" Integrity of personality in such a world as
this, belief in self, without which life is dust and ashes in the
mouth, rest on the sublime assumption that suffusing material force
is ethical spirit, more like unto us than it, controlling force in the
interest of moral and eternal purposes. In these purposes living, not
mechanical, forces play a major part.
Of course, to all such reasoning the Kantians and humanists reply that
these notions of an objective and eternal beauty, of a transcendent
and actual Cosmic Being exist within the mind. They are purely
subjective ideas, they are bounded by the inexorable circle of our
experience, hence they offer no proof of any objective reality which
may in greater or less degree correspond to them.
However, there must be a "source" of these ideas. To which the
philosophers reply, Yes, they are "primitive and necessary," produced
by reason only, without borrowing anything from the senses or the
understanding. Yet there is no sufficient evidence that the idea of
God is thus produced by any faculty of mind acting in entire freedom
from external influence. On the contrary, the idea appears to owe much
to the operation of external things upon the mind; it is not then the
wholly unaffected product of reason. It is a response no less than
an intuition. Like all knowledge a discovery, but the discovery of
something there which could be discovered, hence, in that sense, a
revelation.
Pages:
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197