the will, from its very nature, sets itself to determine the rest of the soul, whereas thought and emotion do not. And so religious teachers have been apt to insist on morality rather than on wisdom or good emotion. Jesus Christ seems rather to have called for love-not indeed as mere emotion, but love that naturally issues in deeds of service. But a complete spiritual life, we should opine, would require for its basis a development of the mental life in its various main aspects, much as a full mental life requires a modicum of development in the various main parts of the perceptual and physical life. Surely the growth of intellect and æsthetic sensibility are not merely incidental developments of the soul, of no use as it attains spiritual life; rather are they requisites to the growth of a complete spiritual life, as the feeling of the Divine which accompanies them suggests. And if this be so, religion will be seen to demand, not only goodness of the will, but also occupation of the soul with truth and beauty, that the spiritual life may grow in its entirety. Love for God and for man will be exercised in encouraging in humanity the growth of the manifold nature of spirit.

Connected also with the experience of the spiritual is the expectation of great change even in the physical nature of man. To some extent this seems to be based upon actual cures of diseases and enhanced bodily powers proceeding from spiritual life. The miracles which have attended strong religious movements seem to be instances of the spiritual transforming matter to serve its purposes. Even legendary tales of miracles may be thought to be indications of a true intuition that the spiritual will ultimately determine everything as it wills. And there is suggested by the spiritual even in its infancy an ideal of life which would demand a different physical constitution from that of ordinary mortal mankind. And the spiritual is apt to give a sense of unlimited power to satisfy all the wants of the soul. Hence there arises belief in the ending of

death, escape from the limitations connected with the physical, and the acquisition of vastly greater powers of perception and memory and control of environment. And the ending of death suggests the ending also of its correlative-namely, birth, and consequently also of sex. Indeed the souls who have attained such an ideal as the early experience of the spiritual indicates (if and in so far as they have a corporeal existence) will have bodies that are tractable instruments of the spiritual life.

Such then appears to be the spiritual, with the conditions of its birth and growth and the effects on the rest of human nature already experienced or foreshadowed. But is there good ground for supposing that the Universe is such as to favour the growth of the spiritual? May we believe that the Universe is itself spiritual within and spiritually self-determined?

CHAPTER II

GOD

MANIFOLD proofs have been offered of the existence and nature of God. There are the three classical arguments the ontological, that perfection necessarily exists; the cosmological, that there must have been a first cause; the teleological, or argument from design in Nature. These, as is well known, were criticized and rejected by Immanuel Kant. The teleological (which Kant called the physico-theological) was the only one for which he professed any respect: "It is the oldest, the clearest, and most in conformity with human reason." It is to be noted, however, that its worth has been for some minds diminished by the biological doctrine of natural selection, according to which organisms, with all their intricate and minute adaptation of part to part, may seem to have come into being through the agency of a few simple forces of Nature.

Kant offered in place of these proofs what he called a postulate of pure practical reason. The moral law, he argued, demands that moral goodness and happiness, the two elements of the highest good, shall be ultimately combined. Now only such a being as is conceived in the idea of God can ensure that this shall be so. As we have seen, religion comes in some measure at least from the demand that the Universe shall respect and further the highest values of human life. But this seems to be rather a reason why

God is believed in than a rational ground for that belief.

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The rationality of the Universe, it has been argued, is implied in scientific induction, and the moral trustworthiness of the Universe is implied in human purpose and work. "Our activity in the Universe," writes Alexander Fraser in "Philosophy of Theism," is dependent on the optimist faith, that the Universe with which we are in constant constant communication through experience must be morally trustworthy-perfectly good omnipotent Power or Personality being therein omnipresent." "The extinction of theistic faith is the extinction of reason in man." I This is kindred to Kant's postulate, but is more far-reaching.

Some metaphysicians have furnished an argument based on an idealist theory of knowledge. All objects of perception, they have contended, imply a subject of perception. Therefore the material world is dependent on consciousness. But since it continues to exist when human consciousness is withdrawn, as is evident from the fact that we come back to find processes advanced of which we saw the commencement, it must be dependent on a universal subject or consciousness. Now a mind which is continually aware of the whole of the material world is such a being as monotheistic religion declares to exist.2

We may notice in addition: the argument from conscience, as being the voice of God to the soul; the argument from the existence of reason and moral goodness in humanity, as implying a reason and a goodness no less great for their cause; and the argument from the prevalence throughout the human race of belief in a Divine Being.

Furthermore, religious men have seemed to them

• Pp. 248 and 331.

"Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion," by Principal Caird, pp. 147-50; "The Ultimate Basis of Theism," by Dr. Rashdall, in "Contentio Veritatis,"

selves to enjoy communion with a Divine Being, acquiring thereby joy and peace of heart and moral strength, and through such mystical experiences and their results have had a firm belief in such a God as the higher religions present.

But over against all these arguments stands the fact of evil. Not only is it illegitimate to infer to the principle of the whole of the Universe from the minute portions of it with which we have but superficial acquaintance, but that part of it which we know bears a character inconsistent with the assumption that the Universe originates in a being of perfect goodness and wisdom. The limitations of our knowledge would in any case prevent us from certainly knowing that the Universe was created and is controlled by such a being, but they do not prevent us from knowing that the Universe is not altogether the work of such a being, since, if it were, it would have no flaw or blemish. Pain, misery, disease, ugliness, immorality have occurred and do occur. The producer must be judged by reference to the product. A perfectly good and wise being would and could create only what is perfectly good. The world is partly evil; therefore it is not wholly created and controlled by a perfectly good and wise being. And if indeed God were not only perfectly good and wise, but also, as has been asserted, omnipotent, the world would not only be free from evil, but even infinitely good.

But this does not forbid the attempt to construct some theory of the Universe. We will start with experience, and try without prejudice to discover the nature and origin of it all.

Consciousness, as we know it, especially in its higher forms, is conditioned by very special and complex arrangements of various kinds of units of this existence, which we may call "material," and the formation of these complexes of material units advanced considerably before the emergence of consciousness in the world.