infinity in relation to time and space which from one point of
view is parallel to the Ontological argument.
Definite theism, bearing the mark of Kant's thought throughout, is found in Hermann Lotze. From the point of view of our grouping, he is an idealist of anomalous type. He begins as an empiricist or realist, with given matter-of-fact; but from time to time (e.g. in his Microcosmus) he makes readjustments without perhaps Definite theistic idealism; Lotze. very clearly informing the reader what is being done, and in the end he is unmistakably idealist. While a pronounced theist-though not a church Christian—he is hardly less an assailant of traditional theism than Kant (e.g. his Outline Lecture headings] on Philosophy of Religion). He dissents as a realist from the Cosmological argument in the form[1] in which it concludes from “contingent” to “necessary” being. We do not wish to find our way to a being who “ must be.” That is an idle dream. We must keep to real and assured facts. Lotze was a man of considerable attainments in special science; perhaps he reveals here the bias of the scientific mind, and possibly even its limitations. He regards the Ontological argument strictly so called as having been exploded by Kant. Still it has a value for him if taken not as an argument, but rather as the expression of an immediate conviction; viz. The highest must exist. This is an intuitionalist touch, or a parallel to intuitionalism, and has called forth a gibe from that very confident ratiocinator, J. E. MacTaggart; Lotze's immediate convictions are matter of interest to a biographer but to no one else. The Design argument elicits from Lotze the criticism that some things look purposeful, but others decidedly purposeless. The only solid nucleus he finds in it is the fact that there is a great deal of beauty in this world. Obviously this writer is harder to focus than Kant or Hegel. He is not all of one piece. He holds—on grounds of fact and science—to the mechanical orderliness of nature, but claims that the Weltanschauung thus suggested may be reinterpreted in view of those undying human aspirations which MacTaggart dismisses to instant execution (unless they can dress themselves in syllogism). Thus, for Lotze, free will is possible; the consequences of action proceed regularly a parte post, and there is no such chaos as the critics of Libertarianism have pretended it would involve. Similarly, miracles-absolute new beginnings—are possible on God's side, if they are not mere anomalies but acts pro motive of the general meaning or tendency of things, and of the divine plan of the universe.[2] But this appeal to “ values ” is only half of Lotze's constructive work. For the other half he falls back on ratiocination. All existences must be individuals, with an inner life (cf. Leibnitz). Since they interact, they must be elements in the life of one supreme being (cf. Spinoza: the Spinozistic affinities of Leibnitz are not so marked as Lotze's). God can be personal and doubtless is (though he has no Non-ego to define himself against) through contrast of passing conscious states with the abiding Ego. It is reasonable to hold that the supreme personality is the only fully personal being, while ours is a broken and imperfect personality, hindered by the Non-ego which in other ways helps it. Lotze resolves space into “ideal space ”; and finally, in the philosophy of religion, or in view of the thought of God (in his Metaphysics), he denies the objective existence of time. God sees all history neither as future nor as present but as actual.
Besides the stream of tendency which flowed from Kant in the direction of idealism, two other streams emerged from him, often but not always blending. There was a new 522755, scepticism-at the very least a doctrine of limitation ments in human knowledge; but in its extremer forms an ZZ: absolute agnosticism. And there was the positive ethical element in Kant's theism.
Ancient scepticism was frankly opposed to religious belief. Later, the emergence of a great body of doctrine attributed to
divine revelation and of a great institution like the Christian church suggested the possibility of enlisting scepticism in the service of dogmatic faith. In a sense (see APoLocEr1cs) this was done in the middle ages, and possibly repeated by Pascal after the Reformation. We now find Kant's intellectual scepticism borrowed by W. Hamilton and H. L. Mansel,[3] both of them, as J. S. Mill complained[4] “ bringing back under the name of belief what they banished as knowledge.” The theory found a melodious echo in Tennyson's In Memoriam, a great hymn of God, Freedom and Immortality on a basis of speculative agnosticism. “ We have but faith we cannot know, For knowledge is of things we see; ” but the moral element which Mansel despised is dominant in Tennyson. “The heart Stood up and answered, I have felt. ” If there is a reading of the new theories of evolution in nature which revives rather than darkens hope in immortality and faith in God, Tennyson gave an early sketch of that tentative modern theism.
R. Browning has been charged by H. Tones with partial agnosticism. But at least we may say that agnosticism is much less clear in Browning than in Tennyson. Browning reasons as far as he can; if reasoning fails him, he gives a leap of faith. ]ones, almost as merciless as MacTaggart, calls this procedure by the hard names of agnosticism and dualism. Another who “got the seed” and “grew the flower” was Herbert Spencer. He quotes pages from Mansel's Hampton Lectures in favour of his own type of agnosticism, which is to make peace between religion and science by permanently silencing the former. Religion may “ feel, ” like Tennyson's “ man in wrath, ” and may expatiate in an undefined awe; science alone is to possess the “knowable/' This yields a characteristic type of pantheism, in the theory of the Unknowable which—rather paradoxically—is offered us. Alongside of this there are other elements in Spencer's composite system of “Naturalism and Agnosticism” (J. Ward's expression, see his Gifford Lecture). The element of naturalism stands for science with a leaning towards materialism (“explanation in terms of matter and motion”). The element of agnosticism tends rather towards pantheism, just as Indian pantheism long ago tended towards agnosticism. John Fiske, however, an able interpreter of Spencer, reached what he called “Cosmic Theism.” He rejected all that is anthropomorphic in theism, but gave a positive not negative interpretation to Spencer’s scientific generalizations, and broke away from pantheism—perhaps also from naturalism—when, like Tennyson, he pleaded for human immortality as the climax of evolutionary progress.
[The name agnosticism (q.v.) is T. H. Huxley's. Modern doubt does not say there is no God; it says, We don't know. Popular scepticism-perhaps even Charles Darwin's; Huxley himself was a student of Hume-understands by agnosticism that science is certain while philosophy and theology are baseless. Leslie Stephen gave this popular agnosticism its finest literary expression. Spencer goes much further in rejection of human knowledge: “The man of science more than any other truly knows that in its ultimate essence nothing can be known.”][5]
An interesting manifesto of agnosticism, with a religious conclusion, is A. J. Balfour's Foundations of Belief, welcomed in Germany by Julius Kaftan (see below). In “ Some Consequences of (naturalistic) Belief,” Balfour argues that the results of “naturalism” are unbearable. In “Some Reasons for Belief,” the author institutes a rapid destructive criticism of all possible philosophies. In “Some Causes of Belief,” he tries, standing outside the psychological process, to show how beliefs grow up under every kind of influence except that of genuine evidence. His constructive theory comes at the end, and seems to argue thus: Since (1) there is no discoverable reason why we
- ↑ Stated and criticized by Kant.
- ↑ Lotze is not to be understood as guaranteeing the actuality of Bible miracles. Such things are phi osophically possible-that is all.
- ↑ Mansel’s theism (or natural theology), and the revelation he believes in, seem both of them pure matters of assertion on his part, without evidence, or even in the teeth of the evidence as he conceives it.
- ↑ Examination of Sir Wm. Hamilton's Philosophy, chap. v.
- ↑ First Principles, p. 67.
