Christianity and Greek Philosophy Part 5

[Footnote 66: Henry's Cousin, p. 510.]

The especial function of reason, therefore, is to reveal to us the invisible, the supersensuous, the Divine. "It was bestowed upon us for this very purpose of going, without any circuit of reasoning, from the visible to the invisible, from the finite to the infinite, from the imperfect to the perfect, and from necessary and eternal truths, to the eternal and necessary principle" that is G.o.d.[67] Reason is thus, as it were, the bridge between consciousness and being; it rests, at the same time, on both; it descends from G.o.d, and approaches man; it makes its appearance in consciousness as a guest which brings intelligence of another world of real Being which lies beyond the world of sense.

Reason does not, however, attain to the Absolute Being directly and immediately, without any intervening medium. To a.s.sert this would be to fall into the error of Plotinus, and the Alexandrian Mystics. Reason is the offspring of G.o.d, a ray of the Eternal Reason, but it is not to be identified with G.o.d. Reason attains to the Absolute Being indirectly, and by the interposition of truth. Absolute truth is an attribute and a manifestation of G.o.d. "Truth is incomprehensible without G.o.d, and G.o.d is incomprehensible without truth. Truth is placed between human intelligence, and the supreme intelligence as a kind of mediator."[68]

Incapable of contemplating G.o.d face to face, reason adores G.o.d in the truth which represents and manifests Him.

[Footnote 67: Cousin, "True, Beautiful, and Good," p. 103.]

[Footnote 68: Id., ib., p. 99.]

Absolute truth is thus a revelation of G.o.d, made by G.o.d to the reason of man, and as it is a light which illuminates every man, and is perpetually perceived by all men, it is a universal and perpetual revelation of G.o.d to man. The mind of man is "the offspring of G.o.d,"

and, as such, must have some resemblance to, and some correlation with G.o.d. Now that which const.i.tutes the image of G.o.d in man must be found in the reason which is correlated with, and capable of perceiving the truth which manifests G.o.d, just as the eye is correlated to the light which manifests the external world. Absolute truth is, therefore, the sole medium of bringing the human mind into communion with G.o.d; and human reason, in becoming united to absolute truth, becomes united to G.o.d in his manifestation in spirit and in truth. The supreme law, and highest destination of man, is to become united to G.o.d by seeking a full consciousness of, and loving and practising the Truth.[69]

[Footnote 69: Henry's Cousin, p. 511, 512.]

It will at once be obvious that the grand crucial questions by which this philosophy of religion is to be tested are--

1st. _How will Cousin prove to us that human reason is in possession of universal and necessary principles or absolute truths?_ and,

2d. _How are these principles shown to be absolute? how far do these principles of reason possess absolute authority?_

The answer of Cousin to the first question is that we prove reason to be in possession of universal and necessary principles by the a.n.a.lysis of the contents of consciousness, that is, by psychological a.n.a.lysis. The phenomena of consciousness, in their primitive condition, are necessarily complex, concrete, and particular. All our primary ideas are complex ideas, for the evident reason that all, or nearly all, our faculties enter at once into exercise; their simultaneous action giving us, at the same time, a certain number of ideas connected with each other, and forming a whole. For example, the idea of the exterior world, which is given us so quickly, is a complex idea, which contains a number of ideas. There is the idea of the secondary qualities of exterior objects; there is the idea of the primary qualities; there is the idea of the permanent reality of something to which you refer these qualities, to wit, matter; there is the idea of s.p.a.ce which contains bodies; there is the idea of time in which movements are effected. All these ideas are acquired simultaneously, or nearly simultaneously, and together form one complex idea.

The application of a.n.a.lysis to this complex phenomenon clearly reveals that there are simple ideas, beliefs, principles in the mind which can not have been derived from sense and experience, which sense and experience do not account for, and which are the suggestions of reason alone: the idea of the _Infinite_, the _Perfect_, the _Eternal_; the true, the beautiful, the good; the principle of causality, of substance, of unity, of intentionality; the principle of duty, of obligation, of accountability, of retribution. These principles, in their natural and regular development, carry us beyond the limits of consciousness, and reveal to us a world of real being beyond the world of sense. They carry us up to an absolute Being, the fountain of all existence--a living, personal, righteous G.o.d--the author, the sustainer, and ruler of the universe.

The proof that these principles are absolute, and possessed of absolute authority, is drawn, first, from the _impersonality of reason_, or, rather, the impersonality of the ideas, principles, or truths of reason.

It is not we who create these ideas, neither can we change them at our pleasure. We are conscious that the will, in all its various efforts, is enstamped with the impress of our personality. Our volitions are our own. So, also, our desires are our own, our emotions are our own. But this is not the same with our rational ideas or principles. The ideas of substance, of cause, of unity, of intentionality do not belong to one person any more than to another; they belong to mind as mind, they are revealed in the universal intelligence of the race. Absolute truth has no element of personality about it. Man may say "my reason," but give him credit for never having dared to say "_my_ truth." So far from rational ideas being individual, their peculiar characteristic is that they are opposed to individuality, that is, they are universal and necessary. Instead of being circ.u.mscribed within the limits of experience, they surpa.s.s and govern it; they are universal in the midst of particular phenomena; necessary, although mingled with things contingent; and absolute, even when appearing within us the relative and finite beings that we are.[70] Necessary, universal, absolute truth is a direct emanation from G.o.d. "Such being the case, the decision of reason within its own peculiar province possesses an authority almost divine.

If we are led astray by it, we must be led astray by a light from heaven."[71]

[Footnote 70: Cousin, "True, Beautiful, and Good," p. 40.]

[Footnote 71: Id., "Lectures," vol. ii. p. 32.]

The second proof is derived from _the distinction between the spontaneous and reflective movements of reason_.

Reflection is voluntary, spontaneity is involuntary; reflection is personal, spontaneity is impersonal; reflection is a.n.a.lytic, spontaneity is synthetic; reflection begins with doubt, spontaneity with affirmation; reflection belongs to certain ones, spontaneity belongs to all; reflection produces science, spontaneity gives truth. Reflection is a process, more or less tardy, in the individual and in the race. It sometimes engenders error and skepticism, sometimes convictions that, from being rational, are only the more profound. It constructs systems, it creates artificial logic, and all those formulas which we now use by the force of habit, as if they were natural to us. But spontaneous intuition is the true logic of nature,--instant, direct, and infallible.

It is a primitive affirmation which implies no negation, and therefore yields positive knowledge. To reflect is to return to that which was. It is, by the aid of memory, to return to the past, and to render it present to the eye of consciousness. Reflection, therefore, creates nothing; it supposes an anterior operation of the mind in which there necessarily must be as many terms as are discovered by reflection.

Before all reflection there comes spontaneity--a spontaneity of the intellect, which seizes truth at once, without traversing doubt and error. "We thus attain to a judgment free from all reflection, to an affirmation without any mixture of negation, to an immediate intuition, the legitimate daughter of the natural energy of thought, like the inspiration of the poet, the instinct of the hero, the enthusiasm of the prophet." Such is the first act of knowing, and in this first act the mind pa.s.ses from _idea to being_ without ever suspecting the depth of the chasm it has pa.s.sed. It pa.s.ses by means of the power which is in it, and is not astonished at what it has done. It is subsequently astonished when by reflection it returns to the a.n.a.lysis of the results, and, by the aid of the liberty with which it is endowed, to do the opposite of what it has done, to deny what it has affirmed. "Hence comes the strife between sophism and common sense, between false science and natural truth, between good and bad philosophy, both of which come from free reflection."[72]

It is this spontaneity of thought which gives birth to _religion._ The instinctive thought which darts through the world, even to G.o.d, is natural religion. "All thought implies a spontaneous faith in G.o.d, and there is no such thing as natural atheism. Doubt and skepticism may mingle with reflective thought, but beneath reflection there is still spontaneity. When the scholar has denied the existence of G.o.d, listen to the man, interrogate him, take him unawares, and you will see that all his words envelop the idea of G.o.d, and that faith in G.o.d is, without his recognition, at the bottom, in his heart."[73]

Religion, then, in the system of Cousin, does not begin with reflection, with science, but with _faith_. There is, however, this difference to be noted between the theory of the "faith-philosophers" (Jacobi, Schleiermacher, etc.) and the theory of Cousin. With them, faith is grounded on sensation or _feeling_; with him, it is grounded on _reason_. "Faith, whatever may be its form, whatever may be its object, common or sublime, can be nothing else than the _consent of reason_.

That is the foundation of faith."[74]

[Footnote 72: Cousin, "True, Beautiful, and Good," p. 106.]

[Footnote 73: "Hist. of Philos.," vol. i. p. 137.]

[Footnote 74: Ibid., vol. i. p. 90.]

Religion is, therefore, with Cousin, at bottom, pure Theism. He thinks, however, that "true theism is not a dead religion that forgets precisely the fundamental attributes of G.o.d." It recognizes G.o.d as creator, preserver, and governor; it celebrates a providence; it adores a perfect, holy, righteous, benevolent G.o.d. It holds the principle of duty, of obligation, of moral desert. It not only perceives the divine character, but feels its relation to G.o.d. The revelation of the Infinite, by reason, moves the feelings, and pa.s.ses into sentiment, producing reverence, and love, and grat.i.tude. And it creates wors.h.i.+p, which recalls man to G.o.d a thousand times more forcibly than the order, harmony, and beauty of the universe can do.

The spontaneous action of reason, in its greatest energy, is _inspiration_. "Inspiration, daughter of the soul and heaven, speaks from on high with an absolute authority. It commands faith; so all its words are hymns, and its natural language is poetry." "Thus, in the cradle of civilization, he who possessed in a higher degree than his fellows the gift of inspiration, pa.s.sed for the confidant and the interpreter of G.o.d. He is so for others, because he is so for himself; and he is so, in fact, in a philosophic sense. Behold the sacred origin of prophecies, of pontificates, and of modes of wors.h.i.+p."[75]

[Footnote 75: "Hist. of Philos.," vol. i. p. 129.]

As an account of the genesis of the idea of G.o.d in the human intelligence, the doctrine of Cousin must be regarded as eminently logical, adequate, and satisfactory. As a theory of the origin of religion, as a philosophy which shall explain all the phenomena of religion, it must be p.r.o.nounced defective, and, in some of its aspects, erroneous.

First, it does not take proper account of that _living force_ which has in all ages developed so much energy, and wrought such vast results in the history of religion, viz., the _power of the heart_. Cousin discourses eloquently on the spontaneous, instinctive movements of the reason, but he overlooks, in a great measure, the instinctive movements of the heart. He does not duly estimate the feeling of reverence and awe which rises spontaneously in presence of the vastness and grandeur of the universe, and of the power and glory of which the created universe is a symbol and shadow. He disregards that sense of an overshadowing Presence which, at least in seasons of tenderness and deep sensibility, seems to compa.s.s us about, and lay its hand upon us. He scarcely recognizes the deep consciousness of imperfection and weakness, and utter dependence, which prompts man to seek for and implore the aid of a Superior Being; and, above all, he takes no proper account of the sense of guilt and the conscious need of expiation. His theory, therefore, can not adequately explain the universal prevalence of sacrifices, penances, and prayers. In short, it does not meet and answer to the deep longings of the human heart, the wants, sufferings, fears, and hopes of man.

Cousin claims that the universal reason of man is illuminated by the light of G.o.d. It is quite pertinent to ask, Why may not the universal heart of humanity be touched and moved by the spirit of G.o.d? If the ideas of reason be a revelation from G.o.d, may not the instinctive feelings of the heart be an inspiration of G.o.d? May not G.o.d come near to the heart of man and awaken a mysterious presentiment of an invisible Presence, and an instinctive longing to come nearer to Him? May he not draw men towards himself by sweet, persuasive influences, and raise man to a conscious fellows.h.i.+p? Is not G.o.d indeed the _great want_ of the human heart?

Secondly, Cousin does not give due importance to the influence of revealed truth as given in the sacred Scriptures, and of the positive inst.i.tutions of religion, as a divine economy, supernaturally originated in the world. He grants, indeed, that "a primitive revelation throws light upon the cradle of human civilization," and that "all antique traditions refer to an age in which man, at his departure from the hand of G.o.d, received from him immediately all lights, and all truths."[76]

He also believes that "the Mosaic religion, by its developments, is mingled with the history of all the surrounding people of Egypt, of a.s.syria, of Persia, and of Greece and Rome."[77] Christianity, however, is regarded as "the summing and crown of the two great religious systems which reigned by turn in the East and in Greece"--the maturity of Ethnicism and Judaism; a development rather than a new creation. The explanation which he offers of the phenomena of inspiration opens the door to religious skepticism. Those who were termed seers, prophets, inspired teachers of ancient times, were simply men who resigned themselves wholly to their intellectual instincts, and thus gazed upon truth in its pure and perfect form. They did not reason, they did not reflect, they made no pretensions to philosophy they received truth spontaneously as it flowed in upon them from heaven.[78] This immediate reception of Divine light was nothing more than the _natural_ play of spontaneous reason nothing more than what has existed to a greater or less degree in every man of great genius; nothing more than may now exist in any mind which resigns itself to its own unreflective apperceptions. Thus revelation, in its proper sense, loses all its peculiar value, and Christianity is robbed of its pre-eminent authority.

The extremes of Mysticism and Rationalism here meet on the same ground, and Plotinus and Cousin are at one.

[Footnote 76: "Hist. of Philos.," vol. i. p. 148.]

[Footnote 77: Ibid., vol. i. p. 216.]

[Footnote 78: Morell, "Hist. of Philos.," p. 661.]

V. The fifth hypothesis offered in explanation of the religious phenomena of the world is that they had their origin _in_ EXTERNAL REVELATION, _to which reason is related as a purely pa.s.sive organ, and Ethnicism as a feeble relic_.

This is the theory of the school of "dogmatic theologians," of which the ablest and most familiar presentation is found in the "Theological Inst.i.tutes" of R. Watson.[79] He claims that all our religious knowledge is derived from _oral revelation alone_, and that all the forms of religion and modes of wors.h.i.+p which have prevailed in the heathen world have been perversions and corruptions of the one true religion first taught to the earliest families of men by G.o.d himself. All the ideas of G.o.d, duty, immortality, and future retribution which are now possessed, or have ever been possessed by the heathen nations, are only broken and scattered rays of the primitive traditions descending from the family of Noah, and revived by subsequent intercourses with the Hebrew race; and all the modes of religious wors.h.i.+p--prayers, l.u.s.trations, sacrifices--that have obtained in the world, are but feeble relics, faint reminiscences of the primitive wors.h.i.+p divinely inst.i.tuted among the first families of men. "The first man received the knowledge of G.o.d by sensible converse with him, and that doctrine was transmitted, with the confirmation of successive manifestations, to the early ancestors of all nations."[80] This belief in the existence of a Supreme Being was preserved among the Jews by continual manifestations of the presence of Jehovah. "The intercourses between the Jews and the states of Syria and Babylon, on the one hand, and Egypt on the other, powers which rose to great eminence and influence in the ancient world, was maintained for ages. Their frequent dispersions and captivities would tend to preserve in part, and in part to revive, the knowledge of the once common and universal faith."[81] And the Greek sages who resorted for instruction to the Chaldean philosophic schools derived from thence their knowledge of the theological system of the Jews.[82] Among the heathen nations this primitive revelation was corrupted by philosophic speculation, as in India and China, Greece and Rome; and in some cases it was entirely obliterated by ignorance, superst.i.tion, and vice, as among the Hottentots of Africa and the aboriginal tribes of New South Wales, who "have no idea of one Supreme Creator."[83]

[Footnote 79: We might have referred the reader to Ellis's "Knowledge of Divine Things from Revelation, not from Reason or Nature;" Leland's "Necessity of Revelation;" and Horsley's "Dissertations," etc.; but as we are not aware of their having been reprinted in this country, we select the "Inst.i.tutes" of Watson as the best presentation of the views of "the dogmatic theologians" accessible to American readers.]

[Footnote 80: Watson, "Theol. Inst," vol. i. p. 270.]

[Footnote 81: Id. ib., vol. i. p. 31.]

[Footnote 82: See ch. v. and vi., "On the Origin of those Truths which are found in the Writings and Religious Systems of the Heathen."]

[Footnote 83: Ibid., vol. i. p. 274.]

The same course of reasoning is pursued in regard to the idea of duty, and the knowledge of right and wrong. "A direct communication of the Divine Will was made to the primogenitors of our race," and to this source _alone_ we are indebted for all correct ideas of right and wrong.

"Whatever is found pure in morals, in ancient or modern writers, may be traced to _indirect_ revelation."[84] Verbal instruction--tradition or scripture--thus becomes the source of all our moral ideas. The doctrine of immortality, and of a future retribution,[85] the practice of sacrifice--precatory and expiatory, are also ascribed to the same source.[86] Thus the only medium by which religious truth can possibly become known to the ma.s.ses of mankind is _tradition_. The ultimate foundation on which the religious faith and the religious practices of universal humanity have rested, with the exception of the Jews, and the favored few to whom the Gospel has come, is uncertain, precarious, and easily corrupted tradition.

[Footnote 84: Watson, "Theol. Inst.," vol. ii. p. 470.]

[Footnote 85: Id. ib., vol. i. p. 11.]

[Footnote 86: Id. ib., vol. i. p. 26.]

The improbability, inadequacy, and incompleteness of this theory will be obvious from the following considerations: