mediate satisfaction will content the spirit, which is aware of a spiritual calling. Religion arises with the consciousness of destiny and attempts to solve the problem thereby proposed.

The motives for the soul's self-affirmation are to be found in the self rather than in the world. Philosophy everywhere must see that its problem arises when man perceives that he belongs to a double order of things; the natural, where his position is final, the spiritual, where his part is that of a novitiate. To adjust these realms, and to effect the transition from one to the other, is the one human problem. Religion seizes man in the moment when he seeks to pass from the lower to the higher. In nature, man feels that his position is only incidental, consisting of the actual, but not partaking of the ideal. If he were mere animal, he would remain content in the immediate world of perception; if he were sheer spirit, he would need no self-assertion, but being man, he has his own destiny to achieve. Nature seems to prescribe too narrow limits for him, whose industrial sciences seek to improve it, while his fine arts aim to perfect it. At the same time, man's life in nature is such as leads to surprise, which is worse than actual pain, so that he soon conceives of his life as something more than natural.

Various vital concerns continue to apprise man of the fact that his relation to the world should not be that of acquiescence, but of opposition. The human spirit desires freedom, and the mechanism of the sensible world defeats this dream. Man's satisfaction can consist of no experience which nature can arrange for him, when his human interests demand something more substantial than bodily well-being or conscious pleasure. Hence the systematic opposition of man to the world, which he cannot accept as the genuine correlate of his own being. The religious act has as its motive the desire to set man over and against the world; above it because its nature is alien to his own, against it because his own naturalness and animality do

not yield immediately, upon the perception of the metaphysical difference, but must be worked up practically to a condition of interest and excitement. Such ideal excitement is provided for by the various forms of worship which belong to the religious life.

The conception which has been developing in the midst of these ideas is strongly marked by humanistic elements. Of the three elements discovered in the religious consciousness, the soul seems to stand out as the mean between the extremes of nature and God. It is the usual mode in philosophy of religion to effect the union of these two by postulating the immanence of God in a world toward which man assumes merely the attitude of spectator. And if, as the new Theism declares, we have made a mistake in relegating the Deity to a position without the universe, it may be replied that now we commit another error when we force humanity to vacate the world of nature to which he most obviously belongs. As the half-gods go, the gods come in. For this reason, it is advisable to emphasize the human side of religion, even though, for the time being, the scheme appears to be all-too-human in its anthropological character. Man, not the world or the world-soul, is the necessary point of departure in consistent religious thinking.

The humanism, which we see no reason to deny, makes necessary, as its correlate, the idea of pessimism. For religion, which seeks the ideal in the midst of the actual, this is inevitable. The world of nature is negated, both within and without, not because of any mere logical distinction which human reason would make, but because of the conflict which man carries on within the world of immediate experience. Psychology and cosmology need raise no question of value in their study of the forms of nature and consciousness, but religion must somehow feel that the world is ill-adapted to man's nature and unprepared for his human career, which itself is carried on in moments of sorrow and sin. World-pessimism and life

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pessimism alike are peculiar to ethnic religion, although, in the western world of Judaism and Christianity, the cosmic and eudaemonistic features of the question are not as marked as the historical and ethical ones. It is when man enters upon the scene, or when he awakens to his human destiny, that the perplexity and pain arise. In this way

all religion is humanistic.

PART II

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THE CHARACTER OF RELIGION

'HAT religion has a character peculiar to itself cannot be doubted any more easily than the fact that it has an independent existence in human nature. Viewed philosophically, as a subject for thought, considered psychologically, as a fact of experience, the religious affirmation of the soul cannot be esteemed less real or less worthy than any other product of spiritual life. But this is not all; the mere fact of religion, which proclaims that the latter is no abstraction, could not account for the influence of faith in human life. Religion is also a factor on a par with other functions of human nature. The precinct of religion is marked by boundaries which are contiguous with cultivated philosophical fields, and, for this reason, a second step is necessary in developing the religious principle, and this involves the character of religion. Compared with philosophy and science in general, and adjusted to its place among the various philosophical sciences, the religious precinct, which contains the essence of religion, is established. Thus located as one among several forms of culture, and by its own nature rendered independent of every one of them, religion begins to assert its own character.

By virtue of this comparison, religion shows its intrinsic character. At the same time, its behaviour is peculiar, and is likely to surprise one who has thought upon the subject in a traditional manner only. Religion is not philosophy, nor is it a combination of speculative and

practical views; its character is such as to transform it into a subject more like art and law than logic and ethics. Alien to speculative philosophy, religion turns away from purely metaphysical and moral implications; allied with historical life, it assumes an æsthetical and juristic character. This is not the usual view, perhaps; and yet, is it not more than a century since Schleiermacher called attention to the truth that religion is no mixture of metaphysics and morality? It remains to be shown how genuine religion is inclined toward the positive and institutional sciences of æsthetics and rights. Religion is consciousness and deed, not demonstration and conduct; religious consciousness is æsthetical and is expressed in worship; religious activity is juristic, being evinced in commandment and custom.

The assertion of characteristic religion will necessitate the same independent attitude as appeared in the contrast set up between the essence of religion and the fields of science and philosophy. To-day it is the fashion to negate the metaphysical, and, with added emphasis, to affirm the moral side of religion, as something demanded by an age which, since Kant, has distrusted speculation and then sought to compensate for this by reaffirming its belief in practice. Such an ethical philosophy of religion, which now reigns supreme in Germany, is cynical in its attitude toward metaphysics, just as it is bitter in its hatred of speculative affairs in general. This view is suggestive of a half-truth; we must indeed affirm that religion is not metaphysics, but we shall not say, therefore, that it is morality; for, in reality, it is neither one nor the other. To believe in the validity of the religious precinct is to see that religion is not speculation, any more than it is action, and a consistent view involves a negation of both speculative and practical views of an independent form of spiritual life and human culture. Nevertheless, we feel that we do no harm to either morality or metaphysics when we say that of them religion is wholly independent.