we know them because they exist. I exist; therefore, being constituted capable of self-consciousness, I know myself in my own thinking and doing, and therein know personal being. The world exists; therefore, being constituted capable of perceiving outward objects, I know them when they are in my presence. God exists; therefore, being constituted capable of knowing God, I know him in His various manifestations. 5. It is sometimes claimed that real knowledge is that alone which is founded on experience. But the reality of knowledge, which is the condition of the possibility of experience, cannot be founded on experience. We may truly say, however, that the entire development of consciousness in the experience of human life is the continuous revelation of the Ego, the World and God. Kant admits that in our moral convictions we have content in consciousness for the idea of God already known as a necessary idea of Reason. God also reveals himself in the knowledge of universal principles and in all spiritual motives and emotions; for these bring us face to face with the absolute Reason in the fullness of its power, love and wisdom. In this sense we may say that we know the Ego, the world and God in experience. It is commonly said and widely accepted as unquestionable, that physical science, being founded on observation and induction, is certain knowledge; but that theological belief is only a faith which never becomes real knowledge. But physical science and religious knowledge are, as knowledge, the same in kind, differing only in their objects. The observation and experience on which physical science rests are self-evident, unproved and unprovable knowledge. The principles on which all the inductions and deductions of physical science rest are self-evident, unproved and unprovable knowledge; such are the principle that every beginning or change of existence has a cause, the principle of the uniformity of nature that the same complex of causes always produces the same effect, and the axioms of mathematics. And its verifications also are simply self-evident, unproved and unprovable knowledge by cumulative observation and experience, by persistence in which in the face of conscious fallibility and many mistakes, it attains what it rightly claims is real and indisputable knowledge. And this scientists call the scientific method; and because this knowledge has been attained in this method, they hold it for true in the face of unanswered objections and the utter inconceivableness of many of its conclusions; receiving it with all its inexplicable difficulties, as a learned professor of natural science has said, “without a wink." But the process of attaining theological knowledge is just the same. It rests on the trustworthiness of the self-evident and unproved primitive knowledge of observed facts and universal principles, just as physical science does. It rests on the experience and observation of mental and spiritual phenomena as indisputable as the phenomena of sense, and essential and dominant factors in the whole history of man; phenomena which physical science confessedly fails to account for, and which it therefore most unscientifically ignores as beyond the pale of science. It also proceeds in its own sphere to verify its conclusions by cumulative observation and experience, and in the face of conscious fallibility and many mistakes attains to real knowledge. And it rightly holds it as real knowledge in the face of unanswered objections and unexplained mysteries. Thus physical science is founded in faith in the same sense in which theological knowledge is so founded; because its knowledge both of facts and of the universal principles underlying all its reasoning is self-evident, unproved and unprovable knowledge. And theological knowledge is founded in experience as really as physical science is. We properly accept this knowledge both of the natural and the spiritual as real knowledge because its reality as knowledge is a primitive datum of consciousness, even if we rest on that as an ultimate fact. But theism gives also rational ground for the reality of knowledge. For theism affirms that God is the Absolute Reason, and the universe is the expression of the truths, laws and ideals of Absolute Reason and the progressive realization of the ends which reason approves as worthy. The constitution of the universe therefore expresses these archetypal principles of Absolute Reason. Theism also teaches that man is in the image of God; his reason, then, however limited, is the same in kind with the absolute Reason; and Reason whether in God or man is everywhere and always the same. Thus theism gives rational ground of the reality of human knowledge. It gives rational ground for a man's knowing the reality of his knowledge when he translates the facts of the universe even to the remotest space and time into his own intellectual and scientific forms, factual and rational; when he assumes that the necessary principles of his reason are not merely subjective and regulative of his own thinking, but are principles of reason everywhere and always the same, the laws of things as well as thought, and thus finds them in the constitution of the universe. It gives rational ground for the postulation of the correspondence of man's knowledge with the reality of nature, of the uniformity of nature which is the basis of scientific induction, of the identity of plan in it which is the basis of classification, analogy and systemization, and of the objective universality of the primitive principles of reason which regulate all thought. It gives rational ground of the reality of scientific knowledge in declaring the common origin of the universe and all beings in it in the power of God, the eternal Reason. energizing in its creation and expressing in its constitution and in the laws of its ongoing, the archetypal thought of his eternal love and wisdom. If it is necessary to the reality of human knowledge that all know. ledge be demonstrated, or that the mind knowing must have a power above itself to criticise its own highest powers and judge of their trustworthiness, or that it must know reality out of all relation to its faculties and compare with it what it knows by its faculties, or that knowledge must have no relation to a mind, then certainly knowledge is impossible to man. But each of these demands involves absurdity and self-contradiction. We see then that man has knowledge. His knowledge begins in experience as self-evident, primitive knowledge, it proceeds to the knowledge of realities beyond experience by processes of thought under the regulation of self-evident and universal principles, and it issues in the knowledge of God and of the universe in the unity of a rational, scientific system through its relations to God. And, theism, when attained, throws its light back on human knowledge, and by disclosing God the absolute Reason, man in his image, and the universe as the expression of his thought, enables us to look beyond the fact that the reality of knowledge is an ultimate datum of consciousness and see the eternal ground of its being so. II. Agnosticism belies the constitution and consciousness of man, debars itself from the possibility of argument in its own support, and contradicts and nullifies itself. Because it denies knowledge on the ground that human intelligence is untrustworthy, it denies the possibility of knowledge and thus equally denies all knowledge. If man knows anything whatever, he is proved capable of knowing, and agnosticism is totally false. I have already explained why agnostic objections are entertained against theology more commonly than against knowledge in other spheres; but logically and rationally, theology is no more invalidated by these objections than astronomy or chemistry, or than a man's knowledge of the road home, or that he was once born, or that the beast he rides is a horse and not a sheep. As equally denying all knowledge, agnosticism is equally powerless against all. It contradicts the fundamental and universal consciousness of man, which persists as the consciousness of knowing, and controls the entire action of mankind not excepting those who propound agnostic speculations. If one should carry out in action the doctrine of agnosticism, it would prove him insane. Agnosticism precludes the possibility of argument or evidence in its support. Argument and evidence presuppose knowledge. It is impos sible to appeal to knowledge in proof that knowledge is impossible, or to reason to prove that reason is irrational and untrustworthy The affirmation of agnosticism is self-contradictory; it is the affirmation of knowledge and implies its reality. Agnosticism is a theory of knowledge. Hegel says: "No one is aware that anything is a limit or defect until at the same time he is above and beyond it."* An ox cannot know that it is ignorant of the multiplication table and incompetent to learn it. If man were incompetent to know he would be equally unconscious of his deficiency. If I say that my beliefs are delusive and not knowledge, I assume that I know what true knowledge is, and by comparing my own beliefs with it I know that they are illusive. If I say that my intellectual faculties are untrustworthy, I assume that I am conscious of a higher faculty by which I know the norm or standard of truth and judge my other faculties untrustworthy. Hegel's maxim is applicable also to partial agnosticism. If I affirm that I have knowledge only of phenomena, not of the true reality which exists as a "thing in itself" out of all relation to my faculties, I assume a knowledge of the "thing in itself" and of phenomena as distinguished from it. When Mr. Tyndall says he has no faculty and no rudiment of a faculty by which he can know God, he already reveals the faculty of knowing him. If the existence of an object involves no contradiction and I can form a conception of it, then I am competent to know it if evidence of its existence comes within the range of my experience and my thought. When Hamilton and Mansel affirm that we have only a negative knowledge of the Absolute (which is no knowledge), and Spencer affirms that the Absolute exists but is the unknowable, they are already looking over the limits of the finite and know the Absolute as existent being. If they had no power to know the Absolute, they would be as unconscious of their ignorance as an ox is of its ignorance of geometry. Accordingly Hamilton teaches. that we cannot know the Absolute, yet that by an entirely unexplained act of faith we believe in its existence and accept it as the supreme object of worship, love and obedience. When Mr. Spencer speaks of "the unknowable," he unwittingly reveals knowledge of it by describing it as "the Absolute," as "Cause, Power, or Force of which every phenomenon is a manifestation," as "some Power by which we are acted on," as "omnipresent" and "persistent." So others, who deny that man can know God, refer to sin and suffering in the universe as incompatible with his existence and thus assume knowledge of God and of how he would have constituted and governed the universe, if he had existed. Encyklopädie, Vol. I. p. 121. The affirmation of agnosticism is also in itself an affirmation that man has knowledge; he knows that he cannot know anything. If agnosticism were proved true, at the same moment it would be proved false, for it would be proved that we know the truth of agnosticism. Augustine has exemplified this contradiction in a passage which almost dizzies the reader by its rapid turns. "I am most certain that I am and I know this and delight in it. In respect to these truths I am not at all afraid of the arguments of the Academicians who say: 'What if you are deceived?' If I am deceived, I am. For he who is not, cannot be deceived; and if I am deceived, by this token I am. And since I am, if I am deceived, how am I deceived in believing that I am? for it is certain that I am, if I am deceived. Since, therefore, I, the person deceived, should be, even if I were deceived, certainly I am not deceived in the knowledge that I am. deceived in knowing that I know. know this also, that I know."* Consequently neither am I For as I know that I am, so I If the Agnostic says that he does not dogmatically deny the existence or reality of everything or anything, but only affirms his ignorance, he at least avows knowledge of his own ignorance and of himself as ignorant. Ignorance itself is knowledge of something by a person knowing, with the additional knowledge that the knowledge of that something is limited. If he says that he does not affirm even his own ignorance, but that his mind is in a state of continuous skepticism, doubting, questioning, in a continuous equipoise, neither believing nor disbelieving, still he affirms his knowledge of his own skepticism; also, some knowledge is prerequisite to the possibility of skepticism, questioning or doubt. And such an equipoise is a state of unstable equilibrium, the existence of which in the conscious experience of man even on a single question is comparatively rare. We may safely say no man was ever permanently conscious of such an equipoise on all objects of thought. Agnosticism is therefore self-contradictory and self-annulling. It is not a legitimate topic for argument, and has no claim on the consideration of any rational being. It continues in debate only because skepticism thrusts it on us in its objections. Otherwise its discussion is no more pertinent as preliminary to theology than to astronomy. III. Any theory of knowledge, any system, or any proposition, which involves agnosticism, is thereby proved false and has no claim to further consideration. There is little danger that agnosticism will find acceptance when distinctly avowed as such. It is not likely to infect men's minds except as it inoculates with its virus some theory ostensibly affirming *Civitas Dei, Book xi. 26. |