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tutes the ultimate reality a religious object. "Infinite" mechanism, for example, would not be able to excite "reverence,' "veneration," " respect," love," or any other emotions characteristically religious. Certainly nothing better could be said of "immutable" coexistence and sequence, or of "eternal" dirt. At most such things could excite mere wonder. Some elements of ideality at least must be present in an object that conditions "reverence,' ," "veneration," and similar emotions; and ideality implies in that far personality. Modern Transcendental Idealism, as represented by Emerson, may be regarded, therefore, as still within, though barely within, the pale of religion; for, although its God tends theoretically to ""* evaporate into an abstraction, practically the evaporation never becomes quite complete. In different degrees the Emersonians personify the world. As to the "feeling of dependence," which has sometimes been regarded as the very soul of religion, let it be observed that not every feeling of dependence is meant, but the feeling of dependence on the “Infinite,” and, by tacit assumption, on the "Infinite" conceived as clothed in personal attributes. Dependence on infinite force, on infinite gravitation for example, is not what is meant, and would still not be, if in addition to "infinite" we bestowed other imposing titles such as "absolute," "immutable," and "eternal." Neither have distinctively religious practices ever been determined by metaphysical attributes alone. Men have never been quite stupid enough to perform religious rites before impersonal mechanism, even if conceived as immeasurably big, or to offer sacrifices and prayers to a system of mathematical relations, though regarded as "eternal." Such acts, when closely examined, are found to be always attended. by a recognition of the personality of the religious object. Toward objects like those just mentioned men have never even assumed the corresponding mental attitudes which, in the more refined religious exercises, sometimes take the place of outward acts of worship. Mere infinity, mere eternity, mere *Professor James's expression.

absoluteness, and mere causality, have no value whatever for the religious consciousness. Professor James is entirely right when, of a God constituted of metaphysical attributes alone, he says: "From the point of view of practical religion, the metaphysical monster which they offer to our worship is an absolutely worthless invention of the scholarly mind." *

Mere ontology is not theology, and the adjustment of oneself to an assumed ultimate reality is not necessarily religion. Whether it is or not, depends on the kind of ultimate reality assumed. The fundamental weakness in Edward Caird's treatment of religion, as of most writers whose conception of religion is intellectualistic, consists in his tendency to confound religion and metaphysics. He says, for example, "The religious like the scientific consciousness seeks to find the reason or principle of the particular in the universal; and it differs from science mainly in this, that it cannot rest except in the infinite unity which underlies all the differences of the finite." This recognizes both a certain agreement and a certain difference between the religious interest and the scientific. The difference noticed. is in fact that which obtains not between the scientific and religious interests, but between the scientific interest (as manifested in the particular sciences) and the philosophic (metaphysical) interest, which cannot rest except in a unitary conception of the world; and the difference is only one of degree, the scientific interest culminating in the philosophical. It is therefore only the scientific interest in its highest development that Caird here calls the religious consciousness. The truth is that religion seeks primarily not "reason and principle," "unity," "the universal," etc. as such, but help, protection, security, peace, fellowship, and other practical goods. "Infinite unity as such is of absolutely no significance for the distinctively religious consciousness. It is not surprising that elsewhere the same author, though taking some account of the practical aspect of religion, defines it in a way to remove all "The Varieties of Religious Experience," p. 447.

grounds for the distinction between irreligion and religion. "A man's religion," he says, "is the expression of his ultimate attitude to the Universe, the summed-up meaning and purport of his whole consciousness of things. If, as this language implies, any kind of ultimate attitude is religion, then irreligion and aggressive atheism are particular varieties of religion. The point of view is intelligible, of course; but it is evident that, if we adopted Caird's conception, we should be compelled to invent a new term with which to distinguish religion from irreligion. The confusion comes from failure to attribute to religion a peculiar object,—an object that differs from a merely metaphysical one in that it possesses personal qualities.

Even some thinkers of strong religious interest, it must be admitted, have hesitated, on account of particular philosophical presuppositions, to accept theoretically the personality of the absolute; but they have in that far been inconsistent. Schleiermacher, for example, who in his earlier works hardly employs the word " God," using instead impersonal expressions such as "the infinite," "the universe," "the whole," etc., is constrained later not only to adopt fully the word "God," and to make a distinction between God and the universe, but to clothe "the infinite," for practical religion, in the attributes of the definite personal God of traditional theology. could not be otherwise. It was impossible for him, as it has been for all other thinkers, to constitute actual, concrete religion without a God of personal attributes.

It

On account of his reputation and authority, the late Herbert Spencer's conception of religion deserves to be mentioned. It is evidently determined by the desire to effect a permanent reconciliation between science (philosophy) and religion, although the reconciliation turns out to be simply the abolition of reli

"Evolution of Religion," Vol. I., p. 30. It is only fair to say that this is not meant to be his final statement of the matter. It is sufficient, however, to characterize his standpoint.

† Compare the “Reden über die Religion" and "Der christliche Glaube."

gion. He finds in every religion two elements: (1) The recognition" that the existence of the world, with all it contains and all which surrounds it, is a mystery ever pressing for interpretation," and (2) "some solution of this mystery." * He contends, however, that the essential element (an element which religion possesses in common with science and philosophy) is the recognition of the mystery, and that religion will become purely religious only when it has completely eliminated the other element, only when it has rejected every solution of the mystery and hence every definite conception concerning ultimate reality. To assume a personal God as the ground of all being is accordingly inconsistent with the very nature of religion! Of this view it is to be said that, apart from the fact that it is purely intellectualistic, taking account only of the doctrinal aspect of religion, it really throws away the essential one of the two elements into which he analyzes religion, and retains the accidental one as alone expressing its true nature. For it can be shown, (1) that religion can get on without mystery (in the sense of the inexplicable), but (2) that it cannot surrender every hypothesis as to the nature of ultimate reality.

Mystery may mean either what cannot be explained on any hypothesis (in this sense the world is a mystery for consistent agnosticism), i. e., absolute mystery; or it may mean what cannot be "scientifically" explained, i. e., understood as a particular case under some general fact or law (conceived as mechanical in its operation) already familiar to our experience. For example, for "the existence of the world with all it contains," materialism offers a scientific explanation in this sense when it asserts that all phenomena would turn out on ultimate analysis to be only material particles in motion. religion has any interest in mystery, it is not in absolute mystery, but only in a world that cannot be explained as the operation of impersonal forces. Religion has its own explanation,

*"First Principles," closing paragraphs of the chapter on mate Religious Ideas."

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-though not a "scientific" one, of the phenomenal universe. It explains the world as the operation of God, or of gods; and its occasional dread of scientific investigation is due to the apprehension that the sphere of explanation by divine volition may be gradually reduced by science to the vanishing point, where the gods are quite displaced by impersonal forces. In fact, religion can tolerate the modern scientific conception of a world without miracles (though full of mystery) only by interpreting the changeless and universal laws of nature as uniform modes of divine activity. Religion is therefore so far from being the mere recognition of mystery, that it is, on its intellectual side, a particular explanation of mystery.

For absolute mystery religion has no use. The mysterious in this sense is not even agreeable to the religious consciousness. What it cannot explain by postulating a personal cause, perplexes, troubles, chills it. This becomes more and more clear as we advance from the lower to the higher expressions of the religious interest. In naïve polytheism it is indeed easy enough to explain superficially the apparently contradictory aspects of nature as the work of different personalities; but, when we come to monotheism, faith in a personal cause of all things is often staggered by the multiple aspects of the world, especially by the co-existence of good and evil; and this is just because evil is a mystery that cannot be explained by ascribing it directly to a personal cause that is at the same time the father of all good. The inexplicable co-existence of good and evil is so far from being a support to the religious consciousness, as on Spencer's theory it ought to be, that the religious consciousness (in monotheism) can survive a clear recognition of this dualism only by assuming that the contradiction is after all but apparent, that evil is transitory or good in disguise. When regarded as quite inexplicable, as an absolute mystery, it is fatal to religion.

It is to be regretted that Professor James, in his recent great work on The Varieties of Religious Experience, fails