This The increasing intimacy of these civic relations brings clearly into view the organic unity of mankind, and suggests the conception of a universal State, whose mighty function shall be to secure international justice without war. ideal is becoming in a measure realized. "Its realization," says Dr. Seelye, "does not require, indeed, in the actual condition of men, would not permit that all particular States should lose their individuality of government or institutions, and be merged in what might be deemed the visible embodiment of the one universal State. The universal State has no visible embodiment. Yet it is not thereby without reality or power. In our modern world nothing has shown itself more real or potent. What we call international law, or the law of nations, unknown except in the vaguest, faintest way in ancient times, is recognized in our day as a sovereignty in human affairs, equally majestic and mighty. It has no visible throne; it does not utter itself through the voice of a monarch, or the votes of a legislature or people; it has no courts to expound, nor any fleets or armies to enforce its dictates; but it guides kings, and legislatures, and peoples, and courts, and fleets, and armies in our times, with an authority whose manifestation of power is steadily increasing. There is nothing so characteristic of modern politics as the sway which international law, a development of the one moral law, is continually gaining among existing nations. There is no other point in which the politics of the present day are so clearly distinct from those of the ancient world. But international law is nothing other than the voice of the one universal State. It is the State in the highest exhibition of it yet given in history." The State thus organizing is a whole, is one and indivisible, uniting through itself more and more manifestly its constituent organizations, without effacing their distinct individuality, and presenting to the vision of political philosophy a world of united States. CHAPTER V THE CHURCH § 141. Religion, in its widest sense, viewed subjectively, is belief in presiding, superhuman, spiritual power, earnest enough to influence moral character and conduct; viewed objectively it is a body of doctrine relative to such power, instructing and regulating its votaries. Religion is of two kinds, natural and revealed; the former relying for its belief and doctrine on reason alone; the latter claiming to have in addition information communicated by the higher power. The negative member of this dichotomy is natural religion. Under scientific treatment it is entitled natural theology. It proceeds independently of historical, racial and local influences, discarding the dogmas of tradition, authority and custom, and upon rational grounds investigates the evidence furnished by nature of the reality and character of a higher power. More particularly, it seeks proof of the existence of God, his unity and personality, the kind and degree of his attributes, his will concerning us, the distinction between right and wrong, good and evil, our relation and obligation to him, and our destiny both here and hereafter. Revealed religions, which Diderot calls the heresies of natural religion, seek in general to impose their systems far less by reason than by persuasion with appeal to emotion and passion. Historically they have been largely characterized by superstition or extreme reverence and fear of what is unknown or mysterious, and by fanaticism or ignorant, irra tional worship of deities, with excessive rigor in opinions, and practice. Witness the prevailing Asiatic and African cults. Christianity, however, is a revealed religion claiming to be in entire accord with natural religion, to be at its basis strictly rational, and to demand no more of its adherents than a reasonable faith in its transcendent doctrine.1 66 we 1 It is an old saying that man is a religious animal. This differentiates, distinguishes him. His very nature determines that he shall look upward and worship. Among Aryan races, even the name which is above every name, at which every knee shall bow, is one, and tells of filial adoration. "In exploring the ancient archives of language," says Max Müller, find that the highest god received the same name in the ancient mythology of India, Greece, Italy, and Germany, and retained that name whether worshipped on the Himalayan mountains, or among the oaks of Dodona, on the Capitol, or in the forests of Germany. His name was Dyaus in Sanskrit, Zeus in Greek, Jovis in Latin, Tiu in German. These names are not mere words. They bring before us the ancestors of the whole Aryan race, thousands of years it may be before Homer and the Veda, worshipping an unseen Being, under the selfsame name, the best, the most exalted name they could find in their vocabulary, under the name of Light and Sky. We have in the Veda the invocation Dyaus pitar, the Greek Zeû πáтep, the Latin Jupiter; and that means in all the three languages what it meant before these three languages were torn asunder; it means Heaven-Father. . . . Thousands of years have passed since the Aryan nations separated to travel to the North and the South, the West and the East; they have each formed their languages, they have each founded empires and philosophies, they have each built temples and razed them to the ground; they have all grown older, and it may be wiser and better; but when they search for a name for what is most exalted and yet most dear to every one of us, when they wish to express both awe and love, the infinite and the finite, they can but do what their old fathers did when gazing up to the eternal sky, and feeling the presence of a Being as far as far, and as near as near can be; they can but combine the selfsame words, and utter once more the primeval Aryan prayer, Heaven-Father, in that form which will endure forever, Our Father which art in heaven." The Science of Religion, Lec. iii. "Im Innern ist ein Universum auch, Daher der Völker löblicher Gebrauch, Dass jeglicher das Beste was er kennt, Er Gott, ja seinen Gott benennt, Im Himmel und Erden übergiebt, Ihn fürchtet und womöglich liebt." - GOETHE. § 142. It has already been pointed out that a theory of Ethics to be complete as to its system must include the recognition of a personal God, and of man's relation to him, and consequent obligation to render him loving service. This does not mean that there may not be practical morality even of very high grade in the various relations among men, without religion, without any acknowledgment of God; but it means that a scheme of morality without God is necessarily incomplete, has no ultimate support, no philosophic unity, and cannot be expanded into a scientifically systematized theory. Herein it appears that natural religion is the capstone, or rather the key-stone, of Ethics. Oriental scholars testify that Confucianism is simply and solely a body of inconsistent, ill assorted and often erroneous ethical doctrines, that Buddhism, the confession of one-third of the human race, is little else, and that both are distinctly atheistic.1 Hinduism is pantheism, and pantheism, whether taught by the Brahman or by the god-intoxicated Spinoza, or by the haughty Hegelian, is merely a refined and enlarged, a generalized feticism. It denies the intelligence and freedom, the personality of its god. Now, since ethics with its complement religion is grounded in and arises from relations among persons, an impersonal being can have no part therein. Man cannot trespass on the world of nature, on the mountains, the continents, the ocean, or the stars, but only on him who intelligently and freely produced them, and to whom therefore they belong. The impersonal, so-called god of the pantheist is not at all the God of the ethical and religious philosopher. Pantheism is essentially atheism. The mythical polytheistic cult of the ancient Greeks, in 1 "Buddhism is no religion at all, and certainly no theology, but rather a system of duty, morality and benevolence, without any real deity, prayer or priest." MONIER WILLIAMS, Hinduism, p. 74. Indeed testimonies abound. form adopted by the skeptical Romans, and by them diffused over the Empire, was doubtless originally a deified personification of natural objects and forces, and an apotheosis of heroes. It was replaced in the philosophic thought of Anaxagoras and of his successors by a strict monotheism, shining forth clearly in the famous hymn of Cleanthes.1 Thus unaided philosophy early reached and taught esoterically a remarkably pure natural religion, which, though it seems not to have taken practical form, nevertheless gave to the ethics of the Stoics a coherence, a consistency, an ultimatum and completeness that secured its permanence and general acceptance even to this day.2 All religions, and even atheistic cults, come within the Scope of Ethics. We have already seen that a man is responsible for his beliefs. Every belief relating to conduct, be its subject true or false, carries with it obligations, duties; for every one is bound, whatever be its error, to conform his conduct to the results of his moral judgment, or, as it is commonly expressed, is bound to obey his conscience. In reli 1 The text of the Hymn may be seen in Ueberweg's History of Philosophy, § 54; and a translation in Mayor's Ancient Philosophy, p. 177. A metrical rendering of the opening lines is as follows: — "Thou, who amid the Immortals art throned the highest in glory, Giver and Lord of life, who by law disposest of all things, Known by many a name, yet One Almighty forever, Hail, O Zeus! for to Thee should each mortal voice be uplifted; 'The 2 See supra, § 100. In his Philosophy of History, Hegel says: idea of God constitutes the general foundation of a people. Whatever is the form of a religion, the same is the form of a State and its constitution; it springs from religion, so much so that the Athenian and the Roman States were possible only with the peculiar heathendom of those peoples, and even now a Roman Catholic State has a different genius and a different constitution from a Protestant State. The genius of a people is a definite individual genius, which becomes conscious of its individuality in different spheres; in the character of its moral life, its political constitution, its art, religion and science." 8 See supra, § 60, note. |