tures. This sense of reverence thus produced a transcendental view of the problem and elaborated, not an ameliorating pantheism, but a stern deism. Poetry brought Brahman into intimate relations with the soul; piety separated Jahveh from the domain of ordinary existence, so that the priest must stand between the soul and God, while the prophet represented the divine mind to the sons of men. This contrast between Sanskrit and Semitic forms of theistic belief continued until the union of the two tendencies at the inception of Christianity.

The Christian theory of redemption restores God to His world in such a manner as to unite the principles of immanence and transcendence in an original manner. This is made possible by virtue of a new view of the world, which is no pragmatic fact to be found directly by means of observation, but consists in an ideal which thought itself must construct. Thus understood, the world of naturism with its forces fades in the presence of the world of humanism with its values, and the world-aspect of the Deity is expressed by saying, God is immanent in the world of spirits, while He transcends the world of things. Buddhism does not fail to distinguish the “world of humanity from the "world of Nirvana" and the "world of the gods," while Christianity elaborates the idea of a divine Kingdom in which all spirits live.

4. The Unity of Finite and Infinite

To bring this examination of the religious precinct to a suitable conclusion, we must meet a problem which has lain implicit throughout the whole of this work; it is the problem of finite and infinite. When it is asserted that religion affirms its independence over against the world, maintains its own character in contrast with logic and ethics, and develops its positive existence in the history of humanity, it is implied that the human spirit is approximating toward an independent realm of Absolute Life. Such was the

significance of the first three parts of the study which lies before us. Having just seen that, on all sides, mankind posits an Absolute Life as the basis of the world of humanity, we must now seek to render man's participation in the Infinite, an idea which, if not perfectly demonstrable, is not to be rejected. The unity of spiritual life, which has been lost to science and philosophy, reappears in religion, wherein it consists, not in a return to nature or a life according to reason, but in a harmony with the ideal. It is the fate of religion to reveal the peculiar plight of man, who is last in nature and first in spirit; and the secret of all human distress and error is found to consist in the dual capacity of mankind with his naturism and spiritism. In the total analysis, this dualism involves the contrast between finite and infinite.

The commingling of lowest and highest is inevitable in the human mind, which determines one principle in the light of the other, but it does not follow that this immediate synthesis is wholly intelligible. To reduce it to acceptable terms of theory, we would best assume that the unity of finite and infinite is not an external one toward which our thought vainly strives, but consists rather in an immanent relation which life itself renders more or less tenable. The whole course of life and its arts, the constant trend of philosophy with its problems, made manifest the thought that apart from some representative relation to the Absolute, human living and thinking can neither be justified nor explained. Significant situations which art discovers in human existence, as well as flashes of insight which philosophy habitually discloses, involve the unity of spiritual life in such a determined fashion that we cannot help relating man to a higher order than that of ordinary life. This inevitable relation makes its presence felt in logic and other forms of speculative philosophy, as also in ethics and more general conceptions of human life. Here, it appears in the reconciliation of spirit and sense, of conscious and unconscious, of temporal and eternal; there,

it affirms the oneness of subject and object, freedom and fate.

1. All sincere philosophy postulates the unity of spiritual life. Much of the confusion, and consequent distrust, caused by philosophy is explicable in the light of the fact that academic reflection is often more concerned about method, whether empiricism or rationalism, hedonism or intuitionism, than about a view, and it is in the development of the latter that genuine philosophy becomes representative of the human mind. Plato's idealism surmounts all bickering contrasts. Plotinus advances to spiritual existence which is at once hyper-real and hyper-rational. In the religious dialectic of Scotus Erigena, the search for finality ends in the conception of "That which neither is created nor creates," a Being which transcends both activity and passivity. Above both phenomenon and noumenon there is the realm of spirit which is known by means of intuition.

To perfect the unity of finite and infinite, appeal must thus be made to a third form of knowledge in which humanity and divinity may participate. Knowledge which arises from the senses, and that which is elaborated by the understanding, do not prevent a third form of knowledge of an intuitive order. In the strict monism of Spinoza, this tertiary and intuitive kind of reason finds its place in a system which premises the absoluteness of the Deity, while it postulates the freedom of the human mind. Over and above the knowledge which springs from sense and that which arises in reason, there appears a third form, which is intuitive. "Praeter haec duo cognitionis genera datus, ut in sequentibus ostendam, aliud tertium, quod scientiam intuitivam vocabimus. Besides these two kinds of knowledge, there is, as I will hereafter show, a third kind of knowledge, which we will call intuitive." The discussion of this intuitive form of knowledge, thus promised by Spinoza, is carried on in the fifth part of the work, which treats of human freedom; and here it appears in con

junction with two other notions, which are highly prized by the faithful reader of Spinoza's Ethica," namely, "The intellectual love of God," and "Knowledge under the form of eternity." "Summus mentis conatus, summaque virtus est res intelligere tertio cognitionis genere.-The highest impulse of the mind and the highest virtue is to understand things by the third kind of knowledge." The religious value of this view appears in the statement made concerning the Deity. "Ex tertio cognitionis genere oritur necessario amor dei intellectualis.-From the third kind of knowledge necessarily arises the intellectual love of God." Added to these propositions, concerning intuition and intellectual love, is a third, number thirty-three, which introduces the view sub specie aeternitatis, to form a triune statement of the problem before us. "Amor dei intellectualis, qui ex tertio cognitionis genere oritur, est aeternus.The intellectual love of God, which arises from the third kind of knowledge, is eternal." In thus discerning the unity of spiritual life, Spinoza's thought is more convincing than in the first part of the work, which is based upon the idea of a substance which is constituted by itself and conceived of through itself, and the conflict between the formalistic and realistic views of substance and attribute loses its significance in the light of Spinoza's own intuitive synthesis of the necessary and contingent, of eternal and temporal.

The problem of finite and infinite stands in need of just statement as well as of adequate solution. In one sense, there is a noetical equality, inasmuch as one half of the disjunction weighs as much as the other; yet, when viewed inwardly, the finite must assume a secondary and derivate position, whence it is able to affirm and accept, not to deny and reject. Assume the view, then, that finite and infinite are both problematical, and may we not see that one stands as much in need of justification as the other? Atheism is a possibility, but equally so is acosmism; man may doubt the existence of God, but he can also question the

identity of self. Such is the logical poise which the formal question assumes. The human merits of the case, however, require us to abandon this artificial device and survey the finite as the slow and painful ascent to the infinite; and hence the difference appears no longer to consist of the distinction between separate qualities, but of certain degrees of lower and higher, which, in the history of humanity, appear in the form of stages of development.

To this approximation of finite to infinite religion is wonderfully adapted. Here it brings its realistic and positive character to bear upon humanity's approach to the Godhead, and its whole plan involves a living reconciliation of sense and spirit, which are abandoned by logic and ethics. Religious intuition is a third form of knowledge which is neither abstract nor concrete, just as holy love can never be confused with desire or duty. In the total view of religious intuition, the claims of empiricism and rationalism are adjusted and no longer need reason to calculate from data or demonstrate from grounds, inasmuch as it finds in religion the possibility of an entire view of the world. When such a view is made the maxim of human life, individual desire which finds its seat in the body, as well as the strain of character which follows upon the expression of duty, are both ameliorated by an artistic impulse which, in all serenity, goes forth to find the Highest.

In the fullness and richness of its own nature, religion perfects the unity of finite and infinite in the blending of conscious and unconscious expressed by every holy act. Saints, as well as artists, rise above natural instinct, while they do not turn aside to the devious ways of inference; in all spiritual integrity, they create their living intuitions. And in the totality of human consciousness, as in the unity of human activity, both alert choice and blind constraint fall below the presence of the One Being of the world. Unconscious activity on the part of the soul is habitually referred to genius or to inspiration; religion invests it with a new meaning, when it is ascribed to the presence