(b) Nor does our idea of God come primarily from tradition, for “tradition can perpetuate only what has already been originated” (Patton). If the knowledge thus handed down is the knowledge of a primitive revelation, then the argument just stated applies—that very revelation presupposed in those who first received it, and presupposes in those to whom it is handed down, some knowledge of a Being from whom such a revelation might come. If the knowledge thus handed down is simply knowledge of the results of the reasonings of the race, then the knowledge of God comes originally from reasoning—an explanation which we consider further on. On the traditive theory of religion, see Flint, Theism, 23, 338; Cocker, Christianity and Greek Philosophy, 86-96; Fairbairn, Studies in Philos. of Relig. and Hist., 14, 15; Bowen, Metaph. and Ethics, 453, and in Bib. Sac., Oct. 1876; Pfleiderer, Religionsphilos., 312-322.
Similar answers must be returned to many common explanations of man's belief in God: “Primus in orbe deos fecit timor”; Imagination made religion; Priests invented religion; Religion is a matter of imitation and fashion. But we ask again: What caused the fear? Who made the imagination? What made priests possible? What made imitation and fashion natural? To say that man worships, merely because he sees other men worshiping, is as absurd as to say that a horse eats hay because he sees other horses eating it. There must be a hunger in the soul to be satisfied, or external things would never attract man to worship. Priests could never impose upon men so continuously, unless there was in human nature a universal belief in a God who might commission priests as his representatives. Imagination itself requires some basis of reality, and a larger basis as civilization advances. The fact that belief in God's existence gets a wider hold upon the race with each added century, shows that, instead of fear having caused belief in God, the truth is that belief in God has caused fear; indeed, “the fear of Jehovah is the beginning of wisdom” (Ps. 111:10).
2. Not from experience,—whether this mean (a) the sense-perception and reflection of the individual (Locke), (b) the accumulated results of the sensations and associations of past generations of the race (Herbert Spencer), or (c) the actual contact of our sensitive nature with God, the supersensible reality, through the religious feeling (Newman Smyth).
The first form of this theory is inconsistent with the fact that the idea of God is not the idea of a sensible or material object, nor a combination of such ideas. Since the spiritual and infinite are direct opposites of the material and finite, no experience of the latter can account for our idea of the former.
With Locke (Essay on Hum. Understanding, 2:1:4), experience is the passive reception of ideas by sensation or by reflection. Locke's “tabula rasa” theory mistakes the occasion of our primitive ideas for their cause. To his statement: “Nihil est in intellectu nisi quod ante fuerit in sensu,” Leibnitz replied: “Nisi intellectus ipse.”Consciousness is sometimes called the source of our knowledge of God. But consciousness, as simply an accompanying knowledge of ourselves and our states, is not properly the source of any other knowledge. The German Gottesbewusstsein = not “consciousness of God,” but “knowledge of God”; Bewusstsein here = not a “conknowing,”but a “beknowing”; see Porter, Human Intellect, 86; Cousin, True, Beautiful and Good, 48, 49.
Fraser, Locke, 143-147—Sensations are the bricks, and association the mortar, of the mental house. Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 47—“Develope language by allowing sounds to associate and evolve meaning for themselves? Yet this is the exact parallel of the philosophy which aims to build intelligence out of sensation....52—One [pg 064]who does not know how to read would look in vain for meaning in a printed page, and in vain would he seek to help his failure by using strong spectacles.”Yet even if the idea of God were a product of experience, we should not be warranted in rejecting it as irrational. See Brooks, Foundations of Zoölogy, 132—“There is no antagonism between those who attribute knowledge to experience and those who attribute it to our innate reason; between those who attribute the development of the germ to mechanical conditions and those who attribute it to the inherent potency of the germ itself; between those who hold that all nature was latent in the cosmic vapor and those who believe that everything in nature is immediately intended rather than predetermined.” All these may be methods of the immanent God.
The second form of the theory is open to the objection that the very first experience of the first man, equally with man's latest experience, presupposes this intuition, as well as the other intuitions, and therefore cannot be the cause of it. Moreover, even though this theory of its origin were correct, it would still be impossible to think of the object of the intuition as not existing, and the intuition would still represent to us the highest measure of certitude at present attainable by man. If the evolution of ideas is toward truth instead of falsehood, it is the part of wisdom to act upon the hypothesis that our primitive belief is veracious.
Martineau, Study, 2:26—“Nature is as worthy of trust in her processes, as in her gifts.” Bowne, Examination of Spencer, 163, 164—“Are we to seek truth in the minds of pre-human apes, or in the blind stirrings of some primitive pulp? In that case we can indeed put away all our science, but we must put away the great doctrine of evolution along with it. The experience-philosophy cannot escape this alternative: either the positive deliverances of our mature consciousness must be accepted as they stand, or all truth must be declared impossible.” See also Harris, Philos. Basis Theism, 137-142.
Charles Darwin, in a letter written a year before his death, referring to his doubts as to the existence of God, asks: “Can we trust to the convictions of a monkey's mind?” We may reply: “Can we trust the conclusions of one who was once a baby?” Bowne, Ethics, 3—“The genesis and emergence of an idea are one thing; its validity is quite another. The logical value of chemistry cannot be decided by reciting its beginnings in alchemy; and the logical value of astronomy is independent of the fact that it began in astrology.... 11—Even if man came from the ape, we need not tremble for the validity of the multiplication-table or of the Golden Rule. If we have moral insight, it is no matter how we got it; and if we have no such insight, there is no help in any psychological theory.... 159—We must not appeal to savages and babies to find what is natural to the human mind.... In the case of anything that is under the law of development we can find its true nature, not by going back to its crude beginnings, but by studying the finished outcome.” Dawson, Mod. Ideas of Evolution, 13—“If the idea of God be the phantom of an apelike brain, can we trust to reason or conscience in any other matter? May not science and philosophy themselves be similar phantasies, evolved by mere chance and unreason?” Even though man came from the ape, there is no explaining his ideas by the ideas of the ape: “A man 's a man for a' that.”
We must judge beginnings by endings, not endings by beginnings. It matters not how the development of the eye took place nor how imperfect was the first sense of sight, if the eye now gives us correct information of external objects. So it matters not how the intuitions of right and of God originated, if they now give us knowledge of objective truth. We must take for granted that evolution of ideas is not from sense to nonsense. G. H. Lewes, Study of Psychology, 122—“We can understand the amœba and the polyp only by a light reflected from the study of man.” Seth, Ethical Principles, 429—“The oak explains the acorn even more truly than the acorn explains the oak.” Sidgwick: “No one appeals from the artist's sense of beauty to the child's. Higher mathematics are no less true, because they can be apprehended only by trained intellect. No strange importance attaches to what was first felt or thought.” Robert Browning, Paracelsus: “Man, once descried, imprints forever His presence on all lifeless things.... A supplementary reflux of light Illustrates all the inferior grades, explains Each back step in the circle.” Man, with his higher ideas, shows the meaning and content of all that led up to him. He is the last round of the ascending ladder, and from this highest product and from his ideas we may infer what his Maker is.