[216]. So Hegel insisted that the fundamental significance of the Christian religion lies neither in the historical career nor in the moral teaching of Jesus (which indeed contained little that had not already been uttered in the form of precept or principle), but in the recognition by the Christian community of the union of God and Man as a fact already realised in individual form in the person of Christ. See Dr. McTaggart’s essay on “Hegelianism and Christianity” in Studies in Hegelian Cosmology.
[217]. So Plato suggested in the second book of the Republic, that God is not the cause of all that happens to us, but only of the good things that befall us. Perhaps, however, Plato is here consciously adapting his expression to current theological doctrine of which he did not fully approve. For a modern defence of the same conception of a finite God, see Dr. Rashdall’s essay in Personal Idealism. Other reasons which have often led to the same view, such as the desire to think of God as a mutable being like ourselves, capable of being influenced in His attitude toward us by our attitude towards Him, seem to rest too much upon idiosyncrasies of private feeling to be of serious philosophical weight. If private feeling is to count at all, one does not see why that of those who would feel outraged by such a conception of a finite changeable God should not be allowed an equal significance with that of their opponents. It is a palpable mistake to treat private feeling, whatever its worth may be, as all on one side in this matter.
[218]. For if we once suppose that we know the universe, in which “God” is only one finite being among others, to be so constituted as to correspond to this demand, it will be the whole of which “God” is one factor, and not “God” by Himself, which will become the supreme object of religious emotion. Thus we may say, until God is thought of as the individual whole, He is not fully God.
[219]. It should be scarcely necessary to point out that the Absolute, if it can be worshipped at all, can be worshipped only as conceived as fully individual. When it is falsely thought of as a “collection” or “aggregate” or “totality” of independent things, it is no more divine than any other collection. This is the fatal objection to vulgar “Pantheism.” How far any of the serious thinkers who are popularly charged with “Pantheism” have countenanced this view of the Absolute as a mere collection, is another matter.
[220]. I am afraid that this essentially irreligious feeling has a great deal to do with the complaints sometimes urged against the Absolute as a poor substitute for a “living God.” Partly these complaints spring, no doubt, from the mistaken notion that the Absolute is not a concrete individual but a mere “collective concept.” But they seem also to be motived by a suspicion that a finite Deity might be more amenable than the Absolute to our wish to have our ideals gratified in our own fashion. And so far as this is the motive of them, such complaints are essentially impious.
[221]. The reader will naturally think of the famous Socratic paradox, that “wrong doing is error,” “vice is ignorance.” If we interpret this to mean that the fundamental advantage of the good man over the bad lies in his truer insight into what he seriously wants, it seems to be true.
[222]. Enneads, I. 8, 15 (quoted and translated in Whittaker, the Neoplatonists, p. 83). Plotinus had just previously made the correct observation that to deny the existence of evil in any and every sense means to deny the existence of good. (κακόν γε εἴ τις λέγοι τὸ παράπαν ἐν τοῖς οὖσι μὴ εἶναι, ἀνάγκη αὐτῷ καὶ τὸ ἀφαθὸν ἀναιρεῖν καὶ μηδὲ ὀπεκτὸν μηδὲν εἶναι.) We might thus say, if good is to be at all, evil must have some kind of relative or phenomenal existence as its antecedent condition. But, as thus serving as a condition for the realisation of good, evil is itself, from a more universal point of view, good, and therefore its existence as evil only apparent. On the whole question of the position of evil in the world-order, see the admirable essay on “Sin” in Dr. McTaggart’s Studies in Hegelian Cosmology.
[223]. When it is said that the Absolute, if it exists, must be morally indifferent, there is often a conscious or unconscious confusion of thought. The Absolute must certainly be “indifferent” in the sense that it does not feel the internal discord of hatred and animosity against any of its constituents. Deus, as Spinoza says, neminem potest odio habere. For the Absolute is not one of the two combatants; it is at once both combatants and the field of combat. But to infer that the Absolute, because devoid of the feelings of hatred and private partisanship, must be indifferent in the sense that our goodness and badness make no difference to our place in it, is a fallacy of equivocation for which unconsciousness and bona fides are scarcely sufficient excuse.
[224]. Thus I do not understand why, apart from respect for the traditions of Christianity, Dr. Rashdall should hold that God, in his sense of the word, is one and not many. His argument appears to me to identify God with the Absolute, where it is required to maintain God’s unity, and to distinguish them as soon as it becomes a question of proving God’s “Personality” (see his essay in Personal Idealism). Professor James appears more logical in his obvious readiness to reckon with polytheism as a possible consequence of his denial of God’s infinity (Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 524 ff.).
[225]. Kant’s famous onslaught will be found in the Kritik der Reinen Vernunft, Transcendental Dialectic, bk. ii. div. 3 (“The Ideal of Pure Reason”), §§ 3-7. Hume’s criticisms are contained in his posthumous Dialogues concerning Natural Religion.