And the practical side of humanity also attests the reality of man's spiritual being and of the objects of his highest aspirations and endeavor. For men live but a little time. If the universe is to give realization to their highest hopes, satisfaction to what is best in their affections, scope for their noblest endeavors, their lives must be more than "little breezes" which

"dusk and shiver

Through the wave that runs forever;"

they must be immortal. And this practical attestation of the reality of the spiritual is precisely the same in kind with the practical attestation of the physical, which in fact compels the belief in its objective reality. Man perceives the reality both of the spiritual and the physical through his feelings, choices, volitions and exertions as really as he perceives outward reality through the senses. There is a true and profound philosophy in one of the "preliminary principles" of the Presbyterian "Form of Government;" "Truth is in order to goodness; and the great touchstone of truth is its tendency to promote holiness, according to our Saviour's rule, 'by their fruits shall ye know them.' There is an inseparable connection between faith and practice, truth and duty. Some scientists teach that, as the inevitable result of evolution, the whole universe will come to a stop and all life and motion forever cease. Our whole being revolts against, resents and resists the conclusion. In accordance with the foregoing principles the impossibility of this belief and the revolt and resentment of the heart against it are founded in a true philosophy. It is safe to predict that any theory which necessarily involves this conclusion will never gain currency among men. In like manner, when we are told that the universe gives no scope for the realization of our spiritual aspirations and that the objects of them have no reality, that our endeavors to attain the noblest ends of our being must be abortive, and that the progress of science is destined to chill and still all such aspirations and endeavors forever, our whole being revolts against, resents and resists the conclusion. And this revolt and resistance also are justified by true philosophy; and we may safely predict that a theory involving such a conclusion will never control the action and history of mankind.

4. The greater part of human actions are acts of faith. In every enterprize a man risks something of the present to win something in the future. He does it in faith that events will be according to his calculations. If he succeeds he knows that his calculations were according to the realities of the universe; that is, according to truth; for truth is reality intellectually apprehended. If he fails, he knows that he was

* Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A. p. 344.

in error. In either case by his voluntary action he acquires knowledge of reality. And in this way a great part of human knowledge is acquired.

But a man may aim at unworthy ends. The universe makes both good and evil possible to him. If now he can ascertain any principles determining what are the highest possibilities of his being, those principles must be true; because those highest possibilities are what the universe itself makes possible to him in his reaction on it.

Man is so constituted that principles of action present themselves in his consciousness as regulative of his thinking, and feeling and willing. He distinguishes the reasonable from the absurd, the true from the false, the right from the wrong, the perfect from the imperfect, the worthy from the unworthy. In the true, the right, the perfect and the worthy he recognizes the highest possibility and supreme good of his being. In reference to these there are problems which thrust themselves for solution on every generation, questions which every age must answer. Are the highest possibilities and noblest ends of human life attained by acting in supreme selfishness or in universal love? by lives of self-indulgence and ease and being ministered unto or by lives of energy and service? by lives conformed to the negations of materialism or to the large and positive principles, promises and hopes of Christianity? These are legitimate criteria of knowledge. The materialist appeals to these and similar criteria as constantly and as earnestly as the theist. By these criteria the experience of the race is establishing the supremacy of the law of love and the reality of man's spiritual interests and relations. Christianity has already advanced far in proving itself true by its effects. When in the lapse of time its principles are all realized and its promises fulfilled in the civilization of mankind, the demonstration will be complete.

IV. The errors and superficiality of skeptical and materialistic scientists rest largely on their disregarding the real relations of knowing, feeling and willing and attempting to construct a science of the universe as if it were an object of thought alone.

1. It is this which leads them to reject, in theory, all argument from final causes. I say in theory; because in fact they habitually use it in their scientific investigations.

Man's knowledge in all departments is closely connected with the satisfaction of his feelings and the accomplishment of his purposes. He accepts the statements of fact and method accordance with which enables him to accomplish his designs. He accepts as true the principles which enable him to realize what both the reason and experience of man pronounce right, and perfect and of true worth. The practical Reason is as real a factor in his knowledge as the Speculative. The

recognition of final causes is in the essence of his knowledge, as really as the recognition of efficient causes. Nor does the knowledge of the efficient, preclude the reality of the final cause. Some unmusical person once described the playing of a great violinist as scraping catgut with horse-hair. It is a correct description. But it would be foolish to insist that this physical force and its instruments are all that science can recognize in the performance, and that it knows nothing of it as the intentional production of enchanting music. As Bulwer says: "Science is not a club-room; it is an ocean; it is as open to the cockboat as to the frigate. One man carries across it a freightage of ingots and another may fish there for herrings. Who can exhaust the sea? Why say to the intellect, 'The deeps of philosophy are pre-occupied?""

2. The principles which have been presented expose the error that the scientific spirit is the pure love of the truth, defecated from all admixture of feeling, preference or choice. Of the love of the truth in this sense Mr. Lecky says that it "is perhaps the highest attribute of humanity;" that they who possess it "will invariably come to value such a disposition more than any particular doctrines to which it may lead them; they will deny the necessity of correct opinions;" that is, love of the truth will entirely cease, being displaced by love for a certain disposition or feeling; love of the truth will be displaced by love for the love of the truth. Mr. Lecky goes so far as to insist that children ought not to be religiously trained lest it should prejudice them. This would equally imply that the child ought not to be trained to virtue, since this training also implies doctrine. The necessary inference would be that a child must not be taught to love God and his neighbor lest he should be biased and prejudiced. Professor Huxley characterizes a religious belief founded on the spiritual aspirations and needs of the soul as immoral. Prof. Clifford, in his essay on the "Ethics of belief," says that to believe even the truth without scientific investigation and evidence is morally wrong and incurs guilt; and that if a busy man has not time to investigate he must not believe. But a large part of human actions are ventures on beliefs which have not scientific evidence, in the sense in which Prof. Clifford uses the phrase, and which nevertheless are beliefs so decisive that men venture on them property, reputation and even life. Would the professor call all these acts sin and say that the actors incur guilt; that is, that they deserve punishment?

In this conception of the love of the truth the mistake of our modern. illuminati is that they conceive of man as divided against himself; they isolate the intellect from all the other constituents of humanity. They do not join with crass practical materialism in saying that man liveth by bread alone. Their maxim is, rather, that man liveth by intellect

alone. The feelings and the will, all that belongs to moral character and practical activity and interests are conceived as in antagonism to the right action of the intellect; and this antagonism is conceived as man's normal state. Hence the only security for the intellect in its search after and knowledge of the truth is its complete isolation and protection from its natural enemies, the feelings and the will, the moral character and the interest in the practical activities of life. In order to the successful use of the intellect our modern illuminism requires the student to unman himself; to divest himself of all feeling and character, of all choice or preference, even of the preference for right rather than wrong, or for enjoyment rather than misery, of all, in fact, which moves him to action and makes him capable of achievement, which makes him of any use or his life of any worth to himself or others. Plainly this can only lead to agnosticism and not to the knowledge of the truth; for it assumes that falsity is organized into the very constitution of man.

The real condition of discovering the truth is just the contrary. It is not the isolation of the intellect from the feelings, choices and volitions, but it is the harmony of intellect, feeling and will in the complete development of the man in the unity of his being to the realization of the rational and normal standards of truth and right, of perfection and worth. Right feeling and character must be in harmony with the knowledge of the truth and helpful to its attainment. It is not feeling, choice, purpose, determination which bias men against the knowledge of the truth; it is only wrong feeling, choice, purpose and determination.

In the very definition of the love of the truth, as conceived by our illuminati, are obvious inconsistencies. They push the analysis of mental processes so far that they seem to regard them not only as separate faculties or organs, but as separate entities in conflict with each other. In insisting that the love of the truth must be defecated from feeling, choice and purpose, they contemplate truth as an entity existing isolated from all relation to human interests. But this is to say that the universe itself has no relation to human interests; for truth is the reality of the universe intellectually apprehended. As such it has powerful and constant influence on human interests. The very conception of seeking truth isolated from human interests is itself falsehood. The supposed isolated truth, if discovered, would not be the truth, would not be the reality of the universe apprehended in the mind; it would be unreality and falsehood. At best it could be only a partial and onesided apprehension of reality. The definition involves another inconsistency. The love of the truth itself involves feeling; seeking to know truth under its influence, is seeking under the influence of a feeling. It

may mislead to disregard moral duty and culture and all the truth involved therein; which would be as real a bias misleading away from truth, as the moral feelings themselves can be.

This conception of the love of the truth reveals its insufficiency and erroneousness also in its practical development. There is a common impression that men devoted to study are weak in practical affairs. So far as this is the necessary result of confinement to a particular line of work it is no disparagement to the scholar; as it is no disparagement to a lawyer that he does not understand medicine. But if study is prosecuted with only a speculative interest there is a weakness of the man and not merely a necessary professional limitation; for his development is abnormal, his culture sickly, and his knowledge awry.

One result is that his interest is concentrated on the inquiry, not on the truth; he studies for the enjoyment of his own intellectual activity. This is the purport of Lessing's famous saying: "If God held in his right hand all truth, and in his left hand the single always urgent impulse to search after truth with the condition that I be always and forever in error, and should say to me, Choose, I should humbly turn to his left hand and say, Father, give me this; the pure truth is for thee alone."* This saying has been repeated by many in different forms as expressing the true scholarly spirit; and Hamilton approves it as expressing the true end and value of philosophical investigation. But it certainly does not express the love of truth. On the contrary it declares that love of truth is entirely displaced by the enjoyment of intellectual activity. And what a picture is-this of the life of a student—a life of amusement only. For what is the difference between spending life in hunting the truth or in hunting foxes, if the truth is no more valued than the fox, and in each case the sole end is the enjoyment of the exercise? Hence comes dilettanteism, a mere amusing one's self with literature, art or science in entire indifference to truth and to its applications to the regulation of life. Hence hypercriticism and fastidiousness, a languid and luxurious disposition to get the most enjoyment possible out of life, and yet a fastidiousness which can find nothing to enjoy. Hence the tendency, which appeared in the decline of the Roman empire, to long and arid controversies on barren questions. Epictetus ridicules a question much discussed in his day. It was this: If a man says of himself, 'I lie,' does he lie, or does he tell the truth? If he lies he tells the truth; but if he tells the truth he lies." Chrysippus wrote a treatise on this question, entitled the "Pseudomenos" in six books, said to have been famous in its day.† Another tendency is to Skepticism as the ultimate issue of all intel

* Werke: Vol. x. pp. 49, 50. Ed. Berlin, 1839. Eine Duplik.

Epictetus; Discourses, B. ii. chap. 17.