Christianity and Greek Philosophy / or, the relation between spontaneous and reflective thought in Greece and the positive teaching of Christ and His Apostles

by B. F. Cocker

[Footnote 62: ][ (return) ] Cousin, "Hist. of Philos.," vol. i. p. 357; vol. ii. p. 337.

[Footnote 63: ][ (return) ] Id., ib., vol. i. p. 88.

[Footnote 64: ][ (return) ] Hamilton, "Metaphys.," p. 277

A profound analysis will further lead to the conclusion that if ideas of reason are not chronologically antecedent to sensation, they are, at least, the logical antecedents of all cognition. The mere feeling of resistance can not give the notion of without the à priori idea of space. The feeling of movement of change, can not give the cognition of event without the rational idea of time or duration. Simple consciousness can not generate the idea of personality, or selfhood, without the rational idea of identity or unity. And so the mere "feeling of dependence," of finiteness and imperfection, can not give the idea of God, without the rational à priori idea of the Infinite, the Perfect, the Unconditioned Cause. Sensation is not knowledge, and never can become knowledge, without the intervention of reason, and a concentrated self feeling can not rise essentially above animal life until it has, through the mediation of reason, attained the idea of the existence of a Supreme Being ruling over nature and man.

Mere feeling is essentially blind. In its pathological form, it may indicate a want, and even develop an unconscious appetency, but it can not, itself, reveal an object, any more than the feeling of hunger can reveal the actual presence, or determine the character and fitness, of any food. An undefinable fear, a mysterious presentiment, an instinctive yearning, a hunger of the soul, these are all irrational emotions which can never rise to the dignity of knowledge. An object must be conjured by the imagination, or conceived by the understanding, or intuitively apprehended by the reason, before the feeling can have any significance.

Regarded in its moral form, as "the feeling of obligation," it can have no real meaning unless a "law of duty" be known and recognized. Feeling, alone, can not reveal what duty is. When that which is right, and just, and good is revealed to the mind, then the sense of obligation may urge man to the performance of duty. But the right, the just, the good, are ideas which are apprehended by the reason, and, consequently, our moral sentiments are the result of the harmonious and living relation between the reason and the sensibilities.

Mr. Mansel asserts the inadequacy of Schleiermacher's "feeling of dependence" to reveal the character of the Being on whom we depend. He has therefore supplemented his doctrine by the "feeling of moral obligation," which he thinks "compels us to assume the existence of a moral Deity." We think his "fact of religious intuition" is as inadequate as Schleiermacher's to explain the whole phenomena of religion. In neither instance does feeling supply the actual knowledge of God. The feeling of dependence may indicate that there is a Power or Being upon whom we depend for existence and well-being, and which Power or Being "we call God." The feeling of obligation certainly indicates the existence of a Being to whom we are accountable, and which Being Mr. Mansel calls a "moral Deity." But in both instances the character, and even the existence of God is "assumed" and we are entitled to ask on what ground it is assumed. It will not be asserted that feeling alone generates the idea, or that the feeling is transformed into idea without the intervention of thought and reflection. Is there, then, a logical connection between the feeling of dependence and of obligation, and the idea of the Uncreated Mind, the Infinite First Cause, the Righteous Governor of the world. Or is there a fixed and changeless co-relation between the feeling and the idea, so that when the feeling is present, the idea also necessarily arises in the mind? This latter opinion seems to be the doctrine of Mansel. We accept it as the statement of a fact of consciousness, but we can not regard it as an account of the genesis of the idea of God in the human mind. The idea of God as the First Cause, the Infinite Mind, the Perfect Being, the personal Lord and Lawgiver, the creator, sustainer, and ruler of the world, is not a simple, primitive intuition of the mind. It is manifestly a complex, concrete idea, and, as such, can not be developed in consciousness, by the operation of a single faculty of the mind, in a simple, undivided act. It originates in the spontaneous operation of the whole mind. It is a necessary deduction from the facts of the universe, and the primitive intuitions of the reason,--a logical inference from the facts of sense, consciousness, and reason. A philosophy of religion which regards the feelings as supreme, and which brands the decisions of reason as uncertain, and well-nigh valueless, necessarily degenerates into mysticism--a mysticism "which pretends to elevate man directly to God, and does not see that, in depriving reason of its power, it really deprives man of that which enables him to know God, and puts him in a just communication with God by the intermediary of eternal and infinite truth." [⁶⁵]

[Footnote 65: ][ (return) ] Cousin, "True, Beautiful, and Good," p. 110.

The religious sentiments in all minds, and in all ages, have resulted from the union of thought and feeling--the living and harmonious relation of reason and sensibility; and a philosophy which disregards either is inadequate to the explanation of the phenomena.