Bend from thy rest, if it be given, O Saint, What though thy foes in feebleness of wrath And when thy work's millennium shall be, And Peace lifts up her sweet and endless song? ART. III.-TIIE LOGIC OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. THE logic of religious belief has always been a puzzle even to religious thinkers, and a downright scandal to the irreligious. As we look along the line of human thinking we see a number of perennial beliefs which seem to exist apart from logic, and often in defiance of it. The existence of God, the efficacy of prayer, a moral government of the universe, and life beyond the grave, are examples. Men have always made a show of argument for these beliefs, but often, it would seem, mainly for form's sake. The arguments offered have varied from age to age, and often from man to man. Moreover, even religious thinkers have rejected all of them at one time or another as illogical and worthless. In every case, soon or later, there comes a point where strict logical consecution fails, and where the passage from premise to conclusion is made by an appeal to faith, or feeling, or some other illogical element. And yet, to the dismay of the logicians, the beliefs live on in perennial freshness and power. In such cases it would seem that we do not hold our beliefs because we can prove them, but we try occasionally to prove them because we hold them; and finally, we insist on holding them whether we can prove them or not. This state of affairs has given rise to manifold speculations. Many religious thinkers have seen in these facts a proof that religious truth does not come within the jurisdiction of logic, and they have moved to change the venue by an appeal to feeling, cess. or to some special faith-faculty or religious sentiment. Intuitions, too, have been largely appealed to and highly esteemed. The eagle soul, it was said, has wings, and should soar to the mountain-top instead of painfully dragging itself upward by the sole force of beak and claws. The more gifted declared that they had no need of aid from either logic or revelation, as they possessed the witness in themselves. They were quite content to resign religious arguments to be hacked and hewed by irreligious logicians, and, indeed, they did not a little of this work themselves. Some of the severest critics of the attempt to reason out religious truth have been believers. From this high stand-point of faith, or sentiment, or intuition, many even ventured to make an onslaught on the speculative faculty itself. The metaphysicians have not succeeded well enough in their attempts to construct a logical theory of things to make an alliance with them especially desirable. We need only mention the names of Plato, Descartes, Leibnitz, Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Mill, Bain, and Spencer, to see that the speculative faculty has not much room for the pride of sucThe human race has done some fantastic things in the ways of religion, but certainly nothing more fantastic than it has done in the way of speculation. From the beginning, speculators have been a race "mad with logic and fed on chimeras," so that the very term has become a reproach. There have always been men possessed of the speculative mania who have flown in the face of consciousness and good sense, and who have denied all the principles by which men and nations live, simply to carry through a theory. Mephistopheles was certainly right when he declared that "a speculating fellow is like a beast on blasted heath led round in circles by an evil spirit." Science itself did not begin until it left off logicchopping, and took to studying facts. As long as men tried to tell what could be and what could not be, instead of inquiring what is, words and empty formalism were the only result. Within the Church, also, periods of rationalizing have always been periods of dearth and death; so much so, that rationalism has become almost synonymous with irreligion. Many have succeeded in arguing themselves out of religion, but seldom into it. Facts of this kind have strengthened the conviction that religion must have other than a speculative basis. It would be too bad if one could not be moral until some one had constructed a theory of morals, and had solved all the metaphysical puzzles which lie at the foundation of a moral theory. It would be too bad if we could not worship except as permitted by some ephemeral system of metaphysics. It is not to be thought of, then, that religion should be forced to carry any speculative system, whether it be the Leibnitzian monads, the Herbartian reals, the Hegelian idealism, or even the doctrine of evolution. To one sore from the buffetings, and grieved by the gainsayings, of logic, such freedom could not fail to be welcome. It seems to be a distinct teaching of experience; and it also sets religion on high, far above logic and its wordy wars. But it has likewise its disadvantages. It looks like an admission that religion has nothing for the reason or the intellect. It is rather a kind of "dark lantern of the spirit" which is not to be used in the realm and light of intelligence. The latter must always remain an unbeliever, and look coldly on while heart and conscience worship. Moreover, the feelings and intuitions, left to themselves, have made very sorry work of it. Feelings have grown faint and intuitions dim. It has been very hard to adjust them to one another, and harder still to adjust their psychology. Hence in the realm of religion itself there has long been an oscillation between rationalism and sentimentalism, and a chronic inability to rest in either. To irreligious thinkers, on the other hand, the illogical nature of religious reasoning has always been a scandal. They have armed themselves with a logic variously described as rigorous, remorseless, relentless, pitiless, etc., and with this they have produced numberless formulas of exorcism against religion. These extend from single syllogisms and epigrams to bulky volumes, and have been incessantly repeated over the possessed for centuries, but without effect. Occasionally a fresh speculator, generally young and inexperienced, re-utters a familiar exorcism with unwonted warmth, and looks confidently to see the evil spirit depart; but, somehow, if the demon does vanish for a time, he soon comes back in a worse form than before. For example, Comte drove out Christianity and ended by setting up a mixed system of ancestor and progeny worship. Strauss and Clifford, also, after getting clear of God, propose to us to worship the Cosmos, thus getting back to nature worship. Suggestions of similar atavism in religion are not wanting in much current speculation. So the rare and choice minds which for a time were empty, swept, and garnished, and, which, indeed, were most efficient in pronouncing the exorcising formulas, become themselves possessed by the evil spirit, and that, too, in a somewhat degraded form. This disappointing outcome of their well-meant endeavors has soured, somewhat, our irreligious thinkers. They conclude that religion does belong to our nature, but to the irrational side of it. It may be based on feeling or instinct, or on some blind impulse; at any rate, it is not based on reason. As rational, we are not religious; and as religious, we are not rational. They regret, of course, to see the irrational win such a victory over the rational, especially as such vast practical interests are involved; but this must be reckoned to the innate stupidity of the universe, which is but a poor affair after all. Here the ways divide. Some regard the religious sentiment as a temporary product of development, but as something which cannot safely be disregarded while it lasts. So they look over their speculative treasures to find a sop with which to quiet it, not without a sigh, however, at finding humanity so set in costly delusions. What progress might not the race make if the money and energy expended in bootless worship were devoted to the scientific training and amelioration of mankind. Others, again, are less patient and more determined. Religion, they declare, is nothing but a projection of human desire and passion upon the external universe, and is believed simply because men want to believe it. As for the argument in its favor, it is so weak that it would be immoral to accept it. They are quite at a loss to know whether the persistency of religious teachers in maintaining their superstitions is due to imbecility or to immorality. These teachers, they say, instead of proving their doctrines, preach them. Most of them, of course, are utterly ignorant of the controversies which rage about the foundations of their doctrines. One would think that before preaching religion it would be well to find out whether there is such a thing as religion. But the preachers go on praying and preaching when the whole world knows that the bottom fell out of religion long ago. Evidently they think it compatible with honesty to teach what they do not know. Still we must not be too hard on men who have to make their living. Some get a living in one way, and some in another. Utterances of this sort are familiar to every reader. In one shape or another they form the staple of the "trenchant arraignments" of religion in which polemic literature abounds. The solution of this outstanding puzzle must be sought in a better knowledge of the psychology of belief; for the puzzle itself arises from a false theory of belief. We shall see that the charge of bad logic lies equally against our entire mental procedure. We shall see also that our deepest beliefs are not deduced, but grow; they are not made by logic, but developed from life. In fact, in these fierce demands for logic there is an almost infantile oversight of the conditions of human existence and of the facts of mental development. They rest upon the implicit assumption that man is an abstract speculator without any sort of practical interests or necessities. Hence he must begin, like Descartes, by rejecting all postulates and assumptions of every kind in order to find some invincible fact or principle; and when this is found, he must admit nothing which cannot be deduced from it. Wherever he comes to the end of his logic he must stop. If this ideal were adopted we should have only knowledge in the mental outcome, and belief would be unknown. Again, if we were purely abstract speculators, this ideal might be made the standard of our mental operations. But as it is, this ideal applies only to mathematics. Here we begin with self-evident intuitions, and deduce our conclusions from them with perfectly cogent logic. Mathematics is the field of knowledge, and knows nothing of belief. It will not even hear of probability, except as a subject of discussion, and the truths reached about probabilities are themselves not probable but demonstrated. But this idea is inapplicable to reality, and the method is speculatively barren. By means of it Descartes came to his "I think, therefore I am," and there he stuck fast. He could reach neither the world of things, nor the world of persons, nor the world of laws. The method was very rigorous, but it left thought without any object. It is well known that no theory of perception whatever can demonstrate that the apparent object exists apart from perception. That something not ourselves exists is certain, but that that something is identical with sense-objects is not only unproved |