of which it is the form. How far soever we can go forwards, so far precisely we can go backwards, in time; each stage or object in the one is the mirror of a counterpart in the other; and in neither is there a beginning before or beyond time. All that is known lies between the two points, the Ideal Object in the future and the reflexion of that same Object in the past; and whatever stage of development is contemplated, whether in the reintegration which is imagined as actual history, since the point of creation, or in the disintegration which is imagined to precede creation, that stage contains explicitly, in some mode of explication, the same Ideal Object; and contains also implicitly whatever may lie beyond that Ideal Object in infinite time, either prior or posterior. For the Ideal Object has been so imagined and defined in the preceding § as to include in itself, by its very definition, all the forces and powers of the universe, both physical and conscious, by the elimination or transformation of some, and the subordination of others to the supreme motive principles of love and justice, so that there remains nothing that is not subservient to these principles either consciously as volition, or unconsciously as mechanism of physical nature; the perfection of Power in the Ideal Object consists in, and can be imagined only by imagining, the perfection of this subordination. 4. Again I repeat that in all this I can see no contradiction; it is possible to thought and imagination. But the question remains, what grounds there are for supposing that this imagination is a true mode of conceiving phenomena. I think that there are such grounds, and that they can be ex BOOK I. CH. II. PART V. § 45. The method of religious thought. BOOK I. $ 45. The method of religious thought. hibited as follows. It is impossible to get rid of the conception of Design in nature; for, whether it is conceived as imposed on the objects of sense by our minds, or as gathered by our minds from those objects as already theirs, it is equally in nature; and if imposed by our minds, still our minds are a part of nature, and how came this to be the nature of our minds? Now this conception of Design is applicable to every phenomenon without exception, to what are called inorganic as well as to organic phenomena, for all stand related to each other. But it is not only from the universality of the applicability of the conception that I shall argue, but from its analysis which shows the ground of that universality. In its nature and analysis, Design is nothing else than the statical mode of regarding phenomena; and every phenomenon regarded statically, or as a whole, is organic, or exhibits design, reference of one part to another, and of the parts to the whole. Dynamically, phenomena exhibit succession and change, but no design; design is found whenever a comparison is made or relation perceived of two or more points in the succession; and this is to take the phenomena statically, or together. Time alone is the foundation of the dynamic mode of existence or consciousness; space is the foundation of the static mode; and a portion of time may be treated statically by marking it out from the rest of time by any two points in its content. A line of space has two A line of least three sides; a solid ends; a surface has at the not know in what the end will consist; the beginning is implied in the same way, if we know the end and treat it as a part of some whole, or statically. The same holds good of the very largest object we can conceive or imagine; for the static and dynamic modes of thought and imagination are founded in the formal element of consciousness itself, in time and in space, and we cannot transcend them. In regarding, therefore, the Ideal Object of religion in relation to the universe of thought, we necessarily treat the two together as statical, and this means mutually implying each other. At every point in the progression of consciousness and of history, which are existence, the End is implied; it is present at the beginning as at the end. But in what way we shall imagine this implicit presence to have realised itself in its explication, or in actual existence of history, this is a question comparatively, and for our present purpose entirely, immaterial and unimportant. I lay, therefore, no stress whatever upon the images I have employed above, the sameness of characteristics in the beginning and in the end, the disintegration into Chaos, and the reintegration out of Chaos again. I affirm only that the Ideal Object of religion is eternal; ever present in the universe, at every point of time and of space, when we regard the universe statically; and that the statical mode of regarding it is a necessity of consciousness. Воок І. CH. II. PART V. $ 45. The method of religious thought. $ 46. The concord of philosophy. § 46. 1. The foregoing considerations tend to prove the compatibility of religion with philosophy religion and and philosophy with religion; for they remove the difficulties which have hitherto beset the connection from a double source, first from a basis of belief in God having been sought in philosophy at all, and VOL. I. Y BOOK I. CH. II. PART V. $ 46. The concord of religion and philosophy. secondly, in a philosophy the ultimate logic of which consisted either in the imperfect notion of cause and effect, the contradictory one of a first or uncaused cause, or the illusory one of an ontological Substance, or Ding-an-sich, with its attributes or properties. But they do not base religion itself upon philosophy, or any of the forms of man's knowledge; they show, or attempt to show, that it is based, by nature or by God himself, upon the emotional nature of man. The philosophical forms which it may assume or combine with from time to time are like a dress which it may wear or put off as the state of our knowledge may compel; but the emotions of love and of justice are continual and imperative, and, so far as we can see, eternal. Men, even religious men, have usually, all but universally, sought to base religion in some supposedly true system of philosophy. One man finally and for ever, following in the steps and repeating the words of his predecessors, Hebrew prophets, of whom he himself was the greatest, took the opposite course,-Jesus of Nazareth. "In vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men." In the scope and spirit of this denunciation are included not only practical and ceremonial observances, which were its immediate occasion, but all doctrines whatever so far as they bear an intellectual character. They are always non-religious, and, when they obscure religion, anti-religious. Religion is not philosophy but "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and all thy mind and all thy strength, and thy neighbour as thyself." "I will have mercy and not sacrifice;" therefore, not philosophy. This was the whole purpose, scope, and spirit, of his teaching. Not one BOOK I. CH. II. PART V. $ 46. The concord of philosophy. word did he utter in favour of the necessity of believing intellectually any doctrine whatever. Yet no sooner was the great teacher laid in his grave, than there began to grow up, around him and around religion and his teaching, the impulse to which growth was the very love and admiration which his life and teaching had inspired,—a web of philosophy and theoretical doctrine, held as a necessary part of religion, and of a religion called by his name whose life had been devoted to clearing religion from similar webwork. To do him the more honour we have been undoing his work; in his own name we have been disobeying him. 2. When we reflect upon this we understand why it must have been so. The reason lies in the relation of the emotional to the cognitive element in consciousness, in the causes which make one comparatively unalterable, the other comparatively accrescent and progressive. This at first sight appears to conflict with the inseparability and complete correspondence of emotion and its framework; but it is not so. The intensity of religious emotion, as of all feelings, is not communicable to others so as to be felt by them; the quality corresponding to it in its framework is the vividness of the image; and it is the precise parallel to intensity or a high degree of intellectual power, the quality corresponding to which in the framework is clearness and distinctness of parts, or of their relation to other frameworks. Both kinds of intensity, the emotional and the intellectual, are alike incommunicable; both alike influence the disciples by inspiring affection and veneration for the master personally. But there is this difference, that the vividness in the one case has no |