which cannot be properly applied, yet may be used metaphorically, such as anger, repentance, sorrow. The omission of careful treatment of the method of application in the writings of many Englishmen who belong to the Demonstrative school has laid them fairly open to the charge of anthropomorphism.

§ 9. TYPE VI.-SOCIAL THEISM

In speaking of Consensus (p. 10), it was pointed out that Consensus, the common opinion or judgment of mankind, may itself be regarded as the true principal source of religious belief. Religion may be held to be not an individualistic matter at all in its primary and substantial meaning, but a matter concerning the type of mankind collectively. The collectivity may be taken either in a single vast whole, through the ages, over the whole field of the history of the race; or in natural groups, tribes, nations, civilisations. The Subject of religion is, on this view, mankind collectively, and the content is correspondingly the accumulation of centuries of human life, complex, varied. The individual mind must not expect to appropriate more than a fragment of what is in the religious consciousness of the 'peoples, nations, and languages' of history. The individual must plainly cease to regard himself as the centre of interest of the world-history, even to himself; he ought also at the same time to renounce regarding himself as the seat of authority in matters of belief, even of his own. As Nature is not what I 'make' it, but what mankind does; as Morality is not my plans and aims; as Art is not the expression of my tastes, so neither is the object of Religion the correlative of my piety and meditation. If my smattering of the sciences were all that was known of nature, may each man say to himself; if my rectitude is all that is upright and righteous, my taste the measure of all that is beautiful, and my capacity for devotion the measure of all that is holy, how poor an object is within my reach!

Hence comes the appeal to substitute for myself the Race, or at least the Nation. We are bidden to approach the question of Theism with ourselves and our modest interests quite in the background: we are to inquire as citizens, as units of a people, as members of the human family. As worshippers we approach the altar raised by our fathers and maintained by successive generations of piety, as men of action we seek the Guide and

Rules for our native land or for mankind at large. Thus identifying 'self' with the larger Subject we take the common belief as authoritative for ourselves. Such a Theism is empirical of course; but it is parallel with the Theism of Personalism, only substituting the Race for the individual personality. This I have called Social or Sociological Theism.

The importance of setting this out as a Type has been impressed upon me as my study has proceeded. Its summary rejection cannot be justified, on the wide import of the term Philosophy of Religion adopted in this essay. It may claim to be the ultimate account of man's religious belief. That it is at least a proximate account of it is plain: it assigns a cause for it in the individual mind which is so manifestly in actual operation that no elaboration of this is called for. The religious belief of the vast majority of men is so arrived at, and, as a matter of fact, is so justified: men worship the God of their fathers: the temples and the religious rites of the world are expressions of religions socially generated and socially maintained.

The Subject of religious belief is, after this method, the tribe or the nation; or the race, as with the gods of Hellas; or the caste as with Brahmanism; or it may be a mass expanding beyond these boundaries and comprehensive of many, as with Islam. But it is open to the human mind to ignore all limitations and to seek for the common faith of the human Family. This century has seen great progress made in the history of Religions, and the development of a Comparative Science of Religion which seeks to trace connections and to indicate, if possible, a doctrine which shall co-ordinate and consummate them all. And it is a tenable position that a man should say to himself: "When I have found the consummating thoughts of the religions of mankind, in these I will believe they shall be my faith; and I will work for a Religion of the Future in which all men, gradually led to abandon temporary and local elements, will join in what thus gathers up the common aspirations and thoughts of the race. In this faith I could both live and die." Such would be a religion of Humanity in which Humanity is the Subject which believes and worships: a truer view than that perverted one which goes on to make humanity the object of religion also.

A thousand modern voices will at once call out that this involves the suppression of Individual Freedom, which in matters

of religion, above all, is an outrage to be abhorred. But it is not difficult to reduce the force of this charge so far as it is raised by Empiricists of every type. It would only need to ask, "Would you have every man take up only so much mathematical truth as he has himself awakened to perceive? Or declare that the Sun actually is precisely as he with his optical apparatus, such as it is, sees it? Should every man be his own astronomer, his own medical adviser?" But it is urged that though this must be allowed for the External world, yet that for conduct and life, freedom must at all costs be vindicated. Then is every man to shape his own social behaviour as he pleases? or to live by his own private moral code? If this is not required, or permitted, why then should a man say that his belief in a Supreme Being is to be confined to what he can himself see? in a Supreme Goodness to so much as he can himself appreciate? When Mill spoke contemptuously of second-hand evidence' did he realise even for a passing moment the break-up of the solidarity of human belief which would ensue? or was he unconsciously as rationalistic as anyone, and in the secret of his soul aware that there was absolute truth and every man was certain to find it if he sought? When Newman spoke of God and the solitary soul as the only supreme concerns of each man, did he for a moment realise that he was setting up a revolution against all the religions of the world? When Martineau demanded that response on the part of the individual should be the absolute measure of what it was right for the individual to believe, was he really satisfied that he meant every narrow mind, every thinfeatured soul, to give up the belief that there were visions and ideals beyond its own attainment yet already in the possession of more favoured men and women?

This Theism may ask that in religion the individual should be content with a place parallel to that which he can occupy as an observer of Nature or as a citizen of a commonwealth, namely, that he may have a little private territory of his own, but that his real concern and his true life will consist in his identifying himself with as large a sphere as possible of the territory of truth and goodness in the possession of mankind. In the appropriation of this the self will find not suppression, but enlargement and life. The Reformer will be the favoured individual who can press forward the boundary of the whole territory; his own special territory being added to it because

he has been able to absorb the best that his progenitors have achieved and to go beyond it.

In Theology the claim of private judgment has been pressed to the point of demanding renunciation of all intermediation in the way of attaining to Truth. But the Social Theist might reply in this manner: "To me as matter of plain fact it is certain that I should not of myself have seen the moral and spiritual truths uncovered for me in Plato's Dialogues, in Burke's speeches, in Wordsworth's poetry, in Lotze's philosophy. And I cannot see that it is different in the field of religious truth. I do not, as matter of simple fact, feel alone with the Almighty; I know there are those who have been intermediaries between Him and me, who have shown me divine aspects of which I was not aware, and inspired me with feelings never experienced before they spoke to me." And if it is said, "Yes, but you have now secured these for yourself, and it is on that ground that they are your beliefs"; the reply could come: "But I insist on believing also in the existence of fair regions of truth and goodness awaiting my appropriation: seen by others, not yet by me."

We shall not discover any prominent British philosophers or writers who have taken up Social Theism as their method. Even strong supporters of 'high' Church views for Christian Faith have not extended the authority of the Community over Natural Theology. The Romanists, as we shall see, insist on official recognition for à posteriori Rationalism: and of Anglican and Presbyterian Churchmen some follow that lead, and others take up other types as indicated in their place.

It only remains, therefore, to add some observations on the attitudes to Social Theism which may be adopted by men building on other foundations.

Few Rationalists take any notice of it: they confine their use of Consensus to the secondary employment of it as suggestive but presently to be left behind as not giving us 'Proof,' or as confirmatory of Proof in assuring us that personal error has not vitiated our reasoning. Some few of them add the use of it as a fact of human history presented to the individual reasoner as a separate datum for Theistic inference.

It is true that post-Kantian Rationalism comes in differently from the pre-Kantian. A fundamental aim of Kant was to bring together individual experience and universal experience:

this he endeavoured to accomplish by his combination of the Sensibility of the individual giving matter, with the Reason giving form in knowledge. Reason gave the universal element, every thinking man in this respect thought as homo rationalis, and his experience was, so far, universal in its validity. The main point was therefore secured. But Kant was entangled too much with the older Rationalism and its separateness from Sensibility to achieve more. It was left to Hegel especially to proceed to treat of experience as given in the life and thought of mankind, the history of human civilisation; for Religion, as for Morals and for Art. In his hands the sphere of Religion exhibited the mind of the individual expressing itself in articulation with the common mind or spirit of humanity. But he did not regard this as being really the highest sphere; that was reserved for philosophy where, so far as I understand him, the distinction between the individual mind and the universal is transcended. It is on these lines that the Scottish Hegelians John Caird and Dr. Edward Caird distinguish between the Philosophy of Religion and Religion itself.

$10. TYPE VII.-THEISM OF FEELING

In the life of the soul we are sensitive as well as rational and active. In all our experience we are involved in pleasure or pain, in happiness or misery. We pass from the feeling attending the organic bodily changes to the refinements of the higher senses which culminate in Music and the Fine Arts, and onward to emotions of the personal life, affections, fear, abhorrence, hatred, pity, admiration, love, the moral sentiment. In this emotional atmosphere arises an interest in life, individual and personal, enlarged by imaginative sympathy with the emotional life of other souls, giving to them and receiving from them. And it is held by most that there is a passing out beyond egoistic and even beyond sympathetic interests to purely disinterested emotion, wherein personal enjoyment is surpassed in a love free from thought of self.

It will be strange indeed if this aspect of life is to be excluded from all share in the formation of belief generally, and in particular if it is excluded from the formation of religious belief. Yet this strange thing has been done, and the greatest repugnance has been shown to the admission of Feeling to any