登陆注册
5237300000191

第191章 Lectures XVI and XVII(20)

"Oh, the little more, and how much it is; and the little less, and what worlds away!" It may be that possibility and permission of this sort are all that are religious consciousness requires to live on. In my last lecture I shall have to try to persuade you that this is the case. Meanwhile, however, I am sure that for many of my readers this diet is too slender. If supernaturalism and inner union with the divine are true, you think, then not so much permission, as compulsion to believe, ought to be found.

Philosophy has always professed to prove religious truth by coercive argument; and the construction of philosophies of this kind has always been one favorite function of the religious life, if we use this term in the large historic sense. But religious philosophy is an enormous subject, and in my next lecture I can only give that brief glance at it which my limits will allow.

POSTSCRIPT In writing my concluding lecture I had to aim so much at simplification that I fear that my general philosophic position received so scant a statement as hardly to be intelligible to some of my readers. I therefore add this epilogue, which must also be so brief as possibly to remedy but little the defect. In a later work I may be enabled to state my position more amply and consequently more clearly.

Originality cannot be expected in a field like this, where all the attitudes and tempers that are possible have been exhibited in literature long ago, and where any new writer can immediately be classed under a familiar head. If one should make a division of all thinkers into naturalists and supernaturalists, I should undoubtedly have to go, along with most philosophers, into the supernaturalist branch. But there is a crasser and a more refined supernaturalism, and it is to the refined division that most philosophers at the present day belong. If not regular transcendental idealists, they at least obey the Kantian direction enough to bar out ideal entities from interfering causally in the course of phenomenal events. Refined supernaturalism is universalistic supernaturalism; for the "crasser" variety "piecemeal" supernaturalism would perhaps be the better name. It went with that older theology which to-day is supposed to reign only among uneducated people, or to be found among the few belated professors of the dualisms which Kant is thought to have displaced. It admits miracles and providential leadings, and finds no intellectual difficulty in mixing the ideal and the real worlds together by interpolating influences from the ideal region among the forces that causally determine the real world's details. In this the refined supernaturalists think that it muddles disparate dimensions of existence. For them the world of the ideal has no efficient causality, and never bursts into the world of phenomena at particular points. The ideal world, for them, is not a world of facts, but only of the meaning of facts; it is a point of view for judging facts. It appertains to a different "-ology," and inhabits a different dimension of being altogether from that in which existential propositions obtain. It cannot get down upon the flat level of experience and interpolate itself piecemeal between distinct portions of nature, as those who believe, for example, in divine aid coming in response to prayer, are bound to think it must.

Notwithstanding my own inability to accept either popular Christianity or scholastic theism, I suppose that my belief that in communion with the Ideal new force comes into the world, and new departures are made here below, subjects me to being classed among the supernaturalists of the piecemeal or crasser type.

Universalistic supernaturalism surrenders, it seems to me, too easily to naturalism. It takes the facts of physical science at their face-value, and leaves the laws of life just as naturalism finds them, with no hope of remedy, in case their fruits are bad.

It confines itself to sentiments about life as a whole, sentiments which may be admiring and adoring, but which need not be so, as the existence of systematic pessimism proves. In this universalistic way of taking the ideal world, the essence of practical religion seems to me to evaporate. Both instinctively and for logical reasons, I find it hard to believe that principles can exist which make no difference in facts.[362] But all facts are particular facts, and the whole interest of the question of God's existence seems to me to lie in the consequences for particulars which that existence may be expected to entail. That no concrete particular of experience should alter its complexion in consequence of a God being there seems to me an incredible proposition, and yet it is the thesis to which (implicitly at any rate) refined supernaturalism seems to cling.

It is only with experience en bloc, it says, that the Absolute maintains relations. It condescends to no transactions of detail.

[362] Transcendental idealism, of course, insists that its ideal world makes THIS difference, that facts EXIST. We owe it to the Absolute that we have a world of fact at all. "A world" of fact!--that exactly is the trouble. An entire world is the smallest unit with which the Absolute can work, whereas to our finite minds work for the better ought to be done within this world, setting in at single points. Our difficulties and our ideals are all piecemeal affairs, but the Absolute can do no piecework for us; so that all the interests which our poor souls compass raise their heads too late. We should have spoken earlier, prayed for another world absolutely, before this world was born. It is strange, I have heard a friend say, to see this blind corner into which Christian thought has worked itself at last, with its God who can raise no particular weight whatever, who can help us with no private burden, and who is on the side of our enemies as much as he is on our own. Odd evolution from the God of David's psalms!

同类推荐
  • 秋日题窦员外崇德里

    秋日题窦员外崇德里

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 兵法心要

    兵法心要

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 伤寒百证歌

    伤寒百证歌

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 简写水浒传

    简写水浒传

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 人间训

    人间训

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
热门推荐
  • 间者谋

    间者谋

    乱世纷争,风云变幻。间者当道,恶人相逼。惨遭灭门的大将军府孤女,怎样才能主宰自己的命运?是身世飘摇的浮萍,也是隐匿最强的间者。是人人争夺的棋子,更要做背后真正的执子之人!
  • 企业人的责任感和担当精神

    企业人的责任感和担当精神

    当一个人从内心深处渴望承担责任时,会认识到自己不仅是对组织或者是企业负责,同时也是对自己负责,并在承担这份责任时感受到自身的价值,以及自己所获得的尊重和认同,从而获得心理与精神上的满足。
  • 嘉泰吴兴志

    嘉泰吴兴志

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 诡异的身世

    诡异的身世

    十多年前那个大雪纷飞的寒冬里,那场令人匪夷所思的白事,开启了少年回家的旅途,并使他踏上了寻找自身秘密的钥匙
  • 明华长公主

    明华长公主

    重生到小姑身上,相貌平平不受宠的皇后摇身一变,成为被所有人捧在掌心,拥有绝色容光的长公主。崭新而光明的人生在她面前展开。
  • 网游之重生开天

    网游之重生开天

    轻松的玄幻修真类网游小说,轻松游戏,轻松看书
  • 无上神皇

    无上神皇

    神皇萧殒,意外重生,修无上功法,从此天上地下,唯吾独尊!!!
  • 重生之流年织锦

    重生之流年织锦

    穿成高门嫡女,继母为难她,庶妹算计她?且看她戴着神秘手镯,如何治继母,踩庶妹,她的婚事她做主!咦,这个美男似乎哪里很眼熟?“娘子,你不记得当年河边树下那个救你的美男子了么?”
  • 异界之逆天衙内

    异界之逆天衙内

    苍龙皇朝的第一纨绔的丁野重生回到二十年前,他该如何弥补前世的错误,挽救家族被满门抄斩的命运?又该如何在纷乱的大陆战争中杀出一条血路,做一个战无不胜的绝代名将?前世误过的事错过的人,这一世不会再辜负;前世闪耀的将星波诡的命运,这一世要尽在掌握;丁野要做一个逆天改命的枭雄,把嚣张进行到底!
  • 孟子一日一谈

    孟子一日一谈

    孟子用儒家“仁”与“智”的大手笔,为后世勾勒了整套的道德理念与人生规范,这种终极的人文关怀,对于我们现代人修身、处世、施政、生存等诸多方面,都极具有精神意义的指引作用。本书以原文、注释、译文、述评解读孟子的言行的形式,让读者感悟这位智者的政治观、人生观、价值观、伦理道德观,以祓除我们自身的人性弱点。孟子的思想是精神世界的一座高山,他充满思辨的语言为我们廓清了人性中混沌的迷雾,他睿智的思想为我们洞开了和谐的生存之门。走进孟子的世界里,体悟生活中的真谛和乐趣。