract view of the One. The One is unity without multiplicity, 
pure Being without change or becoming ; nay, indeed, it is " beyond " 
even the category of Being. "It neither is" he says, "nor is it 
something, nor is it anything, but it is over all. All the categories 
are negatived; it has no magnitude, is not infinite." 1 

And yet, in the very next sentences, he goes on to say that the 
One is " the eternal source of virtue and the source of divine love, 
around which all moves, by which everything directs its course, in 
which vovs and self -consciousness ever have their beginning and 
their end." In a word he allows a place for the manifold world ; and 
views it as in some way having its source in the One. 

Here, then, is the very situation which we wished to find an 
instance in which the negative metaphysic, while holding to its view 
of the One, nevertheless finds a place for the world of manifoldness 
and change. Let us ask, then, by what means Plotinus accomplished 
this. What were his fundamental logical expedients? 

They were mainly two. One was the theory of emanation. This, 
however, in spite of the great place which it took in the thinking of 
that age, is little more than a metaphor; and indeed only by meta 
phors 2 was it made to convey any intelligible meaning. 

But the other was one of the most ingenious logical devices ever 
hit upon by the contriving intellect of man. Plotinus sets up the 
idea of a sort of one-ended relation or rather of a relation, all of 
whose motion is in one direction. As between the two terms of the 
relation, it is a relation when you go from the lower to the upper. 
But when you go from the upper to the lower, it is no relation at all. 

i Enn. VI. Bk. IX. To deal systematically with Plotinus, one would have to ask first 
how he came to his view of the One as indeterminate. The answer would show us some 
thing new in the history of the negative tendency ; new, however, not in character, but 
only in swiftness of movement. For Plotinus reached his view of the One, not by an 
unsparing dialectic argument working out the implications of a realistic beginning, but 
by concentrating such argument into the immediate affirmation of an intellectual 
intuition which apprehends the unity of experience and sets that unity, as the true reality 
over against the particular and finite. (See Erdmann, Hist. Philos. Eng. tr., vol. I., p. 
239, and compare the excellent discussion in Caird s Evolution of Theology in the Greek 
Philosophers.) For our present purpose, however, it is not necessary to go into this. 

z l.g., the snow emits cold ; and yet the snow remains itself, identical, undiminished. 
So, too, a luminous body with its light, or a flower with its fragrance. 

143 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

To the lower term or member it is a relation, the lower being 
dependent upon the higher for its whole existence and meaning. But 
to the higher it is not a relation at all, in any sense which imposes 
metaphysical obligation or responsibility. " It is that," says Plotinus, 
of the One conceived as the Good, " on which all depends, and which 
all things desire and have as principle, and which they are all in want 
of, while it itself has lack of nothing, is sufficient for itself, and is 
the measure and limit of all; which out of itself gives the rovs, and 
essence, and soul, and life, and the activity of reason. . . . But 
it is itself by no means that of which it is the principle/ 1 

Thus, in Plotinus, the negative tendency wrestles with its own 
great theoretical shortcoming. A sort of reality is given to the 
manifold world. And at the same time the One remains nearly, 
though not quite, in accord with the negative conception of it. It 
has ceased, indeed, to be " all in all." But at any rate it remains a 
One which excludes all multiplicity, and is changeless and self- 
sufficient. 

It is easy enough to point out the inadequacy of this solution. 
Metaphors, as such, are not metaphysic. And the idea of something 
which is a relation of B to A, but not of A to B, can only be called 
self -contradictory. With such criticism, however, we are not at this 
point concerned. Our business here is to learn what the negative 
tendency really is and really means; and to learn this by observing 
how it has behaved in the field of history. 

The three great cases so far examined have shown us what the 
inner movement, and the genuine meaning, of this tendency are. 
With this we can pass on intelligently to Spinoza. But first we 
should turn for a moment to the period between Plotinus and the 
beginnings of specifically modern philosophy. For among the various 
appearances of the negative tendency in that period, there is one, the 
outline of which will give us a convenient summary of the chief 
points so far brought to light. 

i Enn. I. Bk. 8. 



144 



THE METAPHYSIC OP SPINOZA 



The whole mediaeval period, indeed, is one vast illustration of 
this last and deepest of the distinctions that have arisen in thought 
and life as men seek to make themselves at one with ultimate and 
eternal reality. And that whether we regard the men of thought, or 
their methods of thinking, or the practical life which in part they 
shaped and which in part shaped them a life half control of the 
world, half renunciation of the world. In the intense and passionate 
reasonings of Augustine which set the problems and laid the basis for 
mediaeval thought ; in the penetrating and radical insights of Erigena ; 
in the massive thought of St. Thomas, where the doctrine of the 
simplicitas 1 of the Divine nature crosses and thwarts the insight 
that all things, and all the determinations of things, have their being 
and their home in God ; 2 in Nicolas of Cusa, whose view of the world 
may be taken as the last great expression of the mediaeval spirit : in 
all these the negative tendency is seen, one hardly knows whether to 
say in conflict or in combination with its opponents. These men all 
knew that the universal is the principle of reality; and that there 
fore the universal of universals is the ultimate object of all science 
and the true end of all conduct. Nor were they blind to the fact 
that that highest universal, that final unity of all things, must be a 
concrete and synthetic principle, the source and home and law of all 
the particulars of the world. But in attempting to reach that highest 
universal they were exposed for reasons which we shall see later, 3 

1 This simplicitas is a oneness which excludes diversity. Diversity must be excluded 
from the Divine nature ; for else the Divine nature would be a " compositum," and " omne 
compositum postering est suis componentibus et dependens ex eis." Moreover " omne 
compositum causam habet." (See Summa Theol. I. 3. 7 ; and cf. I. 11. 1. "unum non 
addit supra ens rem aliquam, sed tantum negationem divisionis" ; cf. also Contra 
Gentiles, Bk. I. cap. 18.) 

2 This may fairly be called the deepest insight in the philosophy of St. Thomas. It 
may be seen, for instance, by taking together the following doctrines and considering the 
consequences of their synthesis. (1) God has " propriam cognitionem de omnibus rebus." 
(Contra Gentiles, I. 50. cf. 67-71 and cf. also the parallel passages in the Summa Theol. 
e.g., I. 14. 9-13.) (2) Scientia Dei est causa rerum. (Summa Theol. I. 14. 8.) (3) But 
" int elligere " is "the activity or energising (actus) of an intelligence which exists in 
itself and does not pass over into anything extrinsic to it, as, for instance, heating passes 
over into that which is heated." (Contra Gentiles, I. 45. 1.) I have attempted at a later 
page to work this out more fully (infra, pp. 336-341). 

3 Infra, pp. 218, 219. 

11 145 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

were specially exposed to the temptation which always waits upon 
that endeavour: the temptation to have recourse to the simple and 
easy expedient of stripping away from the given particulars their 
differentiating peculiarities and retaining only the common element. 
Such a process, as it ascends through the stages of widening univer 
sality, strips away all determinations, and leaves us at the end with 
an altogether abstract and empty Absolute. In the presence of such 
an Absolute, if you are possessed by the instinct and passion of 
religion, there is but one type of religion still open to you the 
mystical. And if you have felt keenly the imperfection and the 
sorrows of the world, you may refuse to grieve that your logic calls 
you and your fellows to such a goal; indeed, in bringing you to that 
goal, your sense of the evil of the world has probably been more 
influential than your logic. 

But over those great names we must pass. To two of them we 
shall return later, but here we must confine ourselves to a single 
mediaeval instance; one, however, which in interest and attraction 
yields not even to those. In the thinking of those " dear friends of 
God," the mediaeval Mystics, the philosophy of the via negativa 
assumes the most winning form which it has ever had in the history 
of man. In its logical movement it remains true to type. It shows 
that keen dialectical development from realistic grounds and 
methods, which has characterised so many of its great historical 
appearances. But to this it added a grace that has won the reluctant 
hearts of later and more earthly generations. And the height of its 
moral passion made it a power effective for the regeneration of the 
religious life of the day a religious life externalised, hardened, 
tending, by that tragedy which waits upon priestly churches, to lose 
itself in the vast forms of the very structure which it had been 
building up through long centuries to be its home. 

So complete, indeed, is the evolution of the negative philosophy 
in the hands of the Mystics within the mediaeval church, that we shall 
find united in their thinking nearly all those main features and 
characters which so far we have discovered by studying widely diverse 
cases. A rapid enumeration of the main points in their teaching 

146 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

will thus afford us that brief summing up of the whole position which 
we wish to make before passing on to Spinoza. 

(1) As they make their way from the particulars given in 
experience to a vision of the highest universal,, they do not take the 
particulars along with them so that when the universal is gained 
the particulars are seen transformed in its light and displayed as 
genuine elements of the eternal. Rather they gain their One as did 
Parmenides and the Vedantists, by being fully in earnest with the 
category, or point of view, of Pure Being, and by rigorously carrying 
that point of view to its last conclusions. Eckhart was a master of 
the Scholastic learning; what he did, as a man of thought, was to 
give complete right of way to tendencies and methods already 
.present in Scholastic Realism, 1 until at last he passes beyond the 
distinction between the God who knows and the begotten or created 
world which He knows to that ultimate and purely unitary Godhead 
in which there is neither knowledge nor action ( " never did it look 
upon deed"), neither Father nor Son nor Holy Ghost. Windelband 
has pointed out that what held the great Schoolmen back from work 
ing out this development themselves, was the high value which 
Augustine had taught them to set upon personality. 2 But with 
teachers who were led, by just their keen feeling for personality and 
for the sorrows and evils which it brings, to wish for its suppression 
rather than for its encouragement, this check was taken away, and 
the realistic logic, hastening forward to its conclusion, came to the 
goal where all logic is hushed. The ultimate reality has no deter 
mination or quality; is, in Philo s word, anoio^. Not merely is it 
above reason ; but even Being, the emptiest of all categories, is regarded 
as too particularised a conception for it, and it is declared to be 
beyond Being. It is not " Icht " but " Nicht." " . . . There 
fore," says the author of the Theologia Germanica, "we do not give 
a name to the Perfect, for it is none of these. The creature as 
creature cannot know nor apprehend it, name or conceive 
it. . . . In what measure we put off the creature, in the same 
measure are we able to put on the Creator; neither more nor less." 3 

i Cf. 145, 146, supra ; and 218, 219, infra. 2 Hist. Philos. tr. Tufts (1893), p. 340. 

3 Theologia Germanica, tr. Miss Winkworth, chap. I. 

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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

And again "... He who findeth satisfaction in aught which 
is this and that, findeth it not in God; and he who findeth it in God, 
findeth it in nothing else, but in that which is neither this nor that, 
but is All. For God is One, and must be One, and God is All and 
must be All. And now what is, and is not One, is not God; and 
what is and is not All and above All, is also not God, for God is One 
and above One, and All and above All. Now he who findeth full 
satisfaction in God, receiveth all his satisfaction from One source, 
and from One only, as One. And a man cannot find all satisfaction 
in God, unless all things are One to him, and One is All, and some 
thing [some particular thing] and nothing (icht und niM) are alike." 1 
(2) But no sooner has this point been reached than they are 
face to face with their great problem the problem set by the mani 
fold and determinate world, whose divine and angelic orders are 
declared by theology, and whose earthly facts are given in experi 
ence. This they see clearly, and set themselves to the task of deriving 
the universe of particular existences from that ultimate which cannot 
even be described as Being, which can as well be called non-Being 
as Being. In that still and formless quiet, a movement of self- 
apprehension and self-utterance is declared to take place. Thus arises 
a double outflowing. First, there is an outflowing of that which is 
God, and in this the Godhead of the Christian religion comes to be. 
Secondly, there is an outflowing of that which is not God (and there 
fore is mere nothing) ; by this all the world of creatures arises. 2 Into 
the details of this account we are, however, not obliged to go. 3 What 
concerns us is the fact that the situation itself was understood, and 
was deliberately faced. It should be noted, however, that the very 
first step in the solution the postulated self-apprehension and self- 

1 Theologia Germanica, tr. Miss Winkworth, chap. XLVL Of course, in the Theologia, 
Germanica, an intensely practical book written in the Western Church, one must not look 
for the negative view in an un contradicted form. The same is to be said of the De 
Tmitatione Christi. 

2 If we overlap three centuries, and the sundering gulf of the Reformation, we find the 
same attempt on a still more Titanic scale in the vast imaginations of Bohme s cosmogony 
and cosmology. But one must note how, in Bohme s hostility to the doctrine of a creation 
out of nothing, there comes forward the desire for a positive or concrete doctrine of 
creation i.e., a doctrine that will show an organic relation between the creature and the 
very nature of God. 

3 References to Pfeiffer are given by Erdmann, Hist. Philos. Eng. tr. vol. I., p. 549. 

148 



THE METAPHYSIC OP SPINOZA 

utterance contradicts the original account of the ultimate reality. 
It is a salto mortale; the gulf is impassable, but it is to be taken as 
crossed. 

(3) And this account of the origin of the world of creatures 
involves a view of the self in man similar to that worked out by the 
Vedantists. For the account given of that outflowing from God by 
which the creature comes to be, implies that what makes the creature 
a creature what distinguishes him, or it, from God is really 
nothing at all. If we could strip away these nothingnesses and get 
at the genuine reality of the creature what Eckhart called the 
"Spark" the point or apex of the soul which is divine and makes 
salvation possible that reality would be nothing other than the one 
eternal reality of God. " Thou sayest/ " the author of the Theologia 
Germanica imagines the objector to say, " beside the Perfect there 
is no substance, yet sayest again, that somewhat floweth out from it: 
now is not that which hath flowed out from it something beside it? 
Answer : This is why we say, beside it, or without it [outside of it] 
there is no true Substance. That which hath flowed forth from it, is 
no true Substance and hath no Substance except in the Perfect, but 
is an accident, or a brightness or a visible appearance, which is no 
Substance, and hath no Substance except in the fire whence the 
brightness flowed forth, such as the sun or a candle." 1 

(4) Finally, all this is carried forward to its ethical and 
religious application. These nothingnesses which separate us, as 
creatures, from God these qualities and determinations, this being 
"here" and "now," which make us to be creatures, and hide from 
us our home in God let us strip them away. " Thou shalt sink thy 
thine-ness and thy thine shall become a mine in his mine," says 
Eckhart to the soul 2 in describing the process of its salvation; a 
process summed up in that virtue of Abgeschiederiheit, in which by 
heroic struggle the moveless inner divine man subdues to himself the 

1 Miss Winkworth s translation, chap. I. Note the Neo-Platonic idea of emanation in 
the last sentence, contained, characteristically, in a metaphor. Note too that what to the 
Vedantist was an express view of the self, is here only the implication regarding the self, 
of the general doctrine as to the creature. (Cf. Erdmann, Hist. Philos. Eng. tr. vol. I., 
pp. 549, 550.) 

2 See Erdmann, Hist. Philos. Eng. tr. vol. I., p. 552. Cf. the reference (p. 219 infra) 
to Professor Royce s paper on Eckhart. 

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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

outer man who is a creature of desire and change ; though the intense 
and practical character of Eckhart s religious endeavours made it diffi 
cult enough for him to remain consistently at this point of view. The 
same teaching, though again with the same qualification, is found in 
the Theologia Germanica. " Now mark : when the creature claimeth 
for its own anything good, such as Substance, Life, Knowledge, Power, 
and in short whatever we should call good, as if it were that, or 
possessed that, or that were itself, or that proceeded from it as 
often as this cometh to pass, the creature goeth astray. What did the 
devil do else, or what was his going astray and his fell else, but that 
he claimed for himself to be also somewhat, and would have it that 
somewhat was his, and somewhat was due to him? This setting up 
of a claim, and his I and Me and Mine, these were his going astray, 
and his fall. And thus it is to this day." 1 " Behold on this sort 
must we cast all things from us, and strip ourselves of them ; we must 
refrain from claiming anything for our own." 2 " For if the left eye 
be fulfilling its office toward outward things ; that is, holding converse 
with time and the creatures; then must the right eye be hindered in 
the working" [i.e., "seeing into eternity"]. 3 "Let no one suppose, 
that we may attain to this true light and perfect knowledge, or life 
of Christ, by much questioning, or by hearsay, or by reading and 
study, nor yet by high skill and great learning. Yea, so long as a 
man taketh account of anything which is this or that, whether it be 
himself, or any other creature; or doeth anything, or frameth a 
purpose, for the sake of his own likings, or desires, or opinions, or 
ends, he cometh not unto the life of Christ." 4 "Be assured, he who 
helpeth a man to his own will, helpeth him to the worst that he can." 5 
And with this may be compared the great lesson De contemptu 
omnium vantitatum mundi which a Kempis is never weary of incul 
cating, and the lesson that we must withhold our minds from all the 
creatures in order that we may find the Creator; for that which is 
not God is nothing, and is to be accounted as nothing. 

i Miss Winkworth s translation, chap. II. 2 Ibid. chap. V. 

3 Ibid. chap. VII. 4 Ibid. chap. XIX. 5 Ibid. chap. XXXIV. 



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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 
V. 

Such was the attempt, in the thought and in the life of the older 
world, to rise by the negative way from appearances to reality. The 
four cases which we have examined show the inner logic of that 
endeavour; show the essential contradiction which vexes it; and show 
something more to what practical efficiency in evil days, and to 
what clear shining of heavenly light in the soul, it was possible for 
men to rise by that bleak and apparently hopeless road of denial. 

When we leave those ages behind us and come to our own, it seems 
as if the last possibility of mystic thought or life had departed. The 
air is different. For good and for evil, the world has made us its 
own. And yet Mysticism, alike in its logic and in its life, has had its 
place among us ; and in both aspects has been surprisingly true to its 
ancient type. As a practical spirit it has passed, as of old, "like 
night from land to land," in unexpected places finding out its own, 
leaving, to mark its course, here and there a starry name but usually 
only the atmosphere of its peace. In the Church of England, in 
Germany though not now as once and specially among the 
Friends, it has laid its finger upon its chosen, and in them has given 
to the modern world well-nigh its most admirable type of character. 
And once at least it moved with terrific energies; many an English 
man, in the civil war, struck hard with the sword, and showed no 
mercy in victory, nor lost hope in defeat, because he had in him as 
an inner fire the same instinct that in earlier days led men to the 
silent life the instinct for the immediate ascent of the soul to God. 

On the -speculative side, the history is easier to trace ; for there 
the mystic conception of ultimate reality came forward in the place 
determined by that secular logic which leads philosophy through its 
epochs. Hence the mystic view of reality, as it appeared in modern 
thought, was at once new and old: old, in that it unconsciously 
repeated an ancient situation and an ancient movement of thought 
for Mysticism is really the one theology of which men ought to say 
" semper eadem " ; new, in that it is original and independent, arising 
from its own modern sources and moving by its own impulses. It 
was a stage a stage integral, essential, necessary in the working 

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THE METAPHYSIC OP SPINOZA 

out of a scientific process which began with the beginning of the 
modern world. In Greece the first men of science had, as we have 
already seen, to begin at the very beginning. And in the long-drawn 
carrying out of the attempt which they initiated, the thought of Par- 
menides not merely occupies a place; it occupies a place logically 
inevitable, performs a function logically necessary. In modern 
thought there has been something very similar. Those who stood at 
the beginning of the modern period held it necessary that science and 
philosophy should do their work all over again ; should go back to the 
very beginning and make their start once more from that point; 
should, from the very bottom, build themselves up altogether anew. 
And the long working out of the endeavour thus initiated proceeded, 
as among ancient Greeks, so among modern Europeans, with strict 
logical continuity. In the latter case, as in the former, there came a 
point where the negative view showed itself as a necessary and 
inevitable stage in the logical evolution. And at that point stood 
Spinoza. 

But the life of the first era of modern Europe was a much more 
complex thing than that of the age in which Greek science began to 
be. This is reflected in the way in which the negative metaphysic 
takes its rise in Spinoza s thought; and is reflected in another 
thing which we shall have to study a little later the way, namely, 
in which, in Spinoza s thinking, it has to share its throne with its 
great opponents, as with Eleatics and Yedantists it had not to do. 

For, as we study its genesis in Spinoza, the first factor that we 
find is a moral and religious one. Experience, as he tells us in the 
remarkable opening pages of his treatise on Method, 1 had taught him 
that " all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile." 
Further reflection convinced him that if he "could really get to the 
root of the matter " he " would be leaving certain evils for a certain 
good." He " thus perceived that he was in a state of great peril " 
and he "compelled himself to seek with all" his "strength for a 
remedy however uncertain it might be ; as a sick man struggling with 

i Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione, I have followed Elwes translation (2nd ed. 
revised) of Spinoza s "Chief Works," save where references to some other edition or 
translation are given. 

152 



THE METAPHYSIC OP SPINOZA 

a deadly disease, when he sees that death will surely be upon him 
unless a remedy be found, is compelled to seek such a remedy with 
all his strength, inasmuch as his whole hope lies therein." He was 
able to see, however, what the source of all these evils is, and so in 
what direction the way of escape from them must lie, if any such way 
of escape there be. " All these evils," he says, " seem to have arisen 
from the fact that happiness or unhappiness is made wholly to depend 
on the quality of the object which we love. When a thing is not loved, 
no quarrels will arise concerning it no sadness will be felt if it perishes 
no envy if it is possessed by another no fear, no hatred, no dis 
turbances of the mind. All these arise from the love of what is 
perishable, such as the objects already mentioned [riches, fame, 
pleasures of sense]. But love toward a thing eternal and infinite 
feeds the mind wholly with joy, and is itself unmingled with any 
sadness, wherefore it is greatly to be desired and sought for with all 
our strength." 

With Spinoza then, as with Vedantist and Neo-Platonist and 
medieval Mystic, it is primarily a moral or religious passion which 
sets him at work. It is a passion after that Eternal, by making our 
home in which we shall be delivered from the vanities and the evils 
of this life. But if we are to understand that fact aright, we must 
give careful heed to three other facts. First, when a man undertakes 
a scientific task, he has to work with scientific instruments no matter 
whether the interest that set him at the work was primarily a moral 
and religious, or primarily an intellectual, one; and therefore the 
work itself must in the first instance be studied and be judged as 
science. Secondly, Spinoza s was a mind of such an order, that his 
religious interest made him work all the more truly in the scientific 
spirit. Just because the stake was so great, therefore the science 
must be as accurate as possible. Just because it was a matter of life 
and death in the deepest sense of those words, therefore logic must 
have its uttermost right and do its uttermost work. But, thirdly, 
even more than that is true. Spinoza s nature was as truly scientific 
as it was truly religious. He was animated by the scientific passion 
as truly as by the. religious. He had the instinct for rationalising the 
world, as truly as the longing after an eternal object for his love. 

153 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

All these three counts require us to consider his system as a piece of 
rational science as a logical structure. And in doing that, our 
first endeavour must be, with him as with Parmenides or Eckhart, to 
understand the logical situation in which he found himself and which 
gave him his point of departure. What that situation was we may 
see by considering carefully just what Descartes had done in his 
attempt to begin at the very beginning and to build up thence a 
science which should be trustworthy because from beginning to end 
no untested material had been admitted. 

Descartes, then, after stripping away all traditions, all doctrines, 
all principles, which lie in any way open to doubt, still finds one 
thing which emphatically is. It so truly is, that even in attempting 
to doubt its existence, one asserts its existence. Cogito, ergo sum. I, 
the thinker, am. Or, as we should probably say nowadays: 
" Thought is." 

So far, good. But the really important question is : What did 
Descartes do with the cogito when he had got it? This may best be 
seen by comparing what Descartes did with what a later philosophy 
did. This later philosophy perceived that in the cogito in all 
thought, though it be the kind of thought called doubt, or even 
though it be the kind involved in sense-perception there is involved, 
on the one hand, a subjective consciousness, and on the other, an 
objective consciousness in which certain principles are operative. 
But this consciousness of objects and that consciousness of self are 
seen to be correlative, neither being possible apart from the other; 
so that they constitute together a consciousness which is truly one 
and not two. This consciousness, then, this cogito, in which many 
facts and operations are thus present in one self-conscious grasp, is 
a true and veritable Many-in-One ; in it is found a genuine principle 
of unity-in-diversity. And with this, the problem of the Many and 
the One at which science and philosophy have been labouring from 
the beginning, comes at last to its solution -in the conception of a 
supreme self-consciousness, or spirit, who is the subject of the world. 

Now there is, it is true, something in Descartes treatment of the 
cogito which looks straight in this direction. And that something a 
modern student, trained in the school of Platonic or Hegelian Ideal- 

154 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

ism, would at once seize upon as the deepest and most valuable insight 
of the Cartesian philosophy. It lies in the fact that to Descartes our 
highest category is the conception of God. In all our judging when 
we doubt or criticise, when we find things to be imperfect or finite 
there is involved an explicit or implicit conception of a being perfect 
and infinite; only through the conception of the perfect and infinite 
can we judge anything to be finite or imperfect. In other words, our 
consciousness of God is the impelling element in all our knowledge. 
It is, so to speak, the vital soul of the cogito. Without it there could 
be no such thing as knowledge or thinking at all. r^ 

But to this insight that an explicit or implicit consciousness of 
God constitutes the very essence of the cogito, and is the basis of all 
knowledge, neither Descartes nor his age could do justice. Nor was 
it to be expected that they should. There is no royal road to meta- 
physic as reasoned science. If men are to use a higher category as 
an assured instrument of orderly and abiding scientific insight, they 
must first work their way through the stubborn dialectic of the lower 
categories. So it was in Greek philosophy; and the case was not 
otherwise with the philosophy of modern Europe. So that what we 
must deal with here is not that idealistic Descartes whom a Platonist 
or a Kantian may very rightly dig up out of the Meditations; it is 
the Descartes whom that age received; and in particular it is the 
Descartes who furnished to Spinoza his point of departure. We must 
inquire very carefully what that Descartes did with the indubitable 
reality which he had found even in the midst of doubt with that 
vital union of subject and object which he summed up in the word 
cogito. 

And first we must notice that in his attempt to found science and 
philosophy anew, he began at the beginning in a far more rudi 
mentary sense than he himself imagined. In dealing with the 
cogito, the Descartes that we are here concerned with drew his point 
of view and his principles of explanation from the first and lowest 
of the families of the categories. He went to the categories of Being 
and employed in particular the category of Substance; adopted, that 
is to say, the method of explanation in which the pure, eternal, 
unchangeable, uncompounded Being is, in some way, put under or 

1E5 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

behind the visible and changing qualities with which in our experi 
ence we have directly to deal, and is viewed as the substrate of those 
qualities. The result of this was that he ended by splitting the 
co git o into two. That is, he sharply sundered the subjective con 
sciousness and the consciousness of objects. Each he treated by 
itself; but of course, since they were viewed as co-ordinate realities, 
used the same category and followed the same schema in each case. 
In dealing with the subjective consciousness, he conceived the ego, 
which is the subject of the cogito, as a substance a " thinking 
thing" and " thought " was its attribute. Of this attribute, the 
various states of mind (ideas, feelings, volitions, and so on) are 
modifications. What leads him to this, is just the perception that 
these latter, these " states of consciousness " which he comes in the 
end to call modifications, cannot stand alone. They are not self- 
intelligible. Per aliud, non per se, concipiuntur. And so we are 
referred back, and back, and back, until we come to something which 
fulfils the great requirement; something quod per se concipitur. 
This is thought. But even yet Descartes is not quite satisfied. 
Thought can be conceived through itself, it is true. But yet, there is 
an ego which is the subject of the cogito; an ego whose essence and 
nature it is to be a thinking thing. And so we get the complete 
scheme: the substance or thinking thing; its attribute, thought; 
and the descending orders of the modifications of this attribute 
modes, and modes of modes, and modes of these again as far as you 
choose to go. Thus, then, Descartes dealt with the subjective con 
sciousness. But, next, he finds a great order of facts or qualities 
which he does not feel able to assign to the subjective consciousness, 
and these he simply casts out of the cogito altogether. 1 Here also 
the same line of reflexion is followed out; the same search made 
after something which can stand alone and be conceived through 
itself. And this gives us the same general form on this side as on the 
other: a substance (body), its attribute (extension), and the 
various modifications of this attribute. 

Furthermore, these two spheres are quite independent of each 
other. Each of these two substances can exist, and be conceived, 

1 See especially Meditation VI. 
156 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

without the help of the other. Indeed it is of the nature of sub 
stances to be mutually exclusive. 1 And the attributes are as radically 
opposed to each other, are as mutually exclusive, as the substances. 
Extension is not conscious; thought is not extended. In a word, 
whatever thought is, that extension is not ; and whatever extension is, 
that thought is not. If anything falls within one, it falls without 
the other. 

But this absolute disjunction plunges us at once into difficulties. 
For in our actual experience these two orders of being most certainly 
come into connexion with each other. I, the thinking thing, have 
an experience of extended things. We have, then, a double problem 
on our hands. First, an empirical problem: By what expedient is 
that connexion as a matter of fact brought about? And secondly, a 
metaphysical problem : How, ultimately, is the possibility itself of 
that connexion to be accounted for ? Descartes answer to the former, 
seen in his theory of the passions and in his view of the function 
of the pineal gland, need not concern us here. But his answer to 
the latter is of radical importance. 

What he did not do, in this answer, was to remove the difficulty 
itself by recognising the organic connexion of thought and the 
extended world. Gassendi in his Objections forced Descartes to the 
point where to a student of to-day this recognition seems unavoid 
able. But it was beyond the power of the philosophy of that age to 
make the recognition in any vital way. A few sentences from the 
argument between Gassendi and Descartes will show how the matter 
stood. " . . . parceque <Tun cote," Descartes had said in the 
sixth Meditation, 2 " j ai une claire et distincte idee de moi-meme, en 
tant que je suis seulement une chose qui pense, et non etendue, et 

1 One finds such statements as, for instance, the following " Sed jam dicendum est 
quo pacto ex hoc solo quod unam substantiam absque altera dart & distincte intelligam, 
certus sim unam ab alia excludi. Nempe haec ipsa est notio substantiae, quod per se, hoc 
est absque ope ullius alterius substantiae possit existere, nee ullus unquam qui duas 
substantias per duos diversos conceptus percepit, non judicavit illas esse realiter dis- 
tinctas." (Responsiones quartae, p. 124 Second Elzevir edition.)-Indeed from the point 
of view of "Being" substances must be mutually exclusive. This Parmenides saw 
clearly ; and then, with his principle that in the real there is no " is not," leapt at once to 
the conclusion that the real is one indivisible substance. 

2 Cousin s edition (Paris : Levrault, 1824-26), tome I., p. 332. In the Elzevir edition, the 
fifth and seventh "Objections and Replies" (the fifth being the discussion with Gassendi) 
are given as an Appendix. 

157 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

que (Tun autre j ai une idee distincte du corps, en tant qu il est 
seulement une chose etendue et qui ne pense point, il est certain que 
moi, c est-a-dire mon ame par laquelle je suis ce que je suis, est entiere- 
ment et veritablement distincte de mon corps, et qu elle pent etre 
ou exister sans lui." Gassendi, in the course of his argument, raises 
this point, 1 " . . . mais suppose, comme vous dites, que vous 
soyez une chose qui n est point etendue, je nie absolument que vous 
en puissiez avoir 1 idee. Car, je vous prie, dites-nous comment vous 
pensez que 1 espece ou 1 idee du corps qui est etendu puisse etre 
regue en vous, c est-a-dire en une substance qui n est point etendue ?" 2 
Descartes answer is rather a clever parrying of the difficulty than a 
solution of it. " Je reponds a cela qu aucune espece corporelle n est 
regue dans 1 esprit, mais que la conception ou 1 intellection pure des 
choses, soit corporelles, soit spirituelles, se fait sans aucune image 
ou espece corporelle." 3 So that to the end Descartes held to the 
mutual independence, the mutual exclusiveness, of thought and 
extension. 

And what he did do, in endeavouring to meet the difficulty, was 
this. He made the two substances, of which extension and thought 
are the respective attributes, subordinate, and premised, to effect 
their connexion with each other, a third substance which is God. 
" By substance," he says, " we can conceive nothing else than a thing 
which exists in such a way as to stand in need of nothing beyond 
itself in order to its existence. And, in truth, there can be conceived 
but one substance which is absolutely independent, and that is 
God. . . . Created substances, however, whether corporeal or 
thinking, may be conceived under this common concept [of sub 
stance] for these are things which in order to their existence, stand in 
need of nothing but the concourse of God." 4 Thinking substance and 
extended substance, then, are not independent of God. But their 
independence of each other Descartes maintains stoutly and to the end. 

It was this thinking, then, and the logical situation which arose 

1 With regard, as he points out, not to "corps en general," but to "corps massif et 

grOSSlGF- 

2 Ed. cited, tome II., p. 224. 

3 Ed. cited, tome II. , p. 297. 

4 Principles, I. 51, 52, tr. Veitch (Blackwood). 

158 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

out of this thinking, that furnished to Spinoza his scientific point of 
departure. True, Spinoza brought with him elements which ortho 
dox Cartesians would have repudiated with becoming severity- 
elements from ben Maimon; from Chasdai Creskas; especially from 
Ibn Ezra, and through him from that heretical Jew pantheist, 
Avicebron; possibly even from Bruno. True also, he brought to the 
Cartesian philosophy, deep spiritual passions of a kind to which it 
was a stranger. And true, moreover, he often states in strangely 
sharp and pointed language his opposition to this or that tenet of 
Descartes. 1 But the fact remains that the logical situation created 
by Cartesianism was Spinoza s scientific point of departure; and 
that by Spinoza s work the fundamental lines in the movement of 
Cartesian thought were carried forward to their logical conclusion. 
That he himself had no special intention to do this ; that he did not 
regard his own system as standing in any very intimate connexion 
with the Cartesian system: these things do not settle the question. 
And to urge either his occasional sharp criticisms of Descartes, or the 
bitter repudiation of him by the orthodox Cartesian schools, as a 
reason for refusing to regard him as the man of thought who revealed 
the ultimate meaning of the Cartesian categories and the Cartesian 
method, is to miss the genuine core of the situation because of some 
of its external incidents : is to miss the main set of the tide because 
of one or two of its prominent and rather noisy eddies. Spinoza 
lived, whether he would or no, in the Cartesian current. In his long 
and quiet meditations, the Cartesian, thought ripened and worked 
itself out. And the outcome was that he became to the first stage of 
modern philosophy what Parmenides had been to the first stage of 
Greek philosophy the man who made clear the goal toward which 
its method led, and the view of the world which lay implicit in its 
working principle. 

The position into which Spinoza was thus brought is what we 
have now to consider. The advance which he made upon the Cartesian 
position may be briefly outlined as follows : 

In the first place he saw that there was really no need at all for 
Descartes to set up his hopeless problem of the connexion of two 

i E.g., Eth. beginning of Pt. III. and especially beginning of Pt. V. 
159 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

substances which are independent of each other. For what Descartes 
had on the one side was really nothing more than an attribute and its 
modifications. And what he had on the other side was likewise really 
nothing more than an attribute and its modifications. There was no 
need at all to put a distinct substance behind each of these attributes. 
Indeed to do so was to misuse the category of substance itself. For a 
substance is precisely that which is needed as the support or the 
home of a variety of attributes; it is the single substrate required to 
bring the many attributes back into unity of existence. What 
Descartes should have said, then, was very simple: there is one sub 
stance, and in that one substance both these attributes inhere. 

So that Spinoza s assertion that substance is One, simply com 
pletes the evolution of Descartes thought. To Descartes substance is 
that " which so exists as to stand in need of nothing beyond itself in 
order to its existence." But upon that definition unless we assert the 
existence of a plurality of absolutely independent universes or monads 
there can be but one substance. And this, as was noted above, 
Descartes himself saw. There can be conceived, he admitted, but 
one substance which is absolutely independent [i.e., which really does 
fulfil the definition], and that is God. We perceive that all other 
things can exist only through the concourse of God [i.e., according 
to the definition are not substances at all] . But he avoided the force 
of this, and avoided the transformation of his system which it 
required, by adding that the term substance does not apply to God 
and the creatures univoce; " that is, no signification of this word can 
be distinctly understood which is common to God and them." 1 
Descartes, that is to say, at once retains and does not retain the scheme 
of the world which he had worked out by the use of the category of 
substance. But the excommunicated Jew with his piercing intelli 
gence could not remain, as the loyal (and, let me insist, sincere) son 
of the church remained, in such a position. That which Descartes 
admitted, Spinoza insisted upon, and put in its proper place in the 
system. For him, from the beginning, reality is One Substance. And 
this is the first great step, the first main position, in Spinoza s meta- 
physic. 

1 See Principles, I. 51. 
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

This first step consisted, it will be seen, in a stricter use of the 
fundamental Cartesian category, not in an advance from it to a 
higher category. In other words, Spinoza did not correct Descartes 
by insisting upon a more accurate treatment of the cogito. He did 
not point out that the objective consciousness that of which the 
consciousness of extended objects is one aspect is correlative to the 
subjective consciousness. He did not point out, to put the same 
thing in another way, that extension is relative to thought, exists for 
thought, and so comes within the sphere of thought. Such a correc 
tion as that, it was left for Kant to make. What Spinoza did was to 
take his stand upon the Cartesian category and insist upon a more 
thoroughgoing application of it. And this fact is of the very highest 
importance for Spinoza s whole system. For it not only gave the 
first step in it; but it also, as we have now to see, determined the 
second step. And this second step was, if possible, more important 
than the first; leads directly, indeed, to the negative conclusion; or 
rather, is the negative conclusion. 

What that second step was, an illustration will help to make plain. 
I assert, let us say, that self-consciousness is the highest principle of 
science that reality consists in a single self-conscious and self- 
determining spirit, and in its activities which are the world and the 
history of the world. Thereupon an objector challenges me. " Self- 
consciousness the highest principle of science ? But exactly what does 
that tell me? What do I know of the nature of self-consciousness?" 
But to this I can at once make an answer : Tat tvam asi thou art 
it. Now it is just this question which Spinoza had to face as soon as 
he had taken that first step which we have just seen. Eeality is One 
Substance. Be it so ; but what does that tell us ? What can we know 
about the nature of the One Substance? 

And the key to this situation lay in the fact already indicated; 
the fact, namely, that the category of substance itself, by which 
Spinoza had shown himself so determined to abide, involves an answer 
to this question. This Parmenides had seen, and had worked out 
with clear and unflinching logic. This also Spinoza saw and worked 
out; and, by doing so, gained the great regulative principle of his 
philosophy. 

12 161 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

This point we must consider very carefully. We shall best com 
prehend Spinoza s procedure here by comparing it with that of the 
earlier historical instances which we have studied. We have seen 
that the thinking which moves on the level of the categories of Being 
has to make an absolute disjunction of " is " and " is not." The " is " 
is a pure " is," and there is no place for any " is not " in it. But 
from this two things at once follow. First, the true and veritable 
Being is apart from all change ; for no " is not " can ever creep in to 
bring about any alteration. Secondly, that true and veritable Being 
must be apart from all limitations or determinations; for these also 
involve an element of " is not." This Parmenides saw and his whole 
system was simply the formulation of this single insight. This, too, 
the mediaeval Mystics saw; as is specially evident in their doctrine of 
the creature. That procession from God by which the creature comes 
to be, is, they said, a procession of that which is not God, i.e., is a 
procession of non-Being. Which is just to say that Being belongs to 
God alone, and that the determinations which make the creature 
seem to be an individual distinct from God, are really nothing at all. 1 

It is this very same line of thought which Spinoza at this point 
follows out. First of all he sees that determination involves an ele 
ment of " is not." But this insight has at least two possible mean 
ings. To a man who stands at a certain logical level, it has one 
significance. To a man who stands at a certain other logical level, it 
has an altogether different significance. It will be advisable, in order 
to understand exactly what it meant for Spinoza, to set these two 
meanings side by side. 

The first is expressed more exactly by saying that affirmation 
involves negation. Affirmation and negation are correlative. Each, 
for its own existence, requires the other. If you characterize any 
thing as " this " you distinguish it from " that." But and this is 
the key to the whole matter it is just because a thing can be such 
a " this " that it can have a place and a function in the system of the 
universe at all. So that there is a sense in which determination is 
negation. But this insight receives all its meaning from the still 

i A conclusion to which, as we have seen, the Vedantists also come ; and by an 
argument that differs more in -mode of expression than in logical content. 

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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

deeper insight which goes along with it. For the universe is seen to 
be a determinate system a system articulated in inner determina 
tions; and the kind of negation involved in determination is seen to 
be necessary to the existence of a universe at all. 

But that is not what the principle meant to Spinoza. His 
thought moves in the region of the Being-categories. And there the 
" is not/ so far from being considered necessary to reality, has to be 
cast out of reality altogether. A spatial illustration may make this 
somewhat more clear. Imagine a cubic foot of space in some definite 
position say, at your right hand. Now, what is it that prevents 
you, considered as the possessor of that defined portion of space, from 
having the whole of space ? It is the determinations the limitations 
which give to that piece or fragment of space its size and shape. If 
these particular limitations, and all limitations of this kind, were 
annihilated, you would have the whole of space. If we carry through 
an argument of this sort, not with regard to space merely, but with 
regard to reality as a whole, we get Spinoza s own conception of the 
meaning of his great principle. This or that particular thing so he 
felt is a piece or fragment of reality. But if all the limitations, all 
the determinations, which make it " this " or " that," were swept 
away, then you would have not a piece or fragment of reality, but 
reality itself. A particular thing is the One Substance with the 
greater part in most cases, indeed, with nearly all of its reality 
negated by determinations. 1 Such, then, was to Spinoza the principle, 
Omnis determinatio est negatio. And such a principle, so construed, 
leads him at once to the principle that the One Substance is indeter 
minate. 2 Every determination is viewed as a negation of reality. 
Therefore the One Eeality is beyond all determinations. 

1 See, for instance, his explanation in a letter to Jarig Jellis (Ep.L.), of the doctrine that 
figure is negation. "This determination [figxire] therefore does not appertain to the 
thing according to its being, but on the contrary is its non-being." (Elwes, vol. II., pp. 369, 
370.) So that the application of the term modus to particular things is literally consistent. 
A particular thing is a mode or manner in which the One Substance exists. And it is 
precisely the determinations which bring it about that, in the particular thing, the One 
Reality exists, not in its wholeness, but only in this very partial mode or manner. The 
full carrying out of this would have given the Mystics doctrine of the creature, or the 
Vedantists doctrine of the human self. 

2 See, for example, the second letter to Huyghens (Ep. XXXVI.) "Now since the 
nature of God is not confined to a certain sphere of being, but exists in being, which is 
absolutely indeterminate, so His nature also demands everything which perfectly ex 
presses being ; otherwise His nature would be determinate and deficient." (Elwes, vol. 
II., p. 357-italics mine.) 

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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

So far, then, Spinoza has done exactly what Vedantist and Eleatic 
and Mystic did. He has worked, as they did, with a category which 
belongs to the general family of the Being-Categories. He has taken, 
as they did, three great steps which represent the strictest and most 
faithful working out of the logic of that category. First, he has con 
ceived reality as a One a One whose unity excludes all dividedness or 
multiplicity. Secondly, he has affirmed that all determinations are 
negations of reality. Thirdly, he has declared the One to be therefore 
indeterminate. 

These principles can serve, and, as we already know, several times 
have served, as the ground-lines of a system of philosophy. They 
are not merely consistent with one another, but are a rigidly consist 
ent development of the inner meaning of that category which fur 
nishes the original point of departure. They need only to be more 
minutely explicated, and to be applied to the problems of practice, in 
order to give such a full-orbed and thoroughgoing system as is found 
in the Vedanta or in the school of Eckhart. In dealing with Spinoza, 
then, let us set these three great positions together, as representing a 
single factor or movement in his thought. And this movement in, or 
aspect of, his thinking, let us call his " first metaphysic." 

But now, will Spinoza give to these principles just that develop 
ment and application which would round them out into such a system 
as we have seen in Yedantist and Mystic ? Our study of those earlier 
systems has shown us what direction such development and applica 
tion would have to take. There remain yet a fourth and a fifth step. 
The fourth step would proceed as follows. All determinations are 
negations of reality. Therefore the separateness from the One which 
the particular things and beings of the world appear to have by 
reason of their determinations, is, after all, an illusory separateness. 
The One alone is, and what distinguishes us from it is really nothing 
at all. 1 This, when fully articulated, would give us a doctrine like 
the Yedantist doctrine of the self, or the Mystic doctrine of the 
creature. Then the fifth step would advance to the ethical and 
religious application of all this similar, for instance, to what we 

i Indeed, with regard to one order of determinations, Spinoza did virtually affirm this. 
In the letter to Jarig Jellis referred to above (p. 163, note) he called the determination of 
figure " the non-being of the thing." 

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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

have already seen in the teaching of Eckhart or in the more con 
sistent teaching of the " Forest Schools." With this, the system as 
a system would be fully rounded out. The only thing that would 
still remain to be constructed would be its Apologetic its defence of 
itself against that great theoretical objection which, as we have seen, 
always troubles systems of this kind. 



VI. 

"Will Spinoza round out those three principles into a com 
plete system of negative philosophy?" The answer is, that he did 
not. And that sets us two problems. First, why did he not? 
Secondly, what did he do instead? 

Why he did not is easy to see. In the first place, as we have 
already so fully seen, in a philosophical development of this kind, no 
sooner do you reach an abstract Absolute, than you have a great 
theoretical problem on your hands. The finite and manifold world 
comes battering at your gate. And with this problem, in one form or 
the other, you must deal. For if you say that the finitude and mani- 
foldness which separate us from the One are really nothing at all, 
and that therefore we really are not separated at all, are not really 
finite, are not really manifold; then the answer comes : " But we seem 
to be finite; and our world seems to be manifold and subject to 
change." And if you reply : " Yes, but that seeming is an illusion," 
then you are still in difficulty. For at once the question arises : " In 
a One which is absolutely without division, without change, without 
negation, in a One which is eternal and perfect, how has such an 
illusion come to be?" 

Zeno, indeed, and even the Vedantists, could cut through this by 
an easy method by involving the objector himself in self-contradic 
tions. But such a way of escape was not in accordance with 
Spinoza s temper. And moreover, in the Europe of his day, there 
was an influence at work which gave to the problem now in question 
an almost overpowering weight. Since the Eenaissance the manifold 
world had been taking hold on men as never before. With regard 
to a vast variety of interests, the soul of man had been kept " asleep " 

165 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

for no small number of centuries, and now in its awakening was 
intolerably " hungry." For one thing, men were turning with almost 
passionate eagerness to the study of the physical order of nature. 
And their devotion to such inquiries made the finite world seem to 
them an ordered and veracious thing, whose reality was not lightly 
to be disputed. It should be noted, too, that they were devoting 
themselves particularly to those mathematical studies upon which 
any scientific conquest of nature that is to be secure, must be based. 
And in these mathematical and physical studies certain great ways 
of viewing things were brought very decidedly forward. First, there 
was the feeling that what explained the world was present in the 
world. Its laws and causes were immanent laws and causes. In your 
search for explanations you were not to go away from the world to 
something outside of it or beyond it. Secondly, there was a growing 
sense of the necessity of the laws operative in the world a necessity 
conceived at first mathematically rather than mechanically or physi 
cally, in so far as there is a distinction between these points of view. 1 
It was not merely that Spinoza lived in an age which was resound 
ing with the work of such men. It was not merely that he numbered 
such men among his friends and correspondents. 2 It was not merely 
that his mind was so large and open that it could not turn a dead 
surface toward any great intellectual influence, and so sincere that 
it could not lightly dismiss any great difficulty. But it was that he 
himself, in a very true sense, was one of these men. This scientific 
tendency, with its devotion to the manifold world, with its view of 
that world as genuinely real and the home of eternal laws and 
inviolable necessities this tendency possessed Spinoza s soul to its 
very core. Not that it made him a physicist. But it exercised a great 
influence on his metaphysical thinking. In a word, the tendency 
which once had been great in the world, and the tendency which was 
now coming to be great in the world the tendency which moves away 
from the manifold world to an abstract Absolute, and the tendency 
which sees the manifold world actuated by an immanent and inviolable 

1 Cf. Pfleiderer, Philosophy of Religion on the Basis of its History (Eng. tr. from 2nd 
German ed.), pp. 40, 41. 

2 E.g., Christian Huyghens-or even Oldenburg. 

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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

necessity had come face to face ; and their battleground was the soul 
of this Jew. But in that calm and self-disciplined mind there was 
no outcry or tumult. The result simply was that by the side of that 
"first metaphysic" which we have been studying, there arose 
another. This we may call Spinoza s "second metaphysic." 

The leading principles and the inner structure of this second 
system, it must now be our task very briefly to study. This we can 
most conveniently do by considering two chief topics: first, the 
method upon which Spinoza, in this part of his thinking, worked; 
secondly, the "world-scheme" built up by the use of that method. 
And in dealing with the latter we shall have to discuss the relation of 
this "second metaphysic" to the "first metaphysic"; for Spinoza 
himself regarded his thinking as a single system, and did not believe 
that its leading factors and principles fall apart into two or three 
distinct systems. 

The significance of the method which Spinoza followed in this 
second metaphysic of his may be brought to clearer light by a com 
parison. When men of science fling themselves upon the manifold 
world of our experience, in the endeavour to make it intelligible as a 
manifold, the process which they carry through is one of discovering 
unity and eternity in that manifold. That the facts of the world 
change on our hands, that they are one thing at one time and another 
thing at another time, is precisely what makes men of science dissatis 
fied and sets them at work ; they cannot leave facts, and the successive 
changes of facts, standing isolated. They link them together by 
searching for and actually discovering those permanent and 
unchanging relations, the formulations of which we call "laws of 
nature." And in this labour there can never be rest, until the whole 
manifold world is seen as a single system: is seen as a unity which 
is also an eternity; for the principles which mediate the unity, and 
govern all the manifoldness and change, are eternal principles. 

But to say this is to say that the method of scientific men is a 
odos avoo a "way up." They begin with particulars, opaque, frag 
mentary, evanescent, altogether unsatisfactory to the intellect. But 
from these they climb up to continually wider views of the laws which 
are operating in them. And as they thus go up, they carry the 



167 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

particulars along with them ; and these hecome transformed become, 
at each upward step, more stable, more law-full, more satisfactory, 
in every way to the intellect. Then, if in this process we reach a 
point where the whole system of existence is seen as transparently 
intelligible is seen as rational through and through we can, if we 
wish, turn and pursue a 6&os HCXTGO We can come down, bringing 
our highest light with us, and illuminating particular spheres of 
existence with it. But a point particularly to be noted we can 
thus " come down," only because we had first laboured through the 
" way up." For precisely the value of that " highest idea " to which 
the upward way led us, precisely the feature of it which makes it 
possible for us so to apply it as we "come down," lies in this, that 
as we worked through the " way up " we found it in the particulars, 
and gradually disentangled it, gradually brought it out into a light 
that grew clearer as we went higher. Precisely the reason that we 
can apply the highest idea as we " come down," is that it is not some 
new thing, brought down from above and alien to the facts. On the 
contrary, it was always in the facts. The only difference is that in 
"coming down" one is applying with clear and easy intelligence 
something which in " going up " one was gaining with pain and trouble. 
The " way up " is what nowadays we usually call the " synthetic 
method." Eeally it is a method of combined analysis and synthesis. 1 
The "way down " on the other hand is a method of pure analysis, 
made possible by preceding synthesis. Historically, however, the 
analytic method has frequently attempted to stand alone, and in so 
doing has played in human thought a great but not altogether a 
happy part. Standing thus alone, it is cut off from its true source 
and support ; its conjunction with the " way up " is broken ; and then 
it becomes a method peculiarly dangerous all the more dangerous, 
that it is exceedingly attractive to just such minds as Spinoza s. In 
this form, it starts with some idea as a premiss, and confines itself 
strictly to the task of getting out of that premiss what is in it. All 
matter not contained in that original premiss must with the utmost 
severity be kept out of the conclusion. And if any such matter does 

i There are people who take a perverse pleasure in calling it "the inductive method." 
But the historical English use of the term " induction " unfits it for such an application. 

168 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

creep in, the method considers itself to that extent to have failed. 
But of the " synthetic method " almost the opposite is true. It is 
precisely the mark of this method to get more into the conclusion 
than was apparent in the original point of departure. For it recog 
nises that its proper business is to get " ideas " (or categories) and 
"facts" properly joined together; and this process of bringing to 
facts the ideas that illuminate them and that draw to light the reason 
hidden in them,, grows continually both in breadth and in depth as 
it goes on. The material dealt with in any given investigation comes 
to mean more and more as the investigation goes on. The original 
premisses are being continually " reconstituted." The " ideas " get 
both deeper and wider increase both in connotation and in denota 
tion. And the " facts " continually take on wider relations and 
greater significance. With the " analytic method " the object of 
investigation remains fixed, fast, .unchangeable from the beginning. 
With the " synthetic method," the more you deal with the object of 
investigation the larger it becomes under your hands. 

The analytic method in that strict form Spinoza deliberately 
adopted. About the question of method he had thought seriously, 1 
and in the treatise De Intellectus Emendations gives us his conclu 
sion on the subject his Organon. The treatise may be described as, 
among other things, a plea for the use of the " way down " without 
any " way up " ; at least, without any " way up " in the sense 
described above. There is an " origin and source of the whole of 
nature," from which, as one may put it, the whole process of nature 
flows down. And if we are to have a " faithful image of nature," 
our mind must have a highest idea which represents that origin and 
source, and then, from that highest idea, must deduce the whole 
descending series of ideas which will accurately represent to us the 
process of nature. 2 Furthermore Spinoza thinks or rather, he 
seems to take for granted that if we are to have a " faithful image 
of nature," the logical movement of our ideas must proceed in the 

1 See Martineau, Study of Spinoza (1882), p. 46 seq. The fact (ibid. pp. 48, 49) that the 
De Intellectus Emendatione , which originally had taken the lead of the Ethics, was 
gradually dropped, and at last left unfinished, is very significant. As it is, the treatise 
ends with a problem which, upon the basis there laid down, is impossible of solution. 

2 Elwes, vol. II., pp. 15, 16. 

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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

same direction as the logical 1 movement of nature. Just as the whole 
process of nature flows down from its " origin and source," so must 
our ideas flow down from the highest idea which represents that 
" source." It does not seem to him permissible that our mind should 
reverse the order; should, in attempting to form a "faithful image 
of nature/ begin with the lowest particulars and run backward along 
the course of their outward flow from their " origin," and so form at 
last a " highest idea " corresponding to that " origin." 

This, it is true, at once raises the question : " But how, without 
such a otfds- avco as has been described, are you to get that highest 
idea at all?" And Spinoza actually does consider this difficulty 
under one of its specific forms. He imagines an objector to say : " In 
order to be certain that your highest idea is really a true idea, you 
will need a proof. But that will call for a still higher idea ; in fact, 
will lead to an infinite regress and so reduce the whole situation to 
absurdity." Spinoza s answer to the mere demand for " proof " is 
very admirable. But he does not see the deeper question which is 
involved. His answer comes to this : " Supposing a man to have 
gained that idea, and to be actually usdng it in the victorious ration 
alisation of nature such a man would not be troubled at all about 
your miserable question of proof." " Truth would make itself mani 
fest and all things would flow, as it were, spontaneously toward him." 2 
But the very finality of his answer to the mere brute demand for 
proof apparently blinds Spinoza to the fact that he has nowhere 
clearly and consciously told us how we are to get that so indispensable 
" highest idea." 

X But then, how, on his own method, is he to construct a world- 
scheme? If he is to do so, a highest idea he must have. And since 
he actually has done so, a highest idea presumably he did have. The 
answer is that he did have a highest idea, and did proceed from it to 
the elaboration of a world-scheme. But the way in which he got at 
that highest idea was peculiar. In part it was the outcome of a long 
course of reflection, the process of which had, so to speak, died away, 
leaving the conclusion standing out like a self-evident and eternal 

J ! For with Spinoza the movement of nature is a logical movement. 

2 Elwes, vol. II., p. 16. 
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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

truth. This conclusion he formulates into a certain number of 
definitions two or three of which contain the gist of the whole 
ma tter and puts these at the head of his world-scheme just as 
Euclid put his axioms at the beginning of his book on geometry. In 
part, again, the highest idea was got by taking over a certain concep 
tion from that aspect of his thinking which we have called his " first 
metaphysic." That first metaphysic had culminated in the view 
that reality is One Substance. And with One Substance the " second 
metaphysic " sets out. As we shall see more fully a little later, these 
two substances appeared to Spinoza to be one and the same thing, 
and so he never doubts the genuine unity of his own thinking. But 
really the two are radically different things. The transition from the 
first to the second metaphysic is not the logically continuous transi 
tion from one part of a unitary system to the next. It is, on the 
contrary, a transition in which the central conception undergoes a 
most subtle, but also a thoroughly fundamental, change. The one 
indeterminate substance becomes the One Substance with infinite 
attributes. What blinded Spinoza to the greatness of this change 
was probably the fact that he held in both cases to his great regulative 
principle, Omnis determinatio est negatio every determination (i.e. f 
ascription of determinate limits, of definite characters and qualities) 
is a negation of reality. He did not see that the use which he made 
of this principle in the second case was really a denial of the principle 
itself. 

With this, then, we may proceed to consider the ground-lines of 
the world-scheme itself, which in its elaboration constitutes the body 
of his " second metaphysic." 

The first point which we have to consider is how he expresses that 
highest idea which, in the way already indicated, he puts at the head 
of his philosophical scheme of the manifold world. First, under the 
names causa sui and substantia, he brings forward the idea of a being, 
unconditioned and self-existent a being which contains within itself 
the ground of its own existence and the ground of its own intelli 
gibility. 1 Then, under the name God, he enriches this uncondi- 

1 Eth. Pt. I. defs. I. and III. Erdmann points out (Hist. Philos. Eng. tr. vol. II., p. 59) 
that the expression causa sui has no reference to a process of self -creation, but means 
" the unconditioned." 

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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

tioned and self-existent being with infinite attributes 1 an attribute 
having been previously defined as that which the intellect perceives 
as constituting the essence of substance. 2 

Then from this starting-point, he goes on to the things which 
are not self-referring but are other-referring. These the various 
individual (i.e., particular) things and beings of the world are 
viewed as modi; that is, as limited " manners of existence " of the 
attributes of God. 3 

Furthermore, the particular way in which God expresses himself 
in modes depends absolutely on the necessity of the divine nature. 
That is to say, the system of particular things, the order of the mani 
fold world, is an order of the strictest necessity and most inviolable 
law. The manifold universe, so to speak, flows down from the one 
source along channels absolutely determined by the nature of that 
source. 4 In a teleological system, it is true, there is also necessity; 
for the end is the supreme law of that whole process in which it is 
being realised. But in such a system as that now before us there is 
absolutely no place for teleology or for the teleological kind of 
necessity. 5 The strict and inviolable necessity of this system is a 
necessity altogether a tergo. 

And so the great category of this metaphysic is the category of 
cause. But we shall altogether fail to understand Spinoza if we take 
his continually recurring term "cause" in the sense in which we 
ordinarily use the term " efficient cause/ As Erdmann points out, 6 
Spinoza s term "cause" means mathematical or logical cause. His 
relation of "cause and effect" is our relation of "ground and con 
sequent." In a word, the universe is to the Spinoza of the "second 
metaphysic," a great process of analytic logic in which the nature 
of God is the original premiss, from which processes of endless 
"causation" flow forth. 

1 Eth. Pt. L, def. VI. 

2 Ibid. def. IV. Mr. Hale White translates: "that which the intellect perceives of 
substance, as if constituting its essence." 

3 Eth. I. 25. Cor. with the reference to prop. 15 and def. V. 

4 This is every where in Spinoza; but see especially his statement of the necessity of 
the world s procession from God, in a letter to Hugo Boxel (Ep. LIV). 

5 See the Appendix to Pt. I. of the Ethics. 

6 Hist. Philos. Eng. tr. vol. II., p. 58. 

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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

Such is the skeleton of this part or aspect of the thought of 
Spinoza. His amplification of it into a detailed system is exceed 
ingly elaborate ; and to one who simply takes his stand within it, and 
judges it by its own standards, offers material for almost endless 
question and criticism. To take a single instance: what is the rela 
tion of the One Substance to the Attributes? The definition of 
" attribute/ 1 so far from giving us a clear view, may itself fairly be 
called a nest of almost hopeless problems; problems which centre in 
the question of the place ascribed to the intellect in Spinoza s scheme 
of reality. 2 But from all these questions of the internal criticism of 
the " second metaphysic " we must here turn away. It is not merely 
that the discussion of them would exceed, a score of times over, all 
possible limits of space. But it would scarcely be in line with the 
task here in hand that, namely, of getting at the main lines, the 
fundamental movements and tendencies, in Spinoza s thought, and 
of viewing these in the light of the general history of philosophy. 

Before passing on, however, one thing may be noted. Graphic 
illustrations of rational doctrines are usually very treacherous helps. 
But the attempt to envisage spatially this world-scheme of Spinoza s 
second metaphysic is somewhat useful. Sir Frederick Pollock s 
illustration, 3 supplemented by that of Professor Erdmann, 4 may be 
used. Let us imagine an infinite number of infinite plane surfaces 
parallel to one another (the attributes). Each of these is ruled with 
an intricate and continually varying pattern made up of geometrical 
figures of definite shapes (the modes particular things and individ 
uals) ; and the number of figures in the pattern is infinite (infinite 
modes). The planes are different from one another let us say, are 
of different colours. But the pattern, and the changes that keep 
taking place in it, are identically the same for every plane. Let it 
be understood, too, that if you ask for the proximate " cause " of any 

1 Eth. I. def. IV. 

2 The two chief interpretations of the definition which involve interpretations of 
Spinoza s whole world -scheme are Erdmann s and Kuno Fischer s. More, I think, can be 
said for Erdmann s than is nowadays usually taken for granted. See, however, the 
exposition of Spinoza s position in Joachim s excellent Study of the Ethics of Spinoza 
(Clarendon Press, 1901), pp. 17-27. 

3 Spinoza, his Life and Philosophy, 2nd ed. (1899), pp. 156, 157. 

4 Hist. Philos. Eng. tr. vol. II., p. 62. 

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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

one of those geometrical figures, or of any change in it, the answer is 
to be given by referring to the figures around it and to their changes. 
That is to say, God is the source or " cause " of the whole system 
of the manifold world in other words, that whole system, viewed 
in its unity, is God ; but the proximate " cause " of any particular 
thing or event is to be looked for in the other particular things and 
events. And both these orders of causation proceed with absolute 
necessity. 

It remains to say a word about the relation to each other of these 
two parts or aspects of Spinoza s thinking which have in the preced 
ing pages been so sharply distinguished. First, let it be distinctly 
understood how the distinction is arrived at. As a critical reader 
goes through Spinoza s writings, he becomes conscious that in them 
there are distinct tendencies, distinct points of view. These are not 
set apart from each other; nor does one appear later than another. 
On the contrary, they are intertwined. On a single page, even in a 
single paragraph or sentence, they appear together. Spinoza himself 
does not even feel that there is such a distinction; he believes that 
his system is one and continuous. Yet there is such a distinction. 
Indeed it is more than distinction. It is contradiction. The appear 
ance together of the contradictory views and tendencies is really 
only juxtaposition, only external union, never a genuine reconcilia 
tion. And what has here been attempted is to bring the distinction 
and contradiction out into clear consciousness, by disentangling the 
tendencies in question, formulating them, and thus setting them, in 
their systematic forms, in sharp contrast with each other. 

But an objector may urge : when all this is done, are the " first 
metaphysic" and the "second metaphysic " really so different from 
each other? Have you not in each the same starting-point unica 
substantia and the same great regulative principle Omnis deter- 
minatio est negatio? So that Spinoza s thought is one continuous 
system after all. The answer is, that the regulative principle is used 
so differently as to become really a different principle. In the one 
case it requires you to say that Substance has no attributes what 
ever. In the other it leads to the declaration that Substance cannot 

174 






THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

have a limited number of attributes, nor attributes of a non-infinite 
kind. And with this the Substance itself becomes different. The 
Substance with which the " second metaphysic " begins is not truly 
the Substance with which the " first metaphysic" ends. 

In connexion with this, however, there is a peculiar Spinozistic 
doctrine which it is worth our while to notice. Plotinus had to face 
much the same situation. He had an abstract One. And he also had 
a rational cosmogony and cosmology. But, as we saw, he had a most 
ingenious logical principle by which these two were enabled to live 
together in peace. " It," he said of the One, " is by no means that 
of which it is the principle." The powers and beings of the manifold 
universe are altogether dependent upon it. But it goes its way in 
the most absolute independence of them, and so retains all its 
characters its negative characters as an abstract One. 1 Now there 
is something very much like this in Spinoza. " An effect," he says, 
" differs from its cause precisely in that which it has from its 
cause." 2 And he uses this principle to show that intellect and will, 
in any sense in which men use these attributes, cannot pertain to 
God who is the sole cause of all things. That is to say, he uses it 
for the very same purpose which Plotinus had served by the principle 
noted above; he uses it to enable the abstract One to be the source 
of a manifold order and yet remain an abstract One. It is an 
expedient closely akin to that of Plotinus; so closely akin, indeed, 
that it falls under the same condemnation. It is subtle ; it is ingeni 
ous; but it forgets the implications of the conception itself of 
relation. You cannot have a relation which works only one way; 
which binds B to A, but not A to B. 



1 St. Thomas has the same problem, though a very different method of solving it. The 
Divine nature is characterised by simplicitas. Yet in God is a multitudo intel- 
lectorwn. How can this be? St. Thomas answers by an elaborate doctrine based upon 
the principle that the Divine nature itself is God s forma intelligibilis ; the Divine intel 
ligence has but one intelligible form its own nature (v. infra, pp. 344, 345). 

2 Eth. 1. 17. echol. 

175 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 



VII. 

So far, then, for this aspect of Spinoza s philosophy. But no 
sooner have we seen what it was, than we are once more face to face 
with a difficulty. Just as in the metaphysical views expressed by 
that Spinoza whose spiritual affinity is with Eleatic and Vedantist 
and Mystic, there was a great theoretical crux, so here, in the meta 
physical views expressed by the Spinoza whose spiritual affinity is 
with the Eenaissance and post-Kenaissance men of science, there is a 
great theoretical difficulty. And just as in the first case that large 
and open and sincere mind faces the difficulty and attempts to solve 
it, so here does he face it and attempt to solve it. 

First, let us see what the present difficulty is. It may be stated as 
follows. On the one hand, in that way of viewing the world with 
which we have just been dealing, particular things and individual 
beings all stand upon a level and all are actuated from behind. 
Spiritual activities the energies of thought and will stand on pre 
cisely the same level as any natural activity. Spinoza, for instance, 
expressly affirms that will does not appertain to the nature of God 
more than any other natural thing does, but is related to it just as 
motion and rest and all other things are related to it; all alike 
follow from the necessity of the divine nature and are determined by 
it to exist and to act as they actually do exist and act. 1 And even if 
Spinoza did not expressly declare this, it would still follow from the 
general point of view which he here holds. From natura naturans 
i.e., from God, the substance whose essence the intellect perceives as 
consisting in infinite attributes 2 follows necessarily natura naturata, 
the system of modes. 3 And in natura naturata man stands on a level 
with all other things, and man s actions on a level with all other 
particular events. For thought is one attribute ; extension is another ; 
and, to recur to the illustration mentioned on a previous page/ that 
total pattern which appears on each of these planes, and on the 

i Eth. I. 32. Cor. 2. 2 Eth. I. defs. VI. and IV. 

3 Eth. I. 29. schol. 4 p. 173, supra. 

176 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

infinite number of other planes, flows from and is absolutely deter 
mined by the necessity of the divine nature. To give a precedence to 
any one of the attributes, or to break down their absolute independ 
ence of one another, their absolute separateness, would be to forget 
the essential principles of this " second metaphysic." 

But on the other hand there is something which compels us to 
do just those things to give a precedence to one of the " attributes," 
and to break down their separation. What this is, we must now con 
sider. 

First, as we have already seen, 1 in our experience subject and 
object are correlative. The consciousness of objects and the con 
sciousness of self are necessary each to the other; if either be taken 
away, the other vanishes; and the development of the one is the 
development of the other. But such correlation and such organic 
union imply community of nature; imply that a single principle is 
manifesting itself in each of the members of the relation. There 
is, that is to say, community of nature and of principle between the 
world given to us in experience and the self that knows the world 
and acts in it and upon it. But what is that common nature of the 
self and of the world ? This question we could answer if we " knew 
from within " either of the members of the relation. And one of 
them we do know from within; as self-conscious, we know by inner 
awareness the nature of the self. So that precisely in the self lies 
the key to the nature of the world. That principle or energy of which 
the human soul is an inchoate form the principle frequently in 
philosophy called "thought," 2 but for which "spirit" is an apter 
name is the principle of the whole objective order, including the 
order of extended things and any other order of being with which 
man s intelligence can enter into relation. In other words, the unity 
of the world the world in the greater sense of the term, as that 
system of things in which the human soul is an element is the unity 
of a single self-conscious experience in which, through manifoldness 

1 Supra, pp. 2, 3 ; and 65. Cf. infra, pp. 208, 209. 

2 In the sense of that total activity in which psychologists sometimes distinguish 
" feeling," "intellect," and "will" : a usage of the term "thought " which is convenient, 
and dignified by long custom, but open to misunderstanding. 

13 177 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

and diversity,, through the shock of conflict and the discipline of 
unfathomable sorrows, there is being realised an ideal end, a " far-off 
divine event/ 5 

the love 
Toward which all being solemnly doth move. 1 

But from this certain consequences follow for the view of the 
world expressed in Spinoza s " second metaphysic." First, the nature 
of the manifold world is emphatically not the nature set forth by 
Spinoza in this aspect of his thinking. The process which is the life 
of spirit is not a process guided by a necessity that acts absolutely 
a tergo. On the contrary, it leads itself on from before. It presents 
ideal ends to itself, and to these it seeks to give being in the world of 
achieved realities. True, the world, as a spiritual process, has neces 
sity in it. But it is the necessity which arises out of the fact that the 
ideal end is itself the supreme law of that process of development of 
which it is the culmination and fulness. And since the source alike of 
that end and of that necessity communicates its own nature to men, 
men are able to adopt that necessity as the law in which their own 
being finds its fulfilment. So that, on the view ultimately given by 
this tendency, necessity itself is enlisted as a good soldier " under the 
banner of the free spirit." 2 

But secondly, this same process the life of spirit, or, as Spinoza 

1 Arthur Henry Hallam, Sonnet On the Picture of the Three fates in the Palazzo 
Pitti at Florence. 

2 Coleridge, in his marginal annotations in Crabb Robinson s copy of Spinoza, has an 
interesting reference to Spinoza s doctrine of necessity, in which he does justice to 
Spinoza s distinctions of immanent necessity from external compulsion. Commenting 
upon Eth. I. 28. he says : " . . . It is true he contends for Necessity ; but then he makes 
two disparate classes of Necessity, the one identical with Liberty, . . . the other, 
Compulsion = Slavery. If Necessity and Freedom are not different points of view of the 
same thing ; the one the Form, the other the Substance, farewell to all Philosophy and to 
all Ethics. It is easy to see that Freedom without Necessity would preclude all Science, 
and as easy to see that Necessity without Freedom would subvert all morals ; but though 
not so obvious it is yet equally true that the latter would deprive science of its main 
Spring, its last ground and impulse ; and that the Former would bewilder and atheize all 
morality. But never has a great man been so hardly and inequitably treated by Posterity 
as Spinoza. ..." 

My attention was called to Crabb Robinson s copy of Spinoza (and to Mr. Hale White s 
publication of Coleridge s annotations, in the Athenceum, No. 3630, May 22, 1897) through 
a charming act of kindness on the part of Miss Lucy Toulmin Smith to a stranger who 
one day entered as a visitor the Library of Manchester College. 

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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

calls it, the " attribute " thought cannot be placed as Spinoza places 
it, simply on a level with the other aspects of reality like extension. 
Men cannot be viewed as standing on a level with " all other natural 
things " as having merely the same relation to the ultimate unity 
that "motion and rest" have. On the contrary, the unity of exist 
ence lies in the fact that the world is constituted by an eternal spirit; 
and we men have, as the essence of our being, a nature and an activity 
which are our own and yet are His nature and activity communicated 
to us. We are, so to speak, lesser centres in that system of which He 
is the supreme centre. He is in us, and we live in His life. Through 
us, or rather in us and our experience, He is realising an eternal 
purpose; and we, in that loyalty to domestic and social and civic 
duties which is the indispensable basis and content of all goodness, 
but which has not become fully itself until it has risen to the form 
of the conscious love of God, can adopt that purpose of His as our 
purpose, and thus enter more and more upon the fulfilment of our 
vocation as sharers in the divine nature and the divine life. 

So that thought itself bears witness against the place which Spinoza 
has assigned to it in the world-scheme of his " second metaphysic." 
And this witness is borne by all the phases and aspects of that 
thought which is our experience. It is involved in the possibility of 
knowledge. It is involved in ordinary or " individual " morality. It 
is involved in those great structures and far-reaching activities which 
we denote by such terms as " the state " and " religion." 

Such, then, is the situation which the Spinoza of the " second meta 
physic " has to face. What will he do ? One thing, it is evident, we 
must not expect. We must not expect him to enter upon the reflective 
mastery of the whole situation by grasping, the insight just noted, and 
explicating it into a system of metaphysic. That was left for the men 
of a later day ; Spinoza must bring Cartesianism to its goal before the 
new era could begin. Descartes had broken the cogito into two, and it 
was but natural that Spinoza should harden the division. 1 To see the 

i This is one of the chief points upon which Coleridge fastened, in the annotations 
referred to above (p. 178, note). " Spinoza begins," says Coleridge, " with the Phantom of 
a Thing in itself, i.e., an Object. But an Object implies a Subject as much as a S. an O. ; 
therefore that only can have a chance of grounding knowledge, which assumes the actual 
fact, namely X = Subject-Object = Object-Subject, Ideal-real, real-ideal! the Absolute- 

179 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA. 

cogito restored fully to its rights and credited with the whole of its 
own possessions, we must wait for Kant and Kant s successors. But 
still a certain degree of advance in this direction was possible to 
Spinoza. For in certain of the aspects or manifestations of thought, 
the witness which it bears to itself is specially emphatic. Three such 
aspects may be noted here ; in actual experience inseparably intercon 
nected, and distinguished here only for convenience of statement. 
First, there is morality as in the individual man. Secondly, there is 
the morality seen in the ideals and regulative principles that operate 
in the life of the state. Thirdly, there is religion. These all of 
them works of thought, 1 and all of them expressing the innermost 
nature of thought stand at the gate of any philosophical scheme of 
reality, demanding admission and requiring that a place be made for 
them which they can occupy without laying aside their essential 
characters. This demand in its fulness Spinoza could not apprehend 
or grant ; to do so would have been to effect that total transformation 
of the philosophical scheme of things, which became possible only 
after Kant and the Kantians had restored the cogito to its rights. 
Something, however, Spinoza could do; and that he did. It was 
never his habit to close his great intellect against any demand of 
scientific sincerity. He listened to the demand now in question, and 
did the best he could to meet it. The result was that he advanced to 
flashes and glimpses of insight, and occasionally even to rather fully 
articulated doctrines, which represent, or imply, a view of reality 
different from either of the two which we have so far seen in him. 
Keeping to the expression already employed, we may call this part or 
aspect of his thinking his " third metaphysic." 

The relation of this third metaphysic to the other two, it will be 
understood, is much the same as that of those to each other. In 
Spinoza s thinking they are intertwined. They appear together often 

eternally foliating the Dual [so Coleridge goes on in his attempt at a speculative doctrine of 
the Trinity] as this the Triad. Being + the Word = the Spirit, and then the mystery or 
Love = God all in all when he hath finally submitted himself to whom all things had been 
submitted" (from the annotation of Ep. II. Spinoza to Oldenburg). Compare with this, 
a sentence from the comment upon the reference to Nero s crime in Spinoza s third letter 
to Blyenbergh : " The truth is, Spinoza, in common with all the metaphysicians before him 
v(Bdhmen perhaps excepted), began at the wrong end commencing with God as an Object." 

i In that greater sense of the word already noted (= rational spirit). 

180 



THE MBTAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

on the same page,, sometimes even in the same sentence; and are 
never observed to speak hostile words to one another. Yet this appar 
ently so close union is only external. In reality they are citizens not 
merely of different, but of deeply severed, kingdoms; to genuine 
reconciliation and unity they never come. If it had been Spinoza s 
fate to occupy a position similar to that of Socrates to stand at the 
head of a great philosophical succession which included in itself virtu 
ally all the serious and disinterested thinkers of the age we should 
probably have found in that succession three great schools, as distinct 
from one another as were those which alike claimed Socrates as their 
head. 

Let us consider, then, the chief discussions and doctrines which 
constitute this " third metaphysic." It would be very interesting to 
study those occasional phrases scattered through his writings, 
which have a bearing on this. For instance, in the very first sentence 
of the De Intellectus Emendatione we find him resolving " to inquire 
whether there might be some real good having power to communicate 
itself." A few pages farther over we find him mentioning " the union 
existing between the mind and the whole of nature." In the mouth 
of a Kantian or of a Platonist such conceptions would have an 
immeasurable, a world-penetrating, significance. But we should go 
astray if we supposed that they had so great a meaning for Spinoza. 
We shall be on safer ground if we turn at once to his discussion of 
those three great works or expressions of thought, in which the inner 
nature of thought simply forces itself on the attention of the observer ; 
to his discussion, namely, of in^iyj^ual,.jaoialiiy, of the state, of 
religion. 

His elaborate discussion of the first of these cannot be reproduced 
within the limits of these pages. Nor is it necessary that it should. 
For it is only with the ground-lines of the discussion, only with its 
controlling conceptions, that we are specially concerned. 

These amount to a virtual bringing back of that ideal point of 
view, and of those teleological categories, which in the " second meta- 
physic " had been driven into extremest exile. This we may see by 
considering the three main topics of the discussion: 1 first, the con- 

i Topics which are, of course, most closely interconnected. 
181 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

ception of the moral good; secondly, the doctrine of man s freedom; 
thirdly, the discussion of the way of attaining to that freedom and 
that good. 

Under the first of these three topics we have to consider in especial 
two great conceptions : that of the " summum ~bonum " ; and that of the 
" conatus in suo esse perseverandi." You, as a man, have a given esse 
or nature, and it is your summum bonum to maintain or rather, as 
we shall see presently, to realise and fulfil that esse. It is true that 
the mere use of these two phrases does not necessarily introduce a new 
point of view. For the summum bonum might be defined to consist 
simply in your position as a necessitated mode of one of the attributes ; 
and the esse, likewise, as consisting simply in the nature given you by 
that position. But precisely the key to the situation is that that is 
just how Spinoza does not conceive them. The esse is conceived, not 
as the nature given you by your mere position as a necessitated mode 
in the great " causal " series, but as something against which that 
position wages war and which you have to maintain in the face of 
that position. And that maintenance, that fulfilment of your nature 
in the face of an implacably hostile situation, is your summum bonum. 
This, however, we must consider in slightly greater detail. First 
of all, in man a great dualism of reason and passion is affirmed. 1 But, 
secondly, while the one side of this represents our position as necessi 
tated modes in the great causal nexus of modes, it is precisely in the 
other side that our summum bonum is to be sought. " Inasmuch as 
the intellect is the best part of our being/ says Spinoza in the remark 
able fourth chapter of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, " it is 
evident that we should make every effort to perfect it as far as possible 
if we desire to search for what is really profitable to us. For in intel 
lectual perfection the highest good should consist/ " Since/ he 
argues in the Ethics, 2 " this effort of the mind wherewith the mind 
endeavours, in so far as it reasons, to preserve its own being, is nothing 
else but understanding; this effort at understanding is the first and 
single basis of virtue, nor should we endeavour to understand things 
-for the sake of any ulterior object . . ." "We know nothing/ 

i Throughout Pts. IV. and V. of the Ethics. 
2 IV. 26. dem. 

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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

runs the next proposition, " to be certainly good or evil, save such 
things as really conduce to understanding or such as are able to hinder 
us from understanding." Again, " In life it is before all things useful 
to perfect the understanding, or reason, as far as we can, and in this 
alone man s highest happiness or blessedness consists . . ." 1 And 
since the good lies in understanding, it follows that " the mind s 
highest good is the knowledge of God, and the mind s highest virtue 
is to know God/ 2 So, then, in this dualism of reason and passion, 
the good lies altogether within one of the two sides. And the other 
side the side which wars against our attaining of this good, and, in 
so far as it prevails, constitutes our " bondage " is, as was said a 
moment ago, just what represents our place as modes in the great 
nexus of modes. For the passions are the ways in which external 
causes act upon us. 3 That is to say, they represent man as the " second 
metaphysic " must represent him altogether ; namely, as one mode 
altogether determined by the " causal " activities of the other modes. 
Spinoza states both sides of this dualism very strongly. The " bondage 
of man " he states so strongly i.e., in stating it he clings so closely 
to the point of view of his " second metaphysic " that he makes it 
quite hopeless. 4 But he states the other side just as strongly. And 
that he does not consider the bondage hopeless he still further shows 
by describing the way in which man is to deliver himself from it, and 
so to attain his good. 

This brings us to the second of these topics, Spinoza s view of 
freedom, which is really nothing other than his conception of the 
Good stated from a special point of view. To study it for its own 
sake would be to undertake one of the most interesting and most 
instructive tasks in the history of philosophy. But here, once more, 
for the purpose of our present discussion we may sum up the matter in 
a sentence or two. Spinoza conceives the freedom of man to lie pre 
cisely in man s fulfilling the law of his own being and living out his 
own true nature, unshackled and undisturbed by those " external 
causes" to which reference was made above. But we have just seen how 

i Eth. IV. Appendix (IV.). 

2 Eth. IV. 28. 

3 See Eth. IV. 5. Cf. the Corollary of the preceding proposition. 
* In Eth. IV., take the Axiom along with propositions 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. 

183 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

Spinoza conceives that true nature of man and that true law of man s 
being. He conceives them, namely, in a way which goes far beyond 
the point of view of the " second metaphysic," and makes no slight 
advance in the direction of restoring to the cogito its true meaning 
and its true place and function in the universe. 1 

And, as we might expect, we find the same tendency in Spinoza s 
discussion of the third of these topics the way of attaining to 
freedom and the Good. We need not, however, dwell long upon it. 
It is enough to say that Spinoza shows at length how the realm of the 
understanding is to be extended over the realm of the passions; 2 in 
other words, how we men are to break away from, and to rise above, 
the position to which we would be absolutely confined if we were really 
the " modes " which the " second metaphysic " holds us to be. Eeason, 
when it has risen through the ascending stages of knowledge, 3 comes 
to that union with God that union with " the whole of nature " in 
which it sees all things under the aspect of eternity and necessity ; and 
learns to accept them, because when thus seen they are seen as parts of 
perfection. But it accepts them, not as a mere mode accepts them i.e., 
as an external fate; in accepting them, it acts from within and of its 
own accord ; for it has risen to the point of view of the eternal, and 
so accepts them not only as good, but as being its Good that in which 
it fulfils its nature. And this state of the soul in which it is no 
longer swayed hither and thither by those forces from without which 
act on us through the passions, but is guided solely by that highest 
form of reason is freedom. 

So much, then, for the question how far Spinoza, in dealing with 
individual morality, introduces a new and higher point of view into 
his system. Next we have to consider the same question with regard 
to his treatment of the state and of religion. 

1 Spinoza s conception of freedom, in its elaborate form, is of course to be looked for in 
the latter part of Eth. IV. and in Eth. V. But it comes forward in many passages in his 
writings passages often remarkable ;f or a keenness and brilliancy that contrast strik 
ingly with the general calm of his pages. See, for instance. Tract. TheoL-Pol. cap. IV. 
(Elwes, vol. I., pp. 58 and 66) ; letter to Isaac Orobio (Ep. XLIX.) with which cf. the keen 
outburst in Eth. V. 41, schol. ; and especially Tract. Pol., II. 7, and the letter addressed to 
Schaller dealing with Tschirnhausen s objections. (Ep. LVIII.) 

2 See the earlier part of Eth. V. specially the scholium to proposition 20. 

3 See pp. 191, 192 infra. 

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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

In Spinoza s discussion of individual morality, we were specially 
concerned to note how the view there taken by him lifted men above the 
position of mere modes of one of the attributes. So far as this went, 
it constituted a recognition alike of the true nature of the cogito and 
of its true place and function in the system of reality. Now, if Spin 
oza holds to the new point of view, as he advances from the individ 
ual to the state, this recognition will be made both deeper and wider. 
The whole insight, so to speak, will move in a wider field, and thus 
the process of restoring the cogito to its rights will be carried onward 
toward its conclusion. 

For the state is one of the great works of the cogito; or, to employ 
more modern language, it is a great structure of objective reason. 
The long process of the formation of the state is one in which the 
rational spirit has struggled and still is struggling, to work out a form 
of organised society in the life of which that rational spirit will find 
its own true home, will fulfil the law of its own being, will realise its 
own essential and eternal nature. Hence, the state is not something 
external to man. Nor do its laws ultimately represent a mere com 
pulsion from without. On the contrary, it is only by living the life 
of a member of the state that man truly becomes man at all. And 
his political freedom consists precisely in belonging to a state whose 
laws are, such that he can adopt them as his own laws and find in them 
his guide toward the fulfilment of his own nature. 

Under certain limitations this view of the state was taken for 
granted by Greek citizens ; still more by Greek men of thought. Freed 
from the Greek limitations, it received an elaborate and systematic 
formulation from Hegel. And by at least one statesman of modern 
days it was thrown into the language of practical politics in Burke s 
great saying that the state is not a contract limited to man s lower 
interests, but on the contrary is " a partnership in all science, a part 
nership in all art, a partnership in every virtue, and in all 
perfection." 

But Spinoza, when he passes from the consideration of individual 
morality to the consideration of the state, does rot make this advance. 
And the reason why is plain. In that very consideration of individual 
morality, he conceives the good, as we have just seen, in a thoroughly 

185 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

iutellectualistic way. Now, an intellectualistic good is not a selfish 
good. Nor is it an individualistic good in the sense that the obtaining 
of it by one man prevents the obtaining of it by others. But it is 
individualistic in the sense that it can be realised by men who stand 
almost alone; who live, as Spinoza himself did, in comparative 
solitude. It is not necessarily a good the very striving after which 
leads to, and is fulfilled in, the building up of great social structures 
and the establishing of great social institutions. 

Moreover, the view which Spinoza takes of the whole cogito is in 
accordance with that intellectualistic view of the good. When the will 
is reduced to intellect; 1 and when, in the peculiar way described by 
him, the intellect extends its domain over the emotions and passions : 
then the cogito which is left is not one which is driven forth by its 
own nature to social activities, nor one which can find its true home 
only in the life of an organised society. 

Hence in Spinoza s views concerning the state we must not look 
for any great advance in the direction indicated above. First, indeed, 
we shall see that certain of his political positions do look in that 
direction. But we shall have also to notice that in his latest writing, 
the Tractatus Politicus, a theory comes forward which almost super 
sedes those and swings far backward toward the point of view of the 
" second metaphysic." 

First, then, for the positions which imply the view that the state 
stands in organic relation to the individual, and that therefore he who 
would be truly a man and would truly realise man s nature, must live 
in the state and perform the functions of a citizen. These are found 
particularly in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. For instance, in 
the fourth chapter, 2 he refuses to regard legislation as in its genuine 
nature a force acting on the citizen from without. He rises to one of 
his rare invectives when he speaks of those whose object in obeying 
law is merely the avoidance of punishment. But the man who 
follows the precept suum cuique, not because he fears the gallows, but 
" from a knowledge of the true reason for laws and their necessity " 

1 See Eth. II. 49. Cor. Spinoza here says that the will and the intellect are one and the 
same thing. But, with him, that virtually means the reduction of the will to intellect. 

2 Elwes, vol. I., p. 58. 

186 



THE MBTAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

he it is who " acts from a firm purpose and of his own accord, and is 
therefore properly called just." Again, in the sixteenth chapter, in 
dealing with the duty of subjects to obey the commands of the 
sovereign power, he remarks : " That state is the freest whose laws 
are founded on sound reason, so that every member of it may, if he 
will, be free ; that is, live with full consent under the entire guidance 
of reason." 1 

And the attitude revealed in such hints as those is carried still 
farther in what we may call his theory of the relation of church and 
state. " God," he says, " has no special kingdom among men, except 
in so far as He reigns through temporal rulers." 2 " It is only 
through " those who possess the right of ruling and legislating " that 
God rules among men, and directs human affairs with equity." 3 Thus 
"secular rulers are the proper interpreters of divine right." 4 But 
from this it follows that the sovereign rulers " are the proper inter 
preters of religion and piety." 5 " If we would obey God rightly," 
" the outward observances of religion and all the external practices of 
piety should be brought into accordance with the public peace and 
well-being." 6 " We cannot, therefore, doubt that the daily sacred 
rites . . . are under the sole control of the sovereign power; no 
one, save by the authority or concession of such sovereign, has the 
right or power of administering them, of choosing others to adminis 
ter them, of defining or strengthening the foundations of the church 
and her doctrines; of judging on questions of morality or, acts of 
piety; of receiving any one into the church or excommunicating him 
therefrom, or, lastly, of providing for the poor." 7 With these passages 
may be taken one of wider scope from the last chapter of the treatise. 
" It follows plainly from the explanation given above of the founda 
tions of a state, that the ultimate aim of government is not to rule or 
restrain by fear, nor to exact obedience, but contrariwise to free every 

i Elwes, vol. L, p. 206. 
2 Tract. Theol.-Pol. cap. XIX. Elwes, vol. I., p. 245. 

3 Loc. cit. Elwes, vol. I., p. 248. 

4 Loc. cit. Elwes, vol. I., p. 249. 

5 Loc. cit. Elwes, vol. I., p. 249. 

6 Loc. cit. Elwes, vol. I., p. 249. 

7 Loc. cit. Elwes, vol. L, p. 252. 

187 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

man from, fear, that he may live in all possible security; in other 
words, to strengthen his natural right to exist and work without injury 
to himself or others. No, the object of government is not to change 
men from rational beings into beasts or puppets, but to enable them 
to develop their minds and bodies in security and to employ their 
reason unshackled; neither showing hatred, anger or deceit, nor 
watched with the eyes of jealousy and injustice. In fact, the true aim 
of government is liberty." 1 

The view of the organic relation of the individual and the state 
implies not only a doctrine as to what the function of the law is and 
as to why we should obey the law. It implies also a doctrine concern 
ing the width of state action : whatever the state can do to enable its 
individual members to live truly human lives and to fulfil the nature 
of man, that the state ought to do. The Spinozistic views just noted 
lean toward a doctrine of this kind. But Spinoza never works his way 
to a clear possession of it. Alongside such passages as those referred 
to in the immediately preceding paragraphs, stand others wherein 
Spinoza regards the function of the state as limited to the securing of 
peace, and the guarding of the individual against the hindrances of 
violence and disorder. " By human law," he says in the fourth chapter 
of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, 2 " I mean a plan of living 
which serves only to render life and the state secure." And in the 
Tractatus Politicus he says : " The quality of the state of any 
dominion is easily perceived from the end of the civil state, which end 
is nothing else but peace and security of life. And therefore, that 
dominion is the best where men pass their lives in unity and the laws 
are kept unbroken." 3 Though even here it is fair to note the qualifica 
tion which he presently adds : 4 " When, then, we call that dominion 
best, where men pass their lives in unity, I understand a human life, 
defined not by mere circulation of the blood, and other qualities 
common to all animals, but above all by reason, the true excellence and 
life of the mind." 

i Tract. TheoL-PoL cap. XX. Elwes, vol. I., pp. 258, 259. 
2 Elwes, vol. I., p. 59. 

3 Tract. Pol. V. 2. Elwes, vol. I., p. 313. 

4 Ibid. cap. V. 5. Elwes. vol. I., p. 314. 

188 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

But finally, as was said above, we come, at the opening of the 
Tractatus Politicus, upon a doctrine which swings decidedly back 
toward the point of view of the second metaphysic. This is the great 
doctrine that natural right is " potentia " ; and this doctrine roots 
itself directly in the view that man is "pars naturae," i.e., in the 
language of the Ethics, a mode of one of the attributes. 
"... Every natural thing has by nature as much right as it 
has power to exist and to operate; since the natural power of every 
natural thing whereby it exists and operates, is nothing else but the 
power of God which is absolutely free. And so by natural right I 
understand the very laws or rules of nature, in accordance with which 
everything takes place; in other words, the power of nature itself. 
And so the natural right of universal nature, and consequently of every 
individual thing, extends as far as its power : and accordingly, what 
ever any man does after the laws of his nature, he does by the highest 
natural right, and he has as much right over nature as he has power/ 1 
On this ground is rested man s right over nature. " If two come 
together and unite their strength, they jointly have more power, and 
consequently more right over nature, than both of them separately, and 
the more there are that have so joined in alliance, the more right they 
all collectively will possess." 2 And on no different ground is rested 
the right of the state over its individual members. "... As 
each individual in the state of nature, so the body and mind of a 
dominion have as much right as they have power. And thus each 
single citizen or subject has the less right, the more the common 
wealth exceeds him in power, and each citizen consequently does and 
has nothing but what he may by the general decree of the common 
wealth defend." 3 "... Whatever he [each individual] is 
ordered by the general consent, he is bound to execute, or may right 
fully be compelled thereto." 4 So that it is quite inconceivable that 
" every citizen should be allowed to interpret the commonwealth s 
decrees or laws " and thus " be his own judge." 5 It will be noted 

1 Tract. Pol. II. 3 and 4. Elwes, vol. I., p. 292. 

2 Ibid. II. 13. Elwes, vol. I., p. 296. 

3 Ibid. III. 2. Elwes, vol. I., p. 301. 

4 Ibid. II. 16. Elwes, vol. I., p. 297. 

5 Ibid. III. (esp. 4-Elwes, vol. I., p. 302). 

189 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

exactly why this doctrine is referred to here. It is not for the purpose 
of criticising Spinoza s strong assertion of the right of the state over 
the individual. A sovereignty of the state over the individual there 
must be, if civil society is to exist at all. But what we have to mark 
is that the particular way in which Spinoza here gains a theory of 
sovereignty, constitutes not an advance in the process of restoring the 
cogito to its rights, but rather a relapse toward the point of view of 
the " second metaphysic." 

Let us pass, then, from Spinoza s political views to the last of the 
three subjects upon which we have here to touch namely, to his 
conception of religion. 1 If it was true that in the state we find the 
cogito going forth from itself and building up a great objective 
structure in whose life it realises its own being, even more is this same 
thing true in religion. For in religion the rational spirit not only 
builds up great objective structures. It not only organises men, and 
establishes customs, and founds institutions. But it does all these 
things, not from a point of view limited to this present life, but from the 
point of view of that total or eternal life which is the real life of man. 
That is, it tries to take the highest and ultimate point of view, and 
from that point of view to organise man s life and to fashion man s 
society. In doing this, it even seeks to make the state its minister, 
and to make man s political life a phase or aspect of his total, or 
religious, life. Nor, ultimately, can this be avoided. It is true, com 
promises, and divisions of the field between religion and politics, may 
be useful or even necessary in this present life. But ultimately 
religion cannot leave outside of itself anything whatsoever which is 
human. It must either seek to shape the whole life of man; or else 
acknowledge that the point of view from which it is endeavouring to 
organise man s life is not the highest and is not ultimate. 

But it follows from this that an adequate theory of religion would 
complete that process which an adequate theory of the state would 
have carried part way: the process of restoring the cogito to that 
supreme place in philosophy, from which Descartes, with the best of 
intentions toward it, had been the means of pulling it down. But 

i With this and the immediately following paragraphs, compare what is said on pp. 
195-198 infra, concerning a contribution ultimately made to religion by the "second 
metaphysic." 

190 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

what we have already seen will guard us from expecting any such 
adequate theory from Spinoza. He really has two views of the religious 
life, as Pfleiderer points out. 1 And these both lead us back to the 
discussions just examined,, rather than forward to a still fuller 
possession of the new point of view. The one refers us to the theory 
of the state. The other takes us back to the theory of the individual s 
summum bonum. 

In the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus Spinoza views religion as 
obedience to the divine commands,, as a life of practical piety. This 
life of piety he sunders quite sharply, indeed sunders absolutely, from 
philosophical insight. If it be guided by revelation, that revelation 
itself is received under the form of imagination, not under that of 
reason. And, as we have already seen, its rites and outward observ 
ances, are to be in accordance with the public peace and well-being, 
and are therefore to be determined by the sovereign power alone; i.e., 
as the rational organisation of man s life the state is both wider and 
deeper than the church and includes the church. Indeed, religion in 
this sense is doubly sundered from reason. Not only is it insisted 
that philosophical insight is not its basis or source (so that Philosophy 
and Theology stand altogether apart). But the separation is made so 
absolute that reason is regarded as incapable of showing us this way 
of salvation at all. 2 So that, in what is the especial work of Spinoza s 
" third metaphysic " the work, namely, of putting thought in its true 
place in the system of reality this part of his theory of religion can 
scarcely be said to take us any farther than did his theory of the state. 

But, besides this, Spinoza has another view of religion. This is 
brought forward in those closing pages of the Ethics where the theory 
of the summum bonum receives that final development which trans 
forms it into a theory of religion. In the third of those three kinds of 
knowledge which he has distinguished in the De Intellectus Emenda- 
tione., 3 we know things under the form of eternity ; that is to say, we 

1 Philosophy of Religion on the Basis of its History, (Eng. tr. from 2nd German ed., 
vol. I., p. 62). 

2 Tract. Theol.-Pol. cap. XV. (see especially Elwes, vol. I., p. 194 and p. 198, along with 
Spinoza s annotation in loc. Elwes, vol. I., p. 276 [25], Van Vloten et Land, vol. I., p. 
625 [xxxi]). 

3 See Elwes, vol. IT., p. 8 seq. Four kinds of "perception or knowledge " are men 
tioned in this passage ; but Spinoza usually groups these as three (see Eth. II. 40, schol. 2 ; 
V. 25-28, 31-33). 

191 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

know them in God. But thus to know things is truly to know God. 
This, furthermore, is our perfection, and we joy in it. This joy is 
attended by the idea of God as its cause. And this, according to 
Spinoza s definition, 1 is love. Thus arises that unselfish and disinter 
ested intellectual love of God 2 which does not expect or endeavour to 
be loved by God in return. 3 

In this intellectual love of God consists the essence of religion 
according to Spinoza s second conception of it. How high and pure 
and disinterested this conception is; how this lofty disinterestedness 
is seen also in his theory of immortality ; 4 how in later days great poets 
and teachers were touched by it : these are topics upon which any lover 
of Spinoza would gladly linger. To turn away from them to the work 
of criticism seems almost like ingratitude. Yet if we are to learn 
from Spinoza that which Spinoza has to teach, we must repeat 
even here the question which especially concerns us as we discuss his 
" third metaphysic." How far, then, does this conception take us in 
restoring the cogito to its place as a principle of philosophical explana 
tion, and thus in giving to reason its due place in the system of 
reality ? 

The answer is, that it really takes us no farther in this direction 
than did the theory of individual morality. This intellectualistic 
religion is the bloom upon that intellectualistic summum ~bonum. No 
more here than there can reason be pourtrayed going forth from itself 
and building those great structures of church and state in which it 
realises its nature and fulfils the law of its being. This, as Pfleiderer 
points out, 5 is the reason why Spinoza is never able to bring into 
organic relation the two kinds of religion which he has described : this 
intellectualistic religion to which men of disciplined mind may attain, 
and which requires no institutions; and that religion of the many, 
described in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, which has a revela 
tion, and institutions, and a social organisation. 6 

1 The sixth of the definitions of the emotions appended to Eth. III. Cf. III. 13. schol. 

2 Eth. V. 15. 

3 Eth. V. 19. 

4 Eth. V. 21-23, 29-31, 3840, and specially 41. 

5 Op. cit., (Eng. tr., vol. I., pp. 65, 66). 

6 Now that the three tendencies in Spinoza s thinking are before us, the position of the 
second relatively to the other two may be indicated in this way : It stands midway 

192 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

VIII. 

Such, then, was the place occupied by Spinoza in that process of 
development which is the history of philosophy. Descartes, standing 
in the forefront of a new age and seized to his heart s core by its spirit, 
had attempted to take his stand as if at the very beginnings of 
science; had attempted to free himself from all assumptions, and to 
show forth the bare fact as he found it. He could not, it is true, 
annihilate the past. He could not put himself back where Vedic poet 
or Ionic cpvffioXoyos had stood. The cogito became self-conscious in 
him as it could not in them. But though his material was so different 
from theirs, yet in dealing with it he put himself nearly upon the same 
logical level as they; he used the same order of categories, and so 
followed essentially the same method of conceiving reality. But while 
it was thus given to him to initiate the first stage of modern philosophy, 
it was not given to him to carry it through to its conclusion. To 
develop the full significance of the categories which dominated it; to 
carry its method through to a final result; to formulate this result 
fearlessly and uncompromisingly, turning aside for no influence either 
of church or of state; and thus, with the emphasis of a final word, to 
make clear what the ultimate outcome is of this way of attempting to 
get at the truth of our experience : this was reserved for Spinoza. 

between the first and the third in the sense that, in working out its view of the world as 
one, it keeps its hold upon certain parts and aspects of the manifold, but makes abstraction 
of other parts and aspects. And those of which it makes abstraction are precisely those 
which, as human development goes on, come more and more to be the supreme interests 
of men. Yet even in this (so long as the scientific interest in the details of the world 
remains dominant) its face must be regarded as turned toward the third rather than 
toward the first. For though it abstracts from the aspects of reality just referred to, and 
leaves no home for them in the One (and therefore cannot in their nature find a key 
to the nature of the One), yet it does this, not in the sense of making a conscious 
and intentional abstraction, such as he makes who believes abstraction to be 
the sole way to truth ; but only in the sense that it has never seen them, has never 
felt the pressure of the problem which they raise. And such abstraction is likely to be 
overcome in the end. For if any aspect at all of the manifold be admitted into the 
One, the other aspects, coming forward each in its own time, may be depended upon to 
enforce their claims with an emphasis that increases with the deepening of human 
experience, and at last becomes irresistible. But the conscious and thoroughgoing 
abstraction which the first tendency makes is a different matter. By its very nature it 
lies almost beyond correction through any art of persuasion. For of what avail is logical 
refutation against a man who has found that human thought and speech cannot express 
that which alone is real, and in union with which is the only true life of the soul ? 

14 193 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

And this alone would make him, in the history of thought, one of 
that small number of abiding figures with which it is the primary 
task of the student of the history of philosophy to deal. But there is 
more than that. In carrying the logic of Cartesianism forward to its 
conclusion, he was no Wolff rounding out the teaching of a great 
master and destroying its vitality in the process. On the contrary, his 
was an original and searching intellect, having life in itself, and driven 
by its own inner forces to penetrate to the elements of things. Hence 
it was impossible for him to stop short with that acosmic or mystic 
view which is the ultimate outcome of the Cartesian way of dealing 
with experience and the experienced world. Other types of thought 
found a place in his mind and won from him an adherence which was 
perfectly sincere: the naturalistic spirit of modern science made its 
appeal to him, and, in defiance of the logic which required an abstract 
Absolute, he made the One Substance the home of innumerable modes, 
and gave to each mode its conatus in suo esse perseverandi; and he 
even has glimpses of the Idealistic insight that spirit or reason is the 
reality of all things, and the active agent in all cosmic processes. 

Of such an historical position the result is that he who makes 
Spinoza his companion makes the greatest things in philosophy his 
companions. On one side, he finds himself brought into touch with 
the austere and immemorial thought of Vedantist and Eleatic and 
Mystic. On another, he is linked, by affinity rather than by similarity, 
with that long succession of men of thought whose greatest name is 
still that of Democritus the men who seek to interpret the world, or 
various aspects of it, by the conception- of a natural necessity acting 
a tergo. 1 And on still another side or rather in his final attitude 
when he seeks to take into himself Spinoza s thought as a whole he 
finds himself with his face set toward Kant, and toward that still 
greater man of thought who articulated Kant s deepest insight into a 
systematic view of the world and of the world s history. 

And the way in which Spinoza s system indeed, the way in which 

i Affinity but not similarity. The Spinoza of the "second metaphysic " agrees with 
these men of science in attempting to explain the actual system of things by a necessity 
which (1) is immanent, (2) acts a tergo. But he differs from them in that he takes the 
divine nature itself as the home and seat of this necessity. He, if one may so speak, lifts 
his Democriteanism into the very nature of God, and values it as the true interpretation 
of that nature. 

194 



THE METAPHYSIC OP SPINOZA 

the whole movement from Descartes to Spinoza thus cries out for 
Kant, is in one sense the most important point of all for the student 
of Spinoza. For if we would understand a system in which diverse 
aspects stand unreconciled side by side, we must gain a point of view 
above the diversities. We must gain a point of view from which we 
can see how they came to be what they are ; and what the failure and 
yet the relative justification of each is; and how they may all be 
taken up into a greater and more comprehensive system which will 
give to each its due without sanctioning the error which each has 
when it attempts to stand alone and to make itself a finality. And 
precisely the way to gain such a point of view for the study of Spinoza 
is, first to make one s journey from him to Kant and Hegel ; and then 
from these back again to Spinoza, in order to interpret him in the light 
gained" from those who finally satisfied the need which he intensified. 

But that brings us to our last question. Let us suppose that the 
journey just mentioned has been made. Let us suppose that Kant 
and the Kantians have done their work, and that we are viewing things 
from the new point of view thus made possible to us. Is there not 
still so our question would run a great lesson for us to learn from 
Spinoza; a lesson which we can learn all the better now; which, 
indeed, we could not have learned properly at all had not Kant come 
to teach us ? Leaving the purely historical interest aside, and thinking 
only of our own outlook upon our world, is there not still a great 
reason why we should continue our pilgrimages to Spinoza? A brief 
consideration of certain facts will show us that to this question we 
must give an affirmative answer. 

First, since Kant and Hegel, we can no longer separate God and 
the world in the way which was once thought agreeable to truth and 
necessary to religion. We may say that God is the subject of the 
world ; or that the world is God s thought, or God s activity, or God s 
objective consciousness. Or we may prefer to retain a theological term 
and say that the world is a continuous creation. But however "we 
phrase it, we cannot escape from the position that God and the world 
stand in organic relation. 

But, secondly, it follows from this that we can no longer think 
highly of God by thinking meanly of the world. On the contrary, to 

195 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

think meanly of the world is to think meanly of God. If, then, we 
would retain those high thoughts concerning God which the men of 
the heroic ages of religion had, we must gain high thoughts of the 
world such as those men had not. And there is one aspect of 
Spinoza s thought which helps us to gain just such thoughts 1 the 
aspect which comes especially forward in what we have been calling 
his " second metaphysic." The way upward from the medieval view of 
this present world and of nature, to juster views of these, was a long 
and arduous way. It called for brave soldiers in the " war of the liber 
ation of humanity." Of these Spinoza was one ; and this seemingly so 
anti-religious " second metaphysic " was precisely one of his instru 
ments in that war. The peculiar form of the category of cause 
employed in this metaphysic is indeed inadequate to the matter to be 
comprehended. But even with this inadequate category Spinoza makes 
plain the greatness of the world, and the majesty of those laws which 
are changeless and inviolable just because they are expressions of the 
necessity of the Divine nature. 

" But," it may be urged, " the metaphysic in question has been the 
choice weapon, not of the merely irreligious, but of the positively and 
avowedly anti-religious, in all the great ages of human culture. Is 
there not something paradoxical in the statement that precisely by this 
metaphysic Spinoza made a great and lasting contribution to the 
deepest spiritual needs of man ? You say that in Spinoza we have, on 
the one side, a man of religion a man who expresses religion in its 
most concentrated and exclusive form . . . that attitude of the 
mind in which all other relations are swallowed up in the relation of 
the soul to God ; 2 while, on the other side, we have a man of natural 
istic temper whose business it was to explain nature as a system of 
necessitated modes. And then you say that it is the latter, rather than 
the former, who has contributed to modern religion. Surely this is 
paradox. Or is your meaning simply this : that modern man can gain 
from a naturalistic metaphysic what Spinoza himself frequently seems 

1 Cf. p. vii. of the Preface to the second edition (1894) of Mr. Hale White s transla 
tion of the Ethics. 

2 From the Master of Balliol s apt definition of Mysticism (Evolution of Theology in 
the Greek Philosophers, vol. II., p. 210). Cf. the following reference to Spinoza s "Athe 
ism " " In him the tendency to unity, to the infinite, to religion, overbalanced itself, till, 
by mere excess it seemed to be changed into its own opposite." (Philosophy of Kant, 

" -sgow, 1877, p. 43. ) 

196 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

to gain from it the Stoic peace which, arises from the very thought of 
the necessity that is in the world, and from the insight that no freedom 
is desirable except the freedom obtained by adopting this necessity as 
one s own law ?" 

No, the answer must run, that is not what is meant. The Stoic faith 
that the necessity of nature is the wisest and kindliest and most reason 
able of all things ; and the resolute peace which such faith brings : 
these, it is true, one can learn from Spinoza. But what is here in view is 
something different: this, namely, present-day religion and theology 
can learn, and have learned, a lesson from Spinoza, but the lesson itself 
has been determined not so much by what Spinoza has to give as by 
what the modern world is able to receive. For the characteristic 
devotion of modern men is to their intellectual and practical citizen 
ship in this present world. They cannot neglect the creature in order 
to find the Creator. They cannot turn away from the world; what 
they seek, alike in thought, in labour, in religion, is the mastery of it. 
It is true, indeed, as already we have had occasion to notice, 1 that 
Mysticism is not without its place among modern men. That ancient 
spirit still passes to and fro, finding in solitary hearts and in quiet 
societies its chosen, and bidding them, if they would truly live, to lose 
themselves, not in the great energies of the world, but in God. And 
if we had among us Mystics in the greatness of the ancient pattern a 
Bernard or an Eckhart they might be powerful by the mere weight 
of their practical example. Their devotion to ends intangible to us, 
their absolute rejection of goods that we take for granted as the true 
goods of life, might shock and surprise us into a re-examination of 
our lives and into a questioning of our habitual " scale of values." 
But the fact remains, that from Mysticism, in the full and historical 
sense of the name, the modern world is virtually incapable of learn 
ing. And from this it follows at once that when modern men make a 
pilgrimage to Spinoza, it is not to the Spinoza of the " first meta- 
physic." 

But the need of which the modern world is conscious, in the realm 
where thought and religion meet, is this. What is wrought into the 1 
very texture of the modern mind is the idea of natural law. Hence,, 

l Supra, pp. 151, 152. 
197 



THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

if religion is to be, not a mere partisan fighting for its existence, but 
the rightful and undoubted master of life, we must be enabled to see 
natural law as a way of God, and the uniformity of natural law as an 
appropriate expression of the rationality of God an appropriate 
expression of a divine reason which, being absolutely perfect, cannot 
be capricious or arbitrary, and which is immanent in the whole of 
nature. I do not mean to say that this is the precise point of view 
taken by Spinoza in his " second metaphysic " ; at any rate, it is not 
the form of expression there used. But it is the lesson which the 
wisest and most sensitive of modern leaders of religious thought have 
been able to learn from this aspect of Spinoza s teaching leaders of 
whom Herder, who was half theologian and half poet, and, therefore, 
eminently fitted to learn valuable lessons in Spinoza s school, is a 
representative. 1 

Such, on this side of its history, has been the strange outcome of 
the thought of Spinoza. It had in it a metaphysic which, to use 
words already quoted, is the theoretical expression of religion " in its 
most concentrated and exclusive form " ; and it had in it a metaphysic 
which for centuries has been denounced as atheistic and anti-religious. 
And of these two it was the latter, and not the former, which (through 
men such as those just referred to men of Herder s type) entered 
beneficently into modern religious thinking, and helped in making 
possible that insight which the world needed for composing the strife 
between science and religion. For men who are in earnest about 
religion specially for men who are concerned with its intellectual 
defense, or with interpreting it to new generations and changed minds 
few facts are more full of instruction and of warning than this. It 
shows, for one thing, what mere sincerity in thinking can do. From 

i It is a lesson which can be learned also from Wordsworth ; in fact, in Wordsworth it 
has its highest and soundest form. And it can be learned from Goethe ; but those whose 
good opinion is most worth having will not censure me if I prefer though it would be a 
happiness to be able to use gentler words in speaking of the great German to whom all 
thoughtful modern men, whether they like it or no, are profoundly indebted a single 
touch of the pure heart and upright spirit of Wordsworth, to all that vast intelligence, 
all that comprehension of the world from the point of view of art, for which the name 
of Goethe stands. Wordsworth s spirit not only is morally higher, but it also brings a 
.sounder and truer understanding of the real nature of the world. For the real nature 
of the world is, if I may be allowed such an expression, passionately moral. And this 
Wordsworth knew ; and so did Plato ; but Goethe did not. 

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THE METAPHYSIC OF SPINOZA 

anything that seemed to be truth, or to be an aspect of truth, Spinoza 
would not turn away. No matter how austere its countenance, he not 
merely received it, but made it a welcome guest. And the result was 
that, from a seemingly " anti-religious " view, later generations 
learned a lesson which was in the most fundamental way serviceable 
to religion. And it shows another thing: apologists who imagine 
that religion can go forward only over the dead body of some scientific 
truth have comprehended neither the depth nor the breadth of that 
which they have taken it as their life-work to defend. Eeligion has 
few more injurious friends than those who are strong in attacking 
opponents, but weak in comprehending and interpreting their own 
position. 



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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 



PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM. 1 

IN the pathetic and winning history of Mysticism one of the most 
marked features is a certain impersonality. Not that Mysticism has 
been without its special champions ; in its history there are outstand 
ing figures the great and daring men of thought who clung to the 
hope of union with reality,, even while they were formulating the world- 
shattering logic which puts reality beyond the reach of all the normal 
forms and energies of our experience. But these are not so much 
individual men of thought who by their own labour make their way 
to a new insight, and win a generation to it, and so become the founders 
of a school and a tradition. Eather they are voices for some 
thing wider than themselves ; something that works dimly in the mind 
of an age, like a hidden ferment, and slowly gathers shape, and comes 
at last to the spoken word. When some great race finds life an unsat 
isfied hunger or a burden of pain; when some great civilisation, with 
all its skill and wealth and luxury, weighs itself in the balances and 
finds itself wanting; when some generation, possessed by the vision 
and the passion of religion, finds its established religion a thing 
external, ceremonial, priestly: then, as by an original tendency of 
human nature, and with no need of historical support or derivation, the 
temper of Mysticism arises like a spirit moving upon the face of the 
deep ; and, having arisen, finds its prophets. It is the business of the 
Idealist to persuade and convince men, as best he can, under all cir 
cumstances and in every spiritual climate; but the Mystic speaks 
usually to hearts made ready for his word ; and, to them, speaks with 
overwhelming power. Indeed, the passage of mystic doctrine from 
land to land and age to age has seldom been more aptly described 

1 1 am indebted to the Delegates of the Clarendon Press for the generous permission 
which has enabled me to quote from Jowett s translation, 

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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 

than by Professor Royce, 1 when he calls to our minds the words of 
Coleridge s Ancient Mariner: 

I pass, like night, from land to land ; 
I have strange power of speech ; 
That moment that his face I see, 
I know the man that must hear me : 
To him my tale I teach. 

The history of Idealism has been very different. He who first 
formulated it, formulated it by the energies of the constructive 
reason in him ; and formulated it well-nigh for ever. To its funda 
mental positions he worked his way slowly, sounding onward as 
through an unknown sea ; availing himself of the diverse results of the 
earlier science of his race, but going far beyond anything of which it 
even had dreamed; and showing himself so pre-eminent in the power 
and insight of the labouring reason that since his day Idealism has 
never departed without profound loss from what is essential in his 
method and teaching, nor returned without receiving the touch and 
the inspiration of a new life. 

In the first place, he fixed for ever the scientific point of departure 
of Idealism the question how our knowledge is possible. Then, pro 
ceeding from that point of departure, he not only moved in the true 
direction in his attempt to comprehend the nature of reality and the 
meaning of our life, but moved so far in that true direction that the 
way was made easy to all who in later days could enter into his teach 
ing as it really was. And another thing he did, in which his greatness 
as the founder of Idealism culminates. He stated his view of the 
world with a grace of temper, an elevation of soul, a prophetic and 
compelling passion, such as gave to his truth a double power and made 
it to the men of later ages an illumination and an austere allurement, 
a persuasion and a rebuke. 

This Plato did; being one of those rare and most mighty spirits 
in whom the gifts and the insights that are given singly to other men, 
appear in combination, and in that combination take on a new and 
greater power, each contributing to the other, each enlightening the 

i The World and the Individual, First Series, p. 85. 
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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 

other, each deepening the other. First, there came to union in him 
the two great scientific currents in which the constructive thinking of 
the Greeks had hitherto run : the older metaphysic, Ionian or Italian, 
which sought to comprehend the universe as a universe ; and the newer 
Socratic " way of ideas." In this combination each side found its true 
fulfilment in the other, so that, in the place of two brilliant but limited 
endeavours, there arose a single complete and solidly based and 
thoroughly luminous view of the world. Then, secondly, this synthesis 
itself was part of a still wider synthesis. On the one side, as the 
achievement just referred to indicates, he had in him the scientific 
mind. He had its intellectual disinterestedness, its passion after 
knowledge for its own sake, its instinct for looking straight upon facts 
and seeing them with clear eyes just as they are; he inherited, in a 
word, not simply the results of the previous scientific history of the 
Greeks, but also their scientific temper in the very perfection of those 
qualities which have made the Hellenic mind to all ages the pattern 
of the scientific mind. But he was possessed also, and to the very 
centre of his being, by the great practical passions: by the passion, 
moral and political, which seeks to shape life and the social organisa 
tion of life according to the good ; and by the religious passion which 
apprehends, as the good, the ultimate principle of the universe, and 
thus sets the whole of man s life in the light of a heavenly vision, and 
directs all his energies to the works whose significance is eternal. And 
in him those things that disinterested scientific temper, that passion 
ate devotion to the realisation of the good, and that profound religious 
ness were not warring tendencies; they were co-operating powers, 
each widening the scope and deepening the character of the others. 
And even this is not the limit of the union and co-operation in him of 
characters that ordinarily stand apart. Along with that scientific 
intellect, that moral and political and religious temper, there went 
the mind of the poet, and the capacities, both receptive and active, of 
the artist. And this side of his nature, once more, in spite of the 
hostility that necessarily existed between him and those artists of his 
race who either were artists and nothing more, or else represented a 
reason earlier and unpurified by criticism really worked together with 
the others. He was half poet ; but in him poetic intuition was a form 

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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 

of intelligence, rather than a rival of intelligence; and so the poet 
in him made him a greater, not a less, philosopher. He had the Ionian 
delight in beauty, and the Ionian command over the powers by which 
beauty is expressed ; but he had also the earnestness of Lacedaemon 
no Dorian saw more clearly than he the need in human life of sim 
plicity, of austere discipline, of that gravity of mind which lifts a man 
above luxury, above levity, above the habit of imitation. He had the 
unashamed Greek joy in the whole of existence ; yet he was haunted by 
a vision of eternity which condemned alike the world that now is, and 
the mythology of his race, and the political order of his state. He had 
the Greek delight in life, the Greek instinct for the exercise and 
development of all the faculties of the soul, the catholic Greek sense 
for completeness and integrity of life; yet he knew that life can 
reach its true wholeness and integrity, not by leaving all its elements 
and interests upon a level, but only by recognising the good, and 
putting it in its place of supremacy, and arranging the whole of life 
as the manifold system of its realisation. 

Such was the many-sided reason that dwelt in Plato and helped to 
make him the greatest figure in the long history of philosophy. But 
there is still something else. A metaphysician is a man who seeks to 
ascertain the true meaning of our experience. And the man who 
would do that, must have more than scientific temper and scientific 
ability, more than a wide mind and large capacities of reason; per 
sonally and vitally he must himself possess, on all its greater and 
constitutive sides, the experience into whose meaning he would inquire. 
For himself, and with directness and integrity of devotion, he must 
have walked in the ways of life and have taken his part in the world s 
work. And this requisite, too, was fulfilled in Plato. It was not only 
that he was man of science, artist, poet; not only that he sustained 
the part of friend and of teacher; but his heart was linked to the 
greater causes in the life of his people ; he was a citizen drawn to the 
welfare of the Greek states with an intensity of earnestness that had 
in it the possibility, and at last the actuality, of tragic pain. He not 
only had a vision of perfection, but felt the call to realise it ; to realise 
it not abstractly nor in dream, but concretely in the life of his day - 
in the education which lasts from birth till death, and in the order of 

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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 

the state. He did not rest, as Windelband so finely points out, 1 in his 
gaze upon the supersensuous world; he was not one of those saints 
of contemplation who " receive into themselves the great picture of 
existence and contemplate it in desireless peace." On the contrary, 
having brought from the eternal realm ideals for this, he took up " with 
passionate courage the struggle against the powers of the earth," and 
strove " with all the energies of his soul to improve and to convert the 
world " ; he was and is " the chief of all the spirits who exercise 
the energies of will." Such he was; and being such, there was no 
escape for him from the wrestle with the world, no standing apart from 
life, no remaining untouched by the storm of the times. 

Thus, then, it was, that, while Spartan armies were going to and 
fro upon the soil of Attica, there was given to the world in Plato its 
most perfect example, not of philosophy only, but of the philosophic 
mind. He was a great man of science; but he was more; he was a 
mighty spirit, taking part in the struggle of man upon the earth, and 
bringing to that struggle its illumination with eternal light. And so, 
too, it was with his view of the world and of life ; it shows the intellect 
working at its very highest power ; but it is more than a work of the 
intellect. It is the passionate vision and creation of the entire human 
soul ; a vision and creation in which the working of the greater 
passions the passion for the state, the passion for righteousness, the 
passion for eternity goes hand in hand with the highest energy of 
the disinterested intellect. 

In attempting to understand this philosophy of Plato s as a body 
of doctrine which involves not merely apprehending Plato s conclu 
sions, but apprehending also the forces and tendencies that operated 
in him to shape them we have three things to remember at the outset. 
First, Plato was an Idealist from the beginning; from the beginning 
the root of the matter was in him there were no Kantian wanderings. 
But secondly, his Idealism was not complete from the beginning. 
The Idealism of his early and middle years had in it an incomplete 
ness which it was one of the great labours of his later years to remedy ; 

1 At the close of his monograph on Plato (Frommanns Klassiker der Philosophic) a. 
brief but most admirable account, which ought to be translated into English. 

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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 

and this later work gave to the whole structure of his philosophy at 
once greater depth, greater concreteness, and greater power. While 
thirdly, throughout Plato s whole life the forces that make, not for 
Idealism at all, but for Mysticism, acted upon him and found in his 
soul a great response. 

These facts give us our plan of treatment. We are to consider an 
Idealist; but one whose Idealism (1) stands face to face with the 
great opponent of Idealism, (2) undergoes development from within. 
It will be wise to take the discussion in three steps : (1) To put down 
in summary form the conclusions which constitute the Idealism of his 
early and central years ; and in doing this, to note what the internal 
incompleteness, just referred to, is. (2) Then to turn to the other 
side, and consider the operation upon Plato, and in Plato, of the 
influences that lead toward Mysticism. (3) Finally, to consider the 
later stage of his philosophy, in order to see (a) how far he has made 
good the incompleteness of his earlier Idealism, (/?) how far he has 
overcome, and how far yielded to, the influences leading him toward 
Mysticism. The two latter questions, it will be noted, do not stand 
apart; they are so closely interconnected as really to form one ques 
tion ; for the more clearly and fully Plato works out his Idealism, the 
more completely does he overcome the tendency toward Mysticism. 

First, then, from the dialogues up to and including the Republic, 
we have to gather the ground-lines of the earlier Platonic Idealism, 
and to set these down in the form of a brief summary. 

I. 

What Plato saw to begin with was that our experience, our actual 
present life, in order to be what it is, must be a part in a system of 
reality greater than anything that now appears to us. He saw saw 
with a clearness which simply startles an English student turning 
back to him from Locke or Bentham or the Mills that there is in our 
present experience something which this present world cannot- give ; 
that there operates in our experience something which that experience 
itsel f as it now stands cannot account for. For our experience involves 
one might almost say, is the operation of conceptions which, both 

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PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 

in perfection and in universality, go beyond the particular things and 
facts and events to which we apply them, and which we comprehend by 
means of them. They, it must be repeated, are not merely present in 
our experience ; they are active and formative in it. They are in our 
minds not merely as something possessed, but as something operative; 
operative in the whole process of our thinking and knowing and doing. 
The straight line, for instance, the perfect circle, the perfect square, 
the perfectly equiangular triangle these conceptions and the many 
similar ones which might be named, are, in the first place, actual 
possessions of our minds; but not that only; they are absolutely 
essential to even the most elementary process of knowing the world, 
and in that process are continuously operative and continuously regu 
lative. Yet this present world does not give them; there are no 
straight lines or perfect circles in nature. And again, as we know 
nature, so also we regulate our conduct, by conceptions which the 
present world cannot give because it has them not to give. We seek 
perfect truth, and justice absolute, and the courage that is complete in 
wisdom ; but where are these to be found existing upon the earth ? 

Here, then, in the elementary facts and the elementary form of our 
scientific and moral experience, is a great problem; and this problem 
is the point of departure for that great voyage of the intellect, to which 
Plato, by many interests, practical even more than speculative, was 
driven. As he advances from it, he works his way to a view of what 
a Greek wmild call the form a modern, the constitution or eternal 
order of the world; and to a corresponding view of the place, the 
development, the true function, of the soul as a part of that eternal 
world. This view we have now to consider; though, as we go on to 
set it down in orderly outline, we must remember that Plato himself 
nowhere presents it in one systematically articulated account ; for it 
was his habit to develop now one, now another, of the many insights 
which enter into it; and to develop these single insights, moreover, 
by the method which best corresponds to the process and struggle and 
gathering light of actual experience the dialectic method. 

(1) First, then, Plato finds the form or constitution of the world 
to be essentially rational ; this is the keynote of his Idealism, and of 
all Idealism. And unless Platonic Idealism, and all Idealism, is to be 
15 209 



PLATO AND THE FOUNDING OF IDEALISM 

radically misapprehended,, it must be clearly understood what it means 
to say that the world is rational in its constitution. It means some 
thing more th