I SURRENDER OF THE MORAL ATTRIBUTES 21 sentative of Hume himself. Cleanthes has appealed to him for his judgement on the case, and in the subsequent I conversation with Philo he makes no return to the subject by way of controverting or even modifying the sweeping and, to most men, staggering conclusion arrived at.1 In that conversation Philo still takes the leading part, and it is remarkable, as we have already partly seen, for the extent of the agreement which it establishes between the two chief disputants, defining, as it does, the extent to which Philo, the airy sceptic, admits the contention of the more solid Cleanthes-as a matter, if not of demonstrable certainty, at any rate of reasonable belief. But the importance of th s agreement has already been largely discounted by the elimination of the moral attributes of God and of the whole idea of a moral government, or moral order, of the universe. As Cleanthes expresses it,' to what purpose establish the natural attributes of the Deity while the moral are still doubtful and uncertain?' The significance of the conclusion is still further whittled away in the concluding pages, where Philo represents the whole controversy between theism and atheism as mainly verbal. The theist, while calling the supreme cause Mind or Thought, is ready to allow that the original Intelligence is very different from human reason, and the atheist (who is only nominally so and can never possibly be in earnest ') allows that the original principle of order bears some remote analogy to it.

1 It must be noted, however, that in the concluding section he still refers to 'genuine Theism' as teaching that man is 'the workmanship of a Being perfectly good, wise and powerful; who created us for happiness, and who, having implanted in us immeasurable desires of good, will prolong our existence to all eternity, and will transfer us into an infinite variety of scenes, in order to satisfy those desires, and render our felicity complete and durable'. The phraseology of this curious passage strikingly recalls Kant's subsequent scheme. Cleanthes presents this doctrine as 'the most agreeable reflection which it is possible for human imagination to suggest', and Philo, admitting that 'these appearances are most engaging and alluring', adds these somewhat significant words-' and with regard to the true philosopher, they are more than appearances '.

It is only, therefore, a question of degree, and in actual discussion it will often be found that they 'insensibly change sides', the theist emphasizing the difference between God and man, and the atheist magnifying the analogy among all the operations of nature. What is there, then, to hinder an amicable adjustment of their differences? 'The whole of Natural Theology resolves itself', in Philo's concluding words, 'into one simple, though somewhat ambiguous, at least undefined, proposition: That the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence.' 'The analogy, imperfect as it is, can be carried no farther than to the human intelligence; and cannot be transferred, with any appearance of probability, to the other qualities of the mind.' The proposition, as he significantly admits, is one which 'affords no inference that affects human life, or can be the source of any action or forbearance'; and, if so, what can the most inquisitive, contemplative, and religious man do more than give a plain, philosophical assent to the proposition, as often as it occurs; and believe that the arguments on which it is established, exceed the objections which lie against it?'

Such is the nature of the attenuated theism to which Hume on all occasions so carefully adheres, and to which he sometimes assigns a central importance in the foundation of that 'philosophical and rational' religion which he so sharply distinguishes from 'vulgar superstition'. It is here if anywhere—in the importance he assigns to it rather than in the nature of the tenet itself—that the inconsistency to which Huxley refers may be found; for how can a proposition possess any religious significance if, as Philo truly describes it here, it affords no inference that affects human life, or can be the source of any action or forbearance'? Involuntarily we recall the pragmatic test of truth by its practical consequences. And however much questionable matter we may find in pragmatist writers associated with this main conten

I

INSIGNIFICANT CONCLUSION

23

tion or developed from it, we may well ask ourselves whether a proposition which has no practical consequences whatever is to be regarded as a truth at all. Is it not either meaningless or (as Hume here says) at least undefined? It is not without reason that theist and atheist so amicably shake hands over their differences, for the proposition contains nothing vital either to affirm or to deny. Certainly this is not what those who have contended for the existence of God have meant by that doctrine. To them it meant undoubtedly a doctrine which, if true, must profoundly affect our whole view of the universe and our conduct in it.

KANT AND THE IDEA OF INTRINSIC VALUE

We have seen in the previous lecture the vague residuum of theistic belief which is all that Hume considered deducible from the evidence-a residuum, however, to which he clings through all his works with an almost curious tenacity. A proposition which affords no inference that affects human life or can be the source of any action or forbearance' seems a credo hardly worth contending for. If we mean by God an extra-mundane entity whose super-human intellectual powers are attested by the orderly arrangements and nice contrivances of the material scheme of things, but who is indifferent, so far as the phenomena enable us to judge, not only to human weal and woe, but also to the aspects of will and character which seem to us indubitably the highest and the best we know, the existence or non-existence of such a deity can hardly be a matter of human concern. It is surely not too much to say that the prominence given to the proof of intelligence in most of the arguments, especially the older arguments, for the existence of God, is due not so much to an interest in the merely cognitive powers-the super-human cleverness, as it were of the world-artificer as to the feeling that, together with knowledge, we may expect to find in the Ground of things something akin to those elements of our being, rooted as they are in intelligence, in which we recognize our true dignity and worth. Whether we have just grounds for believing in such kinship is a question to be dealt with in the further course of these lectures, but certainly without it we cannot expect man to be satisfied, hardly indeed to be interested. Intelligence has, as a matter of fact, for the greater thinkers always meant more than the abstract intellect.

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II

HUME'S RESTRICTED PREMISSES

25

But the nature of Hume's conclusion was determined by the restricted nature of the premisses from which it is deduced. It is explicitly based upon a contemplation of the works of nature', 'the frame of nature, that is to say, upon the order and adjustments of the material system, to the exclusion of human nature and human experience in any other than its sense-perceptive aspect. Now Hume himself points out that 'the first ideas of religion arose not from a contemplation of the works of nature, but from a concern with regard to the events of life, and from the incessant hopes and fears which actuate the human mind'. And although he contrasts 'the religious fictions and chimeras' thence arising with the genuine principles of theism', and counsels an escape from the violence of contending superstitions ' into the calm though obscure regions of philosophy', it is in reality futile to rest a philosophical doctrine of God on a fragment of the evidence actually before us. It is possible that when we include in our survey the sentient creation and the facts of human history- the dread strife of poor humanity's afflicted will 'the whole may appear to us, in Hume's memorable phrase, 'a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery'. But even if we risk such a result, how can we leave these facts out? They are in the very centre and foreground of the picture. It may be, moreover, that although they immensely increase the difficulty of the problem, they alone supply us with the hint of a concrete and tolerable solution.

The general problem of philosophy, as every one knows, passed from the hands of Hume to those of Kant, and to Kant may be traced the most characteristic modern forms of the theistic argument. Kant's precise position is, in my opinion, no more tenable here than is the letter of his general

1 These phrases are repeatedly used in the first two sections of the Natural History of Religion'.

2 In the Natural History of Religion'.

3 Excursion, Book VI.