CHAPTER XVI.

Theories of Life.

EVERY man is, in some sort of way, a philosopher. As he accumulates the facts of experience he begins to generalize from them. A man more and more perceives the immense importance of intention as determining the moral quality of actions. Somehow a man finds the necessity of clinging to some moral support. In cases of failure he will at least try to have the consolation that he acted for the best. Very probably the man turns an optimist, believing that every thing has really been for the best; or even if he turns pessimist, determinately believing that every thing has happened for the worst, he is still constructing some kind of philosophy for himself.

Of course many men can only philosophize these philosophies in a very crude kind of way. Many, on the other side, do so in a very elaborate and complicated manner. But whether men distinctly formulate their views or not, they certainly do make out some kind of theory of life for themselves. Here is our life, and the question is, "What shall we do with it?" In such an inquiry every thing depends on what theory of life we may adopt. There are various theories of life before the world. Approfondissez-go to the bottom of things -is a motto that has a wide predominance at the present day. Men are not so well content as they used to be with being practical atheists, but in an age of general discussion and information they seek some basis of argument that may give color to and explain their lives. The question that un

derlies the whole matter is whether we believe in a Living God, and, supposing we believe in him, whether we regard him as a Loving Father, loving and caring for his children, or whether we regard him simply as the impersonation of the causes which are at work in the material universe, “looking with sober satisfaction upon the successful expansion of the original seed which commenced the formation of the vast material organism."

A man, therefore, must arrive at some solid view of human life. He must not be one of those who are ever learning and yet never able to come to a knowledge of the truth. Until the central idea of life is adjusted, we shall be unable to find a balanced and well-ordered life. A man will, indeed, be ever proceeding in knowledge, and from time to time he will have to put his added experience and ideas into definite relation with his belief. Some people form their opinions dogmatically, and then, as they say, lay them on the shelf. Others always hold their opinions "in solution," prepared to modify or reject them on any advent of further light. An opinion. permanently laid upon the shelf, or, on the other hand, one only retained in a settled state of unsettledness, seems equally removed from an intelligent holding of it. A man will, above all things, hold the love of truth. He will reverence truth as he does his conscience. But having sought carefully for it, and attained it, not as a matter of opinion, but from all the best thought and experience, he will seek to be settled and grounded. Above all, he will know that, with the safeguard of a pure, unselfish, and laborious life, he can not wander far from it. He will know, indeed, that there may be an inaccuracy and incompleteness in his views which time alone can clarify and extend; and in his own mind he will be constantly adjusting the relations of things new to things old. He will also constantly hold the supreme majesty of truth, and wel

come every fact, however opposed to his dearest beliefs, which is brought home by irrefragable argument or fact. But he holds firmly to his belief, since he has sought to build upon a rock, and has so built up the edifice of his faith from deep waters and amid many storms; and he feels pretty certain that no difficulties will represent that investigation and thought with which former difficulties have been overcome. What Philip van Artevelde says is especially true of religion:

66 All my life long

I have beheld with most respect the man

Who knew himself and knew the ways before him,

And from among them chose considerately,

And, having chosen, with a steadfast mind

Pursued his purpose."

The great tendency of the present day is in the direction of physical science. We observe, we note, we examine and cross-examine facts, and from phenomena we attain to law. For a time we seem bound up and delivered over to dead, impersonal, pitiless laws. The world seems as some vast manufactory, in which we hear incessantly the clash and whirring of a complex machinery. But we come to learn that the Lawgiver is behind his laws, and that, paradoxical as it may sound, while he hides himself behind them, he also reveals himself through them. For these laws, too, are emanations of the all-beauteous mind." In a sense they shadow forth the Divinity that contrived them. Moreover, we learn the limitations of these laws; that there are other facts, the facts of mind and conscience, as certain as any material facts, though unamenable to physical law: As Mr. Palgrave strikingly says:

"To matter or to force

The All is not confined;
Beside the law of things

Is set the law of mind;

One speaks in rock and star,

And one within the brain,
In unison at times,

And then apart again;

And both in one have brought us hither,

That we may know our whence and whither.

"The sequences of law

We learn through mind alone; 'Tis only through the Soul

That aught we know is known:

With equal voice she tells

Of what we touch and see

Within these bounds of life

And of a life to be;

Proclaiming one who brought us hither,

And holds the keys of whence and whither."

Or as Principal Shairp* acutely puts it: "One thing often said before must be repeated. This supposed necessity to rest in the perception of ordered phenomena is no necessity at all, but an artificial and arbitrarily imposed limitation, against which thought left to its natural action rebels. It is impossible for any reflective mind, not dominated by a system, to regard the ordered array of physical forces, and to rest satisfied with this order, without going on to ask whence it came, what placed it there. Thought can not be kept back, when it sees arrangement, from asking what is the arranging power; when it sees existence, from inquiring how it came to exist; and the question is a natural and legitimate one, in spite of all that phenomenalism may say against it, and it will not cease to be asked while there are reasoning men to ask it."

I must in this chapter express my obligations to Principal Shairp's admirable little book, "Culture and Religion," which I would venture very strongly to recommend.

Men will, either consciously or unconsciously, philosophize on life; and there is no greater "moment" than when a man resolutely takes up some system of life, and determines to abide by it. Here is Professor Huxley's famous view: "That man, I think, has had a liberal education who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that as a mechanism it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength and in smooth working order-ready, like a steam-engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of Nature, and of the laws of her operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of nature or art; to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself." This is a noble passage, regarded as an eloquent exposition of a merely scientific theory of culture. But it is concerned merely with the phenomena of life. We are to take all the facts of life; we are to look at human life as a game, as Professor Huxley goes on to explain, in which we are to seek to win for ourselves. Man is to be "the servant of a tender conscience;" but we are at a loss to see how, under such a system, a tender conscience is to be framed. God is reduced to an automaton, a mere personification of dead law. Such a system, if consistent with itself, would abjure the moral elements; but, by the introduction of high-sounding moral phrases, we have to see how far it is consistent. The whole merit of life is made to consist in winning a merely human game. But how does it apply to those who have been liberated from merely secular aims; those who have been content to sacrifice all the ordi