PROOFS AND TRIUMPHS OF REASON. 345 Such unification is remain, imperfectly realised. to us at least a far more satisfactory thing to contemplate than merely such unity of a fancied spiritual wedlock as Christlieb depicted between faith and reason, so making faith the masculine partner of the union, while Dr M'Cosh precisely inverted this relation of things, making reason the masculine power, without which faith would be facile and impulsive. Reason, intelligence, mind-it is this which the theistic philosophy has, in the way and sense now indicated, more truly than ever enthroned; it is by such enthronement its largest advances have been made; it is with the numberless proofs of reason in its ever-widening range that the strength of the theistic argument has grown. For reason is, it must here be said, always the newest term in this world-one which has come to combine, fuse, interpret, and develop every existing term-and it has been the vast and fruitful undertaking of the theistic philosophy to sum up these growing triumphs of reason. There is no fear that, in doing so, it will be misled by any tendencies-and such are not wanting to rob Reason in order to pay Authority. So far, however, as Mr Balfour's aim is concerned, we are in large agreement with Professor Andrew Seth that Mr Balfour has really sought to press home on science itself the need of the theistic postulate as against naturalistic assumptions. And whereas theistic thought has been witness to the "proud theologist" being told that the modern man is a Positivist, who has left the conception of God-that "long parenthesis," according to Positivist philosophy, between its two so-called normal modes of thought, Fetichism and Positivism behind as a fictitious, unverifiable hypothesis, what it has really seen is the increasingly proved incapacity of science, with its abstractions so ostentatiously dear to Positivism,— either to outgrow the philosophy of theism, or to stop short of the theistic conclusion as its rational goal. Nor has the stress which the idealism of Professor Royce as it has found expression in his able and delightful work on the Religious Aspect of Philosophy'—has laid upon Reason or pure cognitive Intelligence, at the amazing cost of Will, proved any more satisfactory to philosophic theism, which is to-day less than ever, we believe, prepared to make any such absolute sacrifice of the ethical attributes of the one Universal Will at the shrine of the "one Universal Mind." For theistic philosophy is well content to leave to Professor Royce a philosophy confessedly of a world other than the actual one which here and now is, and is more thankful to know that behind the shadow of the "Infinite Thought" of such tenuous metaphysical idealism, abides for men to whom that sort of idealism has brought but little light and less inspiration, the reality of a Will that reigns in righteousness, and makes Its agency actively CRITICISM OF ROYCE AND HEGEL. 347 and universally felt even in this strange sad world. Will, and the ethical qualities of love, may own thought as their logical prius, but not for that reason as their parent. Theistic philosophy must therefore seek a more synthetic view than that which, in the alleged interests of thought, resolves the Absolute simply into an all-devouring intellection or reason. This we say, although none may compute how much we owe to Hegel for the splendid faith in reason he has helped us to cherish. The primordial Reason which theistic philosophy of religion postulates is also the primordial Force in such wise that the laws of reason entirely accord with the laws which we find in nature. But its primordial Reason is not the "absolute Reason" of Hegel, for all thought is to it that of determinate being, so that, fleeing purely intellectual abstractions, such absolute Reason as it believes in is definite and self-conscious. Its going forth, as finite reason, was to find reason immanent in nature, and it found God as well, Absolute Reason as He is Absolute Being. It is in that Absolute or Universal Reason alone that theistic philosophy finds man's reason live, as it becomes in him. Reason is to it, therefore, no lawless thing, but it is yet so internal in its rise as to pertain to the autonomy of the spirit. No doubt, it finds man's natural reason share in the vitiating results of sin-his false ethical attitude towards the Deity affecting for ill his native intui tion, but it takes the whole realm of spiritual reason never to have been more properly regarded as subject to rational processes or the laws of thought. From what precedes it will be easy to understand how it finds reason in man marked by an endlessly progressive movement towards the transcendent or ideal, which is as a spur to our growth, since it always lies in advance of our actual attainment. Reason must, from its very nature, reject every limitation that men set to it, and press on towards the unattained goal in the spirit of Schiller's "pilgrim " "Und das Dort ist niemals hier!" The goal is still a dream or possibility of the future. Hence is realised that which the poet voices, at the close of Faust' "Im Weiterschreiten find'er Qual und Glück, "In joy or torment ever onward stride, If this quest of the ideal is to be saved from ever growing sickly and languid, that can only be by our coming to see how truly the "gleaming Ideal is the Everlasting Real, no transient brush of a fancied angel wing, but the abiding presence and persuasion of the Soul of souls." Yes, and the words of Amiel are for our philosophy true, as touching this ideal-forming power so essential to man, when he says that "the ideal is a poison CRITICISM OF RITSCHLIANISM. 349 unless it be fused with the real, and the real becomes corrupt without the perfume of the ideal," for we do not admit such a necessary cleft between the real and the ideal as the antithesis sometimes expressed concerning them supposes. "It is only," as one has said, "in the maturity of actuality that the Ideal appears over against the Real, and that the former builds up the same world, apprehended in its substance, in the shape of an intellectual world." There is not a religious instinct-such as that of man's belief in immortality—and not a moral feeling --such as that of moral responsibility-of which the ground and sanction are not to be found in reason. However intuitively truth may be at last discerned, such almost instinctive knowledge is reached only as the ripest product of reason. It may now be said that recent theistic philosophy has shown little disposition to rest in the depreciation of reason and of the activity of thought which marks the attitude of Ritschl, Kaftan, Herrmann, and Kierkegaard, for there is for it no part of the whole domain of religion and morality which is not swept by the eye of reason, and over which the sceptre of reason does not bear a true sway. For, has it not known that reason is too deeply rooted in the soil of man's nature not to return after every expulsion, and assert its place and its dominion more firmly than before? And why are these things so? Is it not because, just as the inseparability of conscience from all other parts of our |