should reach truth, beauty or goodness, but (2) we do, therefore
(3) there must be a God outside the process, overruling and
counteracting the natural tendencies of the human mind. It
seems as if one foot rested on dogmatism and one on scepticism.
The fact—assumed without any attempt at justification by
argument–that, in spite of the multitude of logical reasons for
scepticism, we do know truth and beauty, makes Balfour a
theist. And the God he postulates is brought in ex machina
like the God of the old Design argument in its roughest popular
form. There must be a God, who could compel irrational
matter to serve rational ends–so ran the old argument. There
must be a God who can miraculously endow the irrational
mind of man with truth—so runs the new.
Emphasis on moral motives is plain in Kant’s theism as in Butler’s. If this tendency is to take effect, a certain part of Kant’s rational scepticism must be accepted. There is no chance for the moral consciousness to claim a decisive vote if a metaphysical system like Hegel’s demonstrates all realities in every region, and if its janissaries crush out every movement of rebellion against the tyranny of abstract thought. Is it really impossible to claim for man something between omniscience and universal nescience? May we not cherish what A. C. Fraser calls “reasonable faith”? Granted that, ideally, scientific knowledge ought to be able to demonstrate all truth, is it safe, or humane, for a being who is imperfectly started in the process of knowledge to fling away with scorn those unanalysed promptings and misgivings “Which, be they what they may, Are yet the fountain light of all our day, Are yet a master light of all our seeing . . . truths which wake To perish never”? Those who assert the superior worth and importance of moral judgments speak of “values” (A. Ritschl, after J. F. Herbart and H. Lotze). As worked out by Ritschl, this is specially a basis for Christian belief. With what is specifically Christian we have nothing to do in the present article: but it is worth noticing that the appeal to “values,” aesthetic and still more moral, forms a substitute for that natural theology which Ritschl despised and professed to reject. There are not a few difficulties in his programme. When Otto Ritschl[1] interprets values hedonistically—recoiling from Hegel’s idealism the whole way to empiricism—he brings again to our minds the doubt whether hedonist ethics can serve as a foundation for any religious belief. Julius Kaftan—Balfour’s German editor, and a highly influential theologian, occupying a position of modified Ritschlianism—is also a very thoroughgoing empiricist. On the other hand, W. Herrmann’s appeal to Kant’s moral teaching is in close analogy to the more thoughtful forms of intuitionalist ethics. But is the basis for religious belief to be constructed purely within the region of “values”? Can you contrast “judgments of value” with “judgments of fact”? Or, if, as the Ritschlians maintain, it is a slander invented by their enemy, C. E. Luthardt, to say that they draw this contrast, do you achieve much by calling the principles of moral and religious belief, with A. Ritschl, “independent judgments of value”? Independent of what? Surely not of fact? It is explained that they are in contrast with “accessory value-judgments.” Perhaps the meaning is that they are of independent importance. But does that carry us far? It all seems a very hurried and imperfectly studied philosophical analysis. One might prefer as a theist to hold (1) that we need a philosophical doctrine of the nature of reality—the “Absolute”; given in popular form in the Cosmological argument; (2) that we take the risk of attaching a higher degree of significance and authority to the revelations of the moral consciousness, which, although moulded or educed by society, do not terminate in the authority of society, but point beyond it to God; this position has its popular form in the moral argument; possibly (3) that necessities of thought shut us up to belief in omnipotence or infinity; (4) that divine help is the supreme revelation. But such lines of thought might carry us outside the limits of traditional theism.
If we try to bring the contents of theism under Kant’s three traditional arguments, then moral and aesthetic considerations—the “values”—fall under the Design argument or the study of teleology; albeit there is a great gap between Paley’s supernatural watchmaker and any moral argument or appeal to the beautiful. It might be argued that beauty bears witness against materialism, and moral values against pantheism; although such an anomalous type as ethical pantheism has its representatives—J. G. Fichte, Matthew Arnold, perhaps H. Höffding. Kant’s reliance on the moral argument alone goes with his scepticism. Giving that argument the highest place seems to involve, as already said, a dash of the same scepticism.—The arguments, as already noted, may be differently combined. (1) Usually they are alternatives or else cumulative. (2) Flint spaces out the proof (and the attributes) among them. (3) Hegel regards them as phases.
V. What are the alternative conclusions to theism? The extremest form of antagonism is pure scepticism or pure agnosticism, the assertion that nothing can be known. Empiricism may lead to this conclusion; or it may lead to materialism. True materialism includes within itself dogmatic atheism, and is probably the only coherent Alternatives to theism. or reasoned type of atheistic opinion.[2] Materialism further brings with it an extreme or “hard” determinism; and, denying the soul’s separate existence in any sense, it naturally denies immortality. Once again, empiricism may lead to some qualified and restricted form of agnosticism, religious or anti-religious. If polytheism is to be seriously defended at all, the basis must be empiricist.[3] Intuitionalism in its turn may harden out of “natural” dualism into moral dualism; either a literally Manichaean scheme—a good God impeded by an evil personality or principle (Bayle)—or belief in a good God of limited powers (Mill). And idealism in some cases may interpret itself in favour of pantheism rather than of theism. Pantheism does not favour free will or immortality, and may move indefinitely near to materialism. Out of pantheism again pessimism develops. If the principle of the universe is impersonal or unconscious, personal consciousness in finite spirits comes to wear the appearance of a blunder. Conversely, if God cares for men, despair is impossible. For another systematic grouping, see A. C. Fraser’s Gifford Lectures. Wolff’s list is of some historical importance—atheism, deism (a God without care for men) and naturalism (denial of supernatural revelation); anthropomorphism (assigning a human body to God); materialism, and idealism (non-existence of matter); paganism (polytheism); Manichaeism, Spinozism, Epicureanism. R. Flint has dealt with the following antitheistic theories: atheism, materialism, positivism, secularism, pessimism, pantheism and (in a separate volume) agnosticism. It is hard to be certain that any systematic grouping will anticipate all the suggestions that may occur to a restlessly and recklessly inquiring age.
Literature.—Two sets of writers have been considered:—first, the greater philosophers, who have incidentally furthered theism (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Descartes, Locke, Kant, Hegel, Mill, Lotze), or opposed it (Epicurus, Spinoza, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Mill, Spencer); and, secondly, the deliberate champions of theism—Cicero (especially in the De Natura Deorum), Philo, Raymond of Sabunde (in a sense), Wolff, Butler (in a sense), Paley, and a host of English and German 18th-century authors, who chiefly handle the Design argument; then recent writers like R. Flint, Theism, Antitheistic Theories, Agnosticism—all with valuable notes and references, and J. Martineau—especially in A Study of Religion. The theistic writers are usually intuitionalists; but it has been urged above that a fruitful study of theism must in each case inquire what is the writer’s philosophical basis. The Bridgewater treatises have little more than historical interest to-day. A certain historical interest also attaches to the Burnett prize essays on theism: 1815, 1st prize, W. L. Bruce, 2nd J. B. Sumner, afterwards archbishop; 1855, 1st R. A. Thompson, 2nd J. Tulloch. Among many lectureships, the Gifford Lectures are supposed to
be strictly appropriated to Natural Theology; yet subjects and
