CAIRD'S PHILOSOPHY OF. RELIGION.*

'THE present state of philosophy in England is most hopeful, and full of encouragement to all who take an interest in the higher speculation. Philosophy has again won to her service some of the highest intellects of our time. The peculiar philo- sophical tradition of England, in a modified form, it is true, but still the English tradition, has its exponents and defenders. Science, also, has been forced to become metaphysical, and it is of great interest to observe how the foremost scientific thinkers and workers of our time have been constrained to face the -ultimate questions of philosophy. On a candid survey of our philosophical literature, we are constrained to admit that the Hegelian philosophy has won to its service many of the clearest and most profound minds among our living philoso- phers, and a thoughtful observer of our periodical literature may trace the influence of that school in the treatment of ques- tions of history, science, art, and theology, which at first sight -seem far removed from the metaphysic of Hegel. Nor is this surprising, when we remember who are the leaders of British Hegelianism. They are men patient in thought, who have in large measure the capacity of taking trouble, who are diligent in tracing the movement of thought from age to age, who have extraordinary powers of exposition ; some of them occupy positions in the Universities which afford to them opportunities of influencing the minds of students at their most impressible stage, and of indoctrinating them with the ideas of their philosophy ; most of them are enthusiastic in their work, and are charged with that mysterious personal influence which eludes investigation and defies definition, but which is felt by all who come into contact with leaders of men in any department. When men like these, high in academical position, give themselves to the energetic and enthusiastic exposition and defence of a philosophy, we may be assured that it will make progress. And such men have devoted themselves to the exposition and defence of the philosophy of Hegel. Hutchison Stirling led the way, in his Secret of Hegel; and he was speedily followed by Wallace, in his translation of Hegel's Logic, with the luminous introduction he prefixed to it ; by Green's edition of Hume; and by Edward Caird, in his great book on Sant. Articles and lesser works abound, but it is sufficient to have men- tioned the works of the leaders of the Hegelian school of British philosophy, to show that Hegelianism has become a power in English thought, with which all English thinkers will have to reckon. The Hegelian way of looking at nature, at organic life, at history and its products, is coming into vogue, and it is well that facilities for the study of this philosophy are being

Whatever may be held of Hegelianism as a philosophy, this

• An letroductias to the Philosophy of Reitipon. By John Caird, Principal

• and Vice-ChanoeUot of ilia lJniTanitir of Glasgow. Glasgow James hlaolalwas.

much may be safely said,—that it is a higher and a more adequate solution than that which has led to the setting-up of mechani- cal force as the one solvent of difficulties in science, art, and philosophy. Uncouth and outlandish as it sounds, Hegelianism recognises factors as operative in history to which materialism and positivism offer no asylum. No doubt, it makes claims which as yet it has been unable to substantiate. It identifies absolute thought with human philosophy. It professes to explain the universe, and to show how the notion in its three- fold necessary movement gives rise to mechanism, to chemical action, to organism, to individual self-consciousness, to objec- tive self-consciousness in races and peoples, and absolute self-consciousness in, e.g., art, religion, and philosophy. The Hegelian position is the opposite of that of Shakespeare, for there are no things in heaven or on earth undreamt of in this philosophy. Thought, in the Hegelian sense, accounts for and explains all. A necessity is thus laid on the Hegelian school to apply their philosophy to all problems of science, art, religion, and philosophy. It must account for everything, or abdicate. Hence the abounding labours of the school in history, specially in the history of religion and of philosophy. In a unique way, it has been incumbent on them to give an air of concreteness to their system. Though there is no word they hate so much as the word "abstract," it must be said that abstractness is the charge to which their system is peculiarly liable. Their system moves in free space, unrelated to all kinds of knowledge which men actually do know. Even if it were true, it would give only a knowledge of possibilities of knowledge, and not a knowledge of what is actually known. In its spiral, threefold. movement, in which in continuous and successive revolution the notion works out its destiny, it seems to account for all possible universes. So long as it dwells apart, and refrains from contact with the actual world we know, the notion reigns supreme; but there has been a difficulty felt in getting the notion into actual relation with the universe known to us. This difficulty is the secret of the strong compulsion which forces Hegelianism to prolonged study in history and its products, if by any means it were possible for Hegelians to justify the fundamental postulate of their philosophy by application to actual concrete fact. After diligent study of all the works referred to above, our conviction is that the point of contact between the actual universe and, the universe created by the momenta of the notion, remains yet to be discovered.

The remarks made on the philosophy of Hegel generally are applicable to Hegel's philosophy of religion, as expounded by Principal Caird. The title of Principal Caird's book contains no reference to Hegel, but the book is Hegelian throughout. It is a remarkable book, in many ways,—remarkable in the fact that it proceeds from the pen of a Scottish clergyman, bred in the Presbyterianism of Scotland, nurtured on the metaphysic of the Scottish school, and. on the theology of the Westminster Confession. It is remarkable also for its marvellous power of exposition and graceful subtlety of thought. Hegel's solu- tion of the problem of religion is at length adequately represented in English literature. Hegelianism has never appeared so attractive as it appears in the clear and fluent pages of Principal Caird. It must be confessed, however, that the book is hard reading. We feel that we are learning a new language. Old words have new meanings. We had often met in other pages with the words rational and thought, and had attached to them a certain definite significance. But we had not read much of the book of Principal Caird when we found ourselves asking whether he was using these words in the sense we knew. And on reflection and comparison, we recognised that we had entered into a region where the old laws of logic and of speech no longer obtained. We knew about affirmation and negation, about contradiction and identity, and. about many other pairs of words which had been wedded to- gether in popular speech and in other philosophies, and had to bear a heavy burden of work ; but the old words in their old sense were now superannuated. Everything has become organic. We are in the whirl of a vast movement, where everything be- comes something else, and after an interval, becomes itself again, with something superadded in the process. Contradictions get to be united, and discords become harmonious, and thought, as the universal reconciler of contradictions, is king and lord of all. How has it all happened P Principal Caird's answer is—the Hegelian answer generally is—it is organism that does it. The universe is a vast organic unity, not yet completely organic ; but it will be so, when the capacity of _thought shall be equal to

the content of being, and when sell-consciousness shall be truly absolute. This vast organic unity, which is organic as a whole, is organic also in every part. When once you have grasped differences and contradictions in the unity of thought, you have implicitly solved the problem of the universe. If you have mastered the problem in any presentation of it, you only need patient thought in rendering explicit what was implicit in your solution ; you only need to bring it into clear consciousnes, and.

you have the solution of the mystery of the universe. It is the same problem everywhere. Meet a Hegelian philosopher where you may,—meet him in the region where mechanical force rules, —and he will show you contradictions merging in a higher unity. In science, the organism is the union of contradictory opposites ; in metaphysics, knowledge is the union of self and not-self in the consciousness of sell; in ethics, morality is the reconciliation of the opposite tendencies of impulse and reason ; in religion, why, religion is the union of the finite and the infinite spirit, in the higher and true Infinite which comprehends and is the • reconciliation of both. Thus, the problem of religion is only one form—perhaps the highest form—of the universal problem; and the universal solution will also apply here.

We do not enter at present on the considerations of the various preliminary discussions and criticisms of objections which occupy the opening chapters of this volume. The relativity of human knowledge, the nature and authoritative character of religious knowledge, the necessity of religion, materialism, the proofs of the existence of God, and the in- adequacy of religious knowledge in its unscientific form are passed under review ; but we hasten on to the most vital state- ment in the book :—

"But thought is capable of another and deeper movement. It can rise to a universality which is not foreign to, but the very inward nature of things in themselves, not the universal of an abstraction from the particular and different, but the unity which is immanent in them, and finds in them its own necessary expression ; not an arbitrary invention of the observing and classifying mind, unifying in its own imagination things which are yet essentially different, but an idea which expresses the inner dialectic, the movement or process towards unity, which exists in and constitutes the being of the objects themselves. This deeper and truer universality is that which may be designated ideal or organic universality. The idea of a living organism, as we formerly saw, is not a common element which can be got at by abstraction and generalisation, by taking the various parts and members, stripping away their differences, and forming a notion of that which they have in common. That in which they differ is rather just that out of which their unity arises, and in which is the very life and being of the organism ; that which they have in common, they have, not as members of a living organism, but as deal matter, and what you have to abstract in order to get it is the very life itself. Moreover, the universal in this Case is not last, but first. We do not reach it by first thinking the particulars, but conversely, we get at the true notion of the particulars only through the universal. What the parts or members of an organism are—their form, place, structure, propor- tion, functions, relations, their whole nature and being—is determined by the idea of the organism which they are to compose. It is it which produces them, not they it. In it lies their reason and ground. They are its manifestations or specifications. It realises itself in them, fulfils itself in their diversity and harmony. Nor, again, can wereach this unity merely by predication or affirmation, by asserting, —that is, of each part or member that it is, and what it is. On the con- trary, in order to apprehend it, with your thought of what it is, you must inseparably connect that also of what it is not. You cannot determine the particular member or orgail save by reference to that. which is its limit or negation Lastly, in a still deeper way does negation or a negative movement of thought enter into the idea of an organic whole. Its ideal nature is not immediate, but is reached by a process of growth or development. But the notion of develop- ment is one which cannot be apprehended merely by affirmation or by a series of affirmations, but only by a process which includes affir- mation and negation ; or more precisely, perpetual affirmation and perpetual negation solved in reaffirmation." (pp. 229-30-31.)

From this follows the solution of the problem of religion. Finite spirit can realise itself only through infinite spirit, and the Infinite must contain in itself the determination of the finite, and the relation of the two is that of organic unity. Applica- tions follow to the relation of morality and religion, and to the relation of the philosophy to the history of religion. But the kernel of the book lies in the passage we have quoted.

As to the main position of this philosophy, we have to state that it cannot be expressed in human language. Principal Caird is constrained to proceed by using these categories of the understanding which his system repudiates. In his style, at all events, he assumes that of two contradictories one or other must be true, and affirmation and negation are constantly used 'by him as they are used in common language. His philosophy excludes that of Herbert Spencer and discards Materialism, and yet he never can be sure that these systems may not be other sides of his own system, contradictories which may be solved in the higher unity of a philosophy yet to be. His system gives him no right to use the ordinary processes of logic, or to reason by means of them as if they were valid. All that his book has in common with other books, its use of language, its reasoning by processes of logic, its criticisms of other systems, are all of them so many protests and criticisms of the system he endeavours to set forth. Hegelianism is without relation to the speech which men use, to the processes by which they reason ; and every attempt to set it forth can only be made by constantly affirming what they deny, and denying what they affirm.

A solution of the problem of religion which leaves unsolved the great questions connected with evil and with sin, which practically regards these as necessary elements in the move-

ments of the notion, is on the face of it inadequate. The rela- tion of finite mind to the infinite is only one element of the

problem. You cannot bring man wholly under the category of mind. He is more than mind, and more than sell-consciousness. In fact, here Hegelianism makes a false abstraction, in making which it has served itself heir to the false abstractions of other philosophies. There is no such thing as mind, apart from per- sons. Mind and person are inseparably connected. And it is by neglecting this that Hegelianism has attained to its seeming uni- versality. It is worthy of notice that while Hegelians speak much of the individual, and of the necessity of his transcending his own consciousness, seldom or never does the great word "personality" fall from their pens. But neither the problem of knowledge nor of religion can be solved, until the" abysmal deeps of personality" have first been fathomed. Further, the solution of Principal Caird implies the rejection of the transcendence of God. His system knows only of an immanent reason, of a self- consciousness which is identified with the universe, or which does not exist apart from the universe. But any adequate solution of the problem of religion must be prepared to take account not only of the immanence of God in the world, but also of his

transcendence. And if it is to be a solution which may be called "Christian," it must be prepared with an explanation of the opening verse of Revelation,—" In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Christian philosophy must ever stand or fall with this verse, for it absolutely separates Christian philosophy from all systems which imply the identity of God and the universe.

The history of Hegelianism in Germany has shown that there is a tendency inherent in it to deny the unique position and unique claims of Christ. No one individual of the race, it is affirmed, can occupy the position which Christianity assigns to Him, for the idea can never attain to adequate self-consciousness in the history of any one individual.

So it has been argued ; and without any historical investiga- tion, without any serious examination of the evidence, the extreme left of Hegelianism proceeded to dethrone

Him, and to make Him only a member of the human race. No doubt, Hegelianism still retains a Trinity, but a Trinity

absolutely without relation to the historical Christ. But here

we get no help from Principal Caird. We have references to some of the passages of Scripture which give expression to the deeper relations of the soul to the living God. But everywhere

religion is conceived of as the completion of a process of thought, urged on and completed by an internal necessity. It appears to us that in this philosophy of religion there is no room for a form of religion which rests on a historical basis, and works on data historically given, which brings into consciousness truths divinely revealed, and which continually works on and by per- sonal agents. But a religion which has for its foundation a series of great historical facts, and has for its sustaining power a constant relation to a person, and for its motive force the constraining force of a love which knew no bounds in its lavish sacrifice for others, is the highest form of religion ; .it is Chris- tianity. And we can find no room for Christianity in a philo- sophy of religion which at its best and highest is only a form of thought, whose movements are determined by an inner necessity, and whose highest aim is the identity of thought and. being.