For the scholastics the facultas appetendi embraces feeling, desire, and will. ↩
Cardinal Newman: “The Idea of a University,” Discourse III § 7. ↩
In an article, “How to make our Ideas Clear,” in the Popular Science Monthly for January, 1878, vol. XII p. 286. ↩
Pragmatically, the most important attribute of God is his punitive justice. But who, in the present state of theological opinion on that point, will dare maintain that hell fire or its equivalent in some shape is rendered certain by pure logic? Theology herself has largely based this doctrine upon revelation; and, in discussing it, has tended more and more to substitute conventional ideas of criminal law for a priori principles of reason. But the very notion that this glorious universe, with planets and winds, and laughing sky and ocean, should have been conceived and had its beams and rafters laid in technicalities of criminality, is incredible to our modern imagination. It weakens a religion to hear it argued upon such a basis. ↩
John Caird: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, London and New York, 1880, pp. 243–250, and 291–299, much abridged. ↩
A. C. Fraser: Philosophy of Theism, second edition, Edinburgh and London, 1899, especially part II chaps. VII and VIII; A. Seth [Pringle-Pattison]: Hegelianism and Personality, Ibid., 1890, passim.
The most persuasive arguments in favor of a concrete individual Soul of the world, with which I am acquainted, are those of my colleague, Josiah Royce, in his Religious Aspect of Philosophy, Boston, 1885; in his Conception of God, New York and London, 1897; and lately in his Aberdeen Gifford Lectures, the World and the Individual, 2 vols., New York and London, 1901–02. I doubtless seem to some of my readers to evade the philosophic duty which my thesis in this lecture imposes on me, by not even attempting to meet Professor Royce’s arguments articulately. I admit the momentary evasion. In the present lectures, which are cast throughout in a popular mould, there seemed no room for subtle metaphysical discussion, and for tactical purposes it was sufficient, the contention of philosophy being what it is (namely, that religion can be transformed into a universally convincing science), to point to the fact that no religious philosophy has actually convinced the mass of thinkers. Meanwhile let me say that I hope that the present volume may be followed by another, if I am spared to write it, in which not only Professor Royce’s arguments, but others for monistic absolutism shall be considered with all the technical fullness which their great importance calls for. At present I resign myself to lying passive under the reproach of superficiality. ↩
J. H. Newman: Idea of a University, Discourse III § 7. ↩
Newman’s imagination so innately craved an ecclesiastical system that he can write:
“From the age of fifteen, dogma has been the fundamental principle of my religion: I know no other religion; I cannot enter into the idea of any other sort of religion.”
And again, speaking of himself about the age of thirty, he writes:
“I loved to act as feeling myself in my Bishop’s sight, as if it were the sight of God.”
Apologia, 1897, pp. 48, 50
The intellectual difference is quite on a par in practical importance with the analogous difference in character. We saw, under the head of Saintliness, how some characters resent confusion and must live in purity, consistency, simplicity (here onwards). For others, on the contrary, superabundance, overpressure, stimulation, lots of superficial relations, are indispensable. There are men who would suffer a very syncope if you should pay all their debts, bring it about that their engagements had been kept, their letters answered, their perplexities relieved, and their duties fulfilled, down to one which lay on a clean table under their eyes with nothing to interfere with its immediate performance. A day stripped so staringly bare would be for them appalling. So with ease, elegance, tributes of affection, social recognitions—some of us require amounts of these things which to others would appear a mass of lying and sophistication. ↩
In Newman’s Lectures on Justification, Lecture VIII § 6, there is a splendid passage expressive of this aesthetic way of feeling the Christian scheme. It is unfortunately too long to quote. ↩
Compare the informality of Protestantism, where the “meek lover of the good,” alone with his God, visits the sick, etc., for their own sakes, with the elaborate “business” that goes on in Catholic devotion, and carries with it the social excitement of all more complex businesses. An essentially worldly-minded Catholic woman can become a visitor of the sick on purely coquettish principles, with her confessor and director, her “merit” storing up, her patron saints, her privileged relation to the Almighty, drawing his attention as a professional devotee, her definite “exercises,” and her definitely recognized social pose in the organization. ↩
A fuller discussion of confession is contained in the excellent work by Frank Granger: The Soul of a Christian, London, 1900, ch. XII. ↩
Example:
“The minister at Sudbury, being at the Thursday lecture in Boston, heard the officiating clergyman praying for rain. As soon as the service was over, he went to the petitioner and said, ‘You Boston ministers, as soon as a tulip wilts under your windows, go to church and pray for rain, until all Concord and Sudbury are under water.’ ”
R. W. Emerson:
