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unthinkable, except as ultimately resting on an Absolute Cause or Power.

The same is true in the sphere of rationality. The possibility of concluding reasoning in an inference which gives knowledge, rests on universal truths regulative of all thinking. The validity of these universal truths involves the existence of Reason unconditioned, universal and supreme, the same everywhere and always. Mathematics is a pure creation of the human mind resting on self-evident principles of reason. If our mathematics is not true in all the stars and planets, our astronomy is worthless. The same is true of all the universal principles which are laws of thought. If they are not true everywhere and always our science and all our reasoning give no knowledge; the human mind is constituted untrustworthy. Reason, then, must be universal and absolute, unconditioned by any change of finite things, the same everywhere and always. The alternative is not between the Absolute Reason and the human, but between the Absolute Reason and no Reason or rational knowledge.

Also, in extension in space, duration in time, or limitation in quantity, we find our thought carrying us to the infinite. Finite extension, duration and quantity must be thought as embosomed in the immensity, eternity and plenitude of the infinite.

In our endeavors to know the manifold in the unity of an all-comprehending unity, we find it only as the universe is the manifestation of the Absolute and Unconditioned One.

Thus in every line of thought the knowledge rises self-evident before us that there must be an Absolute and Unconditioned Being. We properly recognize it as a primitive and universal truth, known in rational intuition. The idea of Absolute Being and the belief of its existence are in the background of human consciousness and at the foundation of all knowledge through human thought. "A consciousness which has got rid of the thought of absolute being would become a prey to endless atomicism and dissolution."* The existence of Absolute Being underlies the possibility of all finite being, power, reasoning and rational knowledge.

In this rational intuition a new sphere of reality is opened to human intelligence.

III. We cannot know a priori what the Absolute Being is; but, so far as this knowledge is possible, only a posteriori, in knowing that it accounts for the universe, including both man and nature. In the rational intuition that Absolute Being exists, it is known as the ground of the universe. The knowledge of being has been attained, as already

* Dorner, Christlichen Glaubenslehre, ? 18, 2 B.

explained. This intuition gives us knowledge that a being exists that is absolute and unconditioned; and by thought we know further that, as the ultimate ground of the universe, the absolute must have all the powers necessary to account for its existence; as manifested or revealed in the universe, the Absolute must be endowed with the powers which can account for the existence and ongoing of the universe and which thus are revealed in it. Hence the Absolute is the All-conditioning as well as the Unconditioned. By rational intuition man knows that absolute being exists; his knowledge of what it is, is progressive with his progressive knowledge of man and nature in the universe.

Kant objects that, though the idea of God is necessary to the Reason, it has no content in consciousness. The foregoing remarks show that we do have knowledge what God is as he reveals himself in the universe. I may add that the idea has content in consciousness through the five ultimate ideas of the Reason. Kant admits that it has content in consciousness through the practical reason, in the knowledge of right and wrong. God speaks in our hearts in his moral law. But we now see that God, the Absolute Reason, equally reveals himself in our consciousness in the rational ideas of the True, the Perfect and the Good or Worthy. Also, God reveals himself in our consciousness in our religious experience; especially in the experience of a Christian man, the purest, loftiest and most comprehensive experience of God's gracious revelation of himself. Even in the religiousness of ruder men who know not Christ, God has "not left himself without witness." God acts on men and they react upon his influences; and thus they find him in their own consciousness. They know him and the spiritual sphere by this action and reaction, in a manner analogous to that in which they know the world of sense. No Christian man will say that the idea of God is an empty idea void of content in his own consciousness. He will say, "I know him whom I have believed;" not the idea of him or propositions about him, but HIM.

Herbert Spencer, recognizing the belief of the existence of Absolute Power as a primitive datum of consciousness and a priori to the individual, would account for the belief as the result of the experience of the human race, registered through innumerable generations in the human organism and transmitted by heredity. If so, men must have experienced the action of God on them through all generations, until religious belief and worship have become constitutional and the idea of an Absolute Being and the belief of his existence have become primitive data of consciousness.

55. The Pseudo-Absolute.

I. The true absolute must be distinguished from false ideas of it assumed in the current objections to theism. These appear in various forms.

Some forms of the pseudo-absolute originate in the attempt to know what the absolute is a priori; that is, by simply developing the words, absolute, unconditioned, infinite. Then the idea of the absolute necessarily remains void of content and negative; it is not conditioned by dependence on any cause; it is not limited in time, space or quantity; and there is no reality of which we predicate the unconditionateness and the illimitation.

Other forms of the pseudo-absolute arise from attempting to determine empirically what the absolute is. The necessary result is that some conception of the finite is mistaken for the absolute. Of these I may mention two which have played important parts in the objections to theism.

One is the idea of the absolute as "the ALL," the mathematical sum total of all that is, the "omnitudo realitatis." It is supposed that the absolute is to be found by adding together all finite things, until we reach "the All." But "the All" thus found must always be itself finite.

The other is the idea that the absolute is the largest general notion or logical concept. The greater the extent of a general notion the less its content. A general notion including all reality in its extent would have no content. It would have no peculiar quality by which it could be distinguished from anything else; it would be entirely indeterminate. If we say that this is the general notion of being, then we merely hypostasize the copula; to affirm that anything is a being is then the weakest > and least significant of affirmations; anything is a being which can be connected by the copula is with any predicate. Being then is entirely indeterminate; it is equal to nothing. And precisely this is what some eminent philosophers mean by the Absolute. So Hamilton says that the idea of the absolute is attained "only by thinking away every character by which the finite was conceived." We must, then, think away all that we know of concrete being and its properties and powers; and what is left is the Absolute. This is very like the famous metaphysical process of ascertaining what a swallow's nest in a clay-bank is, by thinking away the bank and leaving the hole. The Absolute would be a logical general notion and the world-process would be a process of logic. II. Many of the current objections against theism are founded on a false idea of the absolute and from it derive all their force.

1. It is said that the absolute is "pure being;" it is "the thing in itself;" it is "out of all relations." These are results of attempting to

ascertain a priori what the absolute is. The Absolute, the unconditioned, the infinite are adjectives and negatives. It is impossible by developing them a priori to pass from the adjective to the substantive, from the negative to the positive. We get only pure being which is equal to nothing. But it has already been shown that being is known, not merely as an abstract general notion, but as concrete reality; that in the rational intuition of the Absolute we already know what a being is; the knowledge of being is not given in the rational intuition, but only the necessary truth that a being must exist absolute or unconditioned. But in knowing being as absolute or unconditioned we do not cease to know it as being, endowed with all the essential powers of being, and with all the powers essential to it as the ground and cause of the universe. And so in opposition to Hamilton, J. S. Mill says: "Anything carried to the infinite must have all the properties of the same thing as finite, except those which depend on its finiteness."* It enters then into the true idea of the absolute, not that it must exist out of all relations, but only out of all necessary relations. It may be in relation to a universe; it is known to us as the ground and cause of the universe, but it is not dependent on it. The existence of the universe is conditioned on the existence of God; but the existence of God is not conditioned on the existence of the universe.

2. There is, also, a class of objections founded on a false idea of the absolute as the sum total of the universe.

It is objected that if the existence of reason in the universe proves that God is spirit, the existence of matter in the universe equally proves that God is matter. This objection derives its force from the error that the absolute is the sum total of the finite. But the relation of the absolute to the finite is not the mathematical relation of a total to its parts, but it is a dynamical and rational relation. The true Absolute is a power competent to account for the existence of matter dynamically and rationally. The conclusion of the objector is not an inference from the true idea of the Absolute; on the contrary, it is incompatible with it and contradictory to it.

The objection that evil must exist in the Absolute is founded on the same erroneous idea. Says Hegel: "What kind of an Absolute Being is that which does not contain in itself all that is actual, even evil included?" This implies that the absolute is the sum total of all things, and therefore must include evil. This conclusion, also, is not only not an inference from the true idea of the absolute, but it is contradictory to it. If God for wise reasons gives existence to finite rational beings in a moral system, they in their free agency may do wrong. Their

* Examination of Hamilton, Vol. I., 129.

free action accounts for the fact of sin; to account for it, it is not necessary to infer that God is sinful, but only that for wise reasons he has brought into being a rational and moral system consisting of rational beings free to do right or to do wrong.

Mansel objects that "the distinction between the possible and the actual can have no existence as regards the absolutely infinite; for an unrealized possibility is necessarily a relation and a limit."* This rests on a pseudo-absolute as existing out of all relations, and also on a pseudo-absolute empirically developed as the sum of all that is already actually existent. These objections do not show us reason breaking down in contradiction; but only false philosophy befooling itself in declaring that the finite is itself the infinite, and the conditioned itself the unconditioned.

3. The agnostics object that the Absolute cannot be a personal being because to predicate of it personality, is to limit it; if the absolute is personal, it must exclude the impersonal. The objection is of equal force against predicating of the absolute any attribute whatever; we therefore cannot say that it exists, for being exists only in its qualities and powers; we cannot even say that it is absolute or unconditioned, for that would distinguish it from the finite and conditioned, and so would limit it. This objection is valid only of some form of the pseudoabsolute. If the Absolute is "pure being," or "the All," as a sum total of finites, or the largest general notion, then to predicate of it personality would be incompatible with the idea of the absolute and would involve limitation. But it is not incompatible with the true idea of the absolute, and if predicated of it involves no limitation.

This objection is founded on the maxim, "Omnis determinatio negatio est," or, "All definition limits." I have already shown that, while this maxim is true of mathematical quantities and logical general notions, it is not true of concrete beings; that of these the contrary is true; the more determinate or specific a being is by the increase or multiplication of its powers, the greater, and not the less or more limited, is the being.

56. Personality of the Absolute.

I. The Absolute may be a person. Reason and free-will are essential elements of personality. Will is Reason energizing; Reason is Power rational. Reason is in its essence universal and unchanging, the same in all places and all time, unconditioned and all-conditioning. Reason energizing is autonomic, self-directive, self-exertive, free. Reason realizing its ideals in action is the all-perfect. It is ade

*Licits of Religious Thought, p. 76.

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