of reason to prove its objective reality. The same with regard to God. All the arguments advanced by metaphysicians to prove the existence of God, crumble into dust beneath his touch. Having demolished metaphysical argument, Kant proceeds to build up a system upon morality. He first proves that the concept of duty has an objective character, which is not possessed by any of the concepts of speculative reason. He then maintains that this concept of duty communicates immediately its objectivity to a second concept, that of liberty, which is so closely bound up with the first, that they form together an inseparable whole. Duty and liberty become the pivots of man's conscious being; and his life is one of conflict between the impulse of free will to assert its liberty and the impulse of conscience to insist on duty as a curb. This conflict must cease; there must be some moral equilibrium between duty and liberty. Therefore there is a future life and a God. Practical reason does not demonstrate, but demands, the existence of both. The moral concept thus communicates its objective virtue to the religious concepts. Having affirmed the existence. of God, Kant proceeds to define His nature. He shows that He must be intelligent, omniscient, omnipotent, eternal. Thus by his "Critique of Practical Reason," Kant restored religion and morality, the fabric of which he seemed to have ruined by his "Critique of Speculative Reason."1 1 Kant: Complete Works, ed. Rosenkrantz and Schubert; Leipsic, 1838-40. Morell: Historical and Critical View, &c.; London, 1848. Saintes: Vie et Philosophie de Kant; Paris, 1844. Beidermann: Die Philosophie von Kant bis auf unsere Zeit, 1842. Erdmann: Die Entwickelung d. deut. Specul. seit Kant, 1848. Saisset: Pantheism; London, 1863. 9. FICHTE (1762—1814). Above the individual I, which is the basis of Fichte's logical system, he places the pure and general I, acting and revealing itself in the human thought, and dominating its activity, the governing principle of the moral world. But above and outside of the moral world there is no personality. That principle is the highest that can be conceived. “This active and living order is God Himself; we need no other God, and indeed we can conceive no other." The idea of a personal God, of a being who exists as a person beside other persons, is, he argues, incompatible with His infinity; and those who attribute to God a conscious personality, in fact reflect their own personality upon Him. Having been accused of atheism, Fichte attempted to rectify his logic, and without restoring to the Deity that personality of which he had divested Him, he explained that the great absolute I thought the world, and so objected Himself into a personality conceivable by man. The universe is then the NonEgo produced by the Ego, and one with it. In other words, God is the absolute subject-object, the Eternal Unity, infinite thought which embraces eternally the universe.1 10. HEGEL (1770—1831). In the preceding chapter an outline has been given of the theosophy of this subtle reasoner, to which only a few words need be added here. According to Hegel, the Absolute has three moments; the first is pure immaterial thought; the second is the heterization of immaterial thought, the disruption of thought 1 Fichte: Sur le Fondement de notre Foi; 1798. Sämmtliche Werke: Berlin, 1845. Fischhaber: Ueber das Princip. d. Fichteschen Systems; Carlsruhe, 1801. into the infinite atomism of time and space, that is to say into Nature; the third is the return out of heterousia into ousia, the resolution of the heterization of nature, and in this way it becomes at last actual, self-cognizant thought.1 This cursory review of the speculations of the great minds of antiquity and modern times, on the subject of the relation existing between God and the world, has been necessary, as synoptic exhibition of thought oscillating between theism and pantheism, or standing still in despair of a solution and proclaiming materialism. The irresistible tendency towards one or other view, the existence of God outside of and apart from matter, or His immanence in matter, show that the truth must be sought, not on one side or the other exclusively, but in one point which will conciliate the two. May not theism and pantheism be two aspects of the same truth? And may not one without the other be but half a truth? If it were not so, the argument on each side would not be so assailable. Theism pierces the joints of pantheistic argument, expecting to slay it, and pantheism strikes blows at theism meant to be deadly, but without ever reaching its vital centre. Possibly each is true in its affirmations, and each is false. in its negations. 1 Hegel's Werke: Berlin, 1834-45. Stirling The Secret of Hegel : and Stirling's translation of Schwegler's Handbook of the History of Philosophy; 1868. CHAPTER XVI THE IDEA OF EVIL The idea of evil a generalization from the perception of pain-personification of evil-The first idea of evil the idea of God-The second stage is the belief in the capriciousness of the gods-The third stage is dualism -The fourth stage is Satanism-The fifth stage the denial of the absolute existence of evil-Objections to this theory. THE HE idea of evil is a generalization from the perception of pain. If frost did not nip, and fire blister the skin, man would have no idea of the harmful; and the harmful is the evil' Infant humanity behaved towards what hurt it, after the manner of children. The boy who has been stung by a nettle, takes a stick and beats down the weed. The girl who has torn her clothes in scrambling over a hedge, lays the blame on the brambles. The child, far from seeing that the fault lies in its own actions, attributes to the object that has caused the pain malignant motives and a hostile will. This habit survives in the adult, who gives character to the ship and temper to the sun and wind. 1 It is unavoidable, in treating of the origin of the idea of evil, not to go over part of the ground already trodden in the consideration of the origin of the idea of God, and of morality. When pain is felt without any tangible object to which to attribute a motive and a will to hurt, as in disease, some object is feigned, and given imaginary being. Plague, and famine, and war, are conditions of suffering; but instead of man looking to his own neglect of sanitary precaution as the cause of plague, to his own bad husbandry as the reason why his barns are empty, to his own bad government as the generator of war, he supposes plague, famine, and war to be active genii of evil. David speaks of the "pestilence that walketh in darkness," and Horace of "Pallid death with equal foot tapping at the door of the pauper's hovel and the prince's hall." What to David and Horace is mere prosopopeia, to the savage is not metaphor at all, but is a reality. He regards death, pestilence, and famine as vengeful divinities whose wrath must be deprecated. Man must find a reason which will account for every phenomenon, good or evil. The Huron Indian, when attacked by small-pox, supposed that it was produced by the breath of a wicked demon, who prowled at night about his wigwam. The Australian savage, when gorged with mutton and suffering from nightmare, attributes his pain to a fiend who is pestering him for a light, and he flings a firebrand into the night to relieve himself of his distress.2 When the North American Indians are afflicted with drought, they seek a cause, and however absurd that cause may be, it satisfies them because it does account for their discomfort. "The crops were withering under a severe drought," says a historian of Canadian missions; "the pitiless sky was cloudless. There was thunder in the east, and thunder in the west; but over Ihonatiria all was 1 Le Mercier Rélation des Hurons, p. 134; 1637. |