"Video meliora proboque,

Deteriora sequor."

One

is a fact to be explained, not to be explained away. modern theory speaks of an Eternal Self-Consciousness gradually revealing itself. But if an Eternal Self-Consciousness reveals itself in a perpetual process, every moment of which is filled with imperfections, must there not be a distorting medium which is not reasonable? The world is certainly reasonable in the sense of being knowable; and a thing is only knowable by reference to the end in the light of which it is viewed; but what of that end itself? Rational means a) understandable b) moral; and to argue from one to the other is not so admissible as is sometimes supposed; e.g., I understand perfectly-to use Conan Doyle's example that the fall of a splinter from the roof of my skull upon a certain portion of my brain--a fall which I am powerless to prevent, and for which no conscious action of mine is in any way responsible-may in a moment change me from a more or less normal human being into a degraded idiot, with every obscene and vicious tendency; but I do not in the least understand what purpose is served by such a lowering of my nature. If I am told that I must look at such things in ordine ad universum, the case is made no better. Whence, to begin with, come the instincts which make such a point of view so difficult to attain? And even granted that I do rise to this lofty and impersonal height, I still find it impossible to conceive any way in which my suffering furthers progress towards any reasonable end. In the moral world the reason is compelled to realize itself through a medium which is always indifferent and sometimes hostile ;-which is reasonable only in the barren sense of being understandable; yet if we fall back upon the other solution of an imperfect God gradually revealing himself because only gradually evolving himself, even setting aside the question of the end to which he is tending, we are at a loss to find an explanation for the ideas of perfection-ideas not purely negative—which we undoubtedly have. It may here be worth while to glance at a modern school which sometimes claims to have received the mantle of Plato, and which proves triumphantly that it is impossible to sin against reason by the following ingenious process :If a man's whole nature be turned in a certain direction, he can

not proceed in any other; but "knowing, feeling and willing are simply aspects of the one self-conscious subject;" therefore he must always act in the way in which his self-consciousness directs him; therefore the dualism between Reason and Passion is transcended. In other words, we call the whole man by the name of "self-conscious subject," identify self-consciousness with Reason, prove that granting the truth of our premises and of our identification, it is impossible to act against reason, and then go on our way rejoicing. To the ordinary man it appears that this argument either involves a double begging of the question, or else amounts to the somewhat doubtful triumph that we are free, because we are conscious of our own slavery. While it is always difficult, and often impossible, to tell what was passing through the mind of Plato, it is certain that he was confronted by difficulties analogous to these. His final solution is given in the Philebus, and even here we see that there remains an element - for Plato a large element-alien and impervious to rea

For the presence of this, for the baneful influence which it exerts over man's life he has no explanation, save the myth of Er, the son of Armenius, with which the Republic closes. With this alien element, he seems to say, Philosophy has nothing to do; it remains outside the pale of reason; if you insist upon a solution I can only say that it must be along the lines, not of philosophy, but of religious mysticism.

The ideal which Plato holds up is a very noble one. His quarrel is not with the Sophists, for some of whom he has a very high regard, while for the rest his feeling is rather one of contemptuous indifference than of active dislike; that dislike, or rather noble indignation mingled with scorn and deep pity, is reserved for the ordinary mass of mankind with their low ideals and grovelling ambitions. For the Kingdom to which he calls them is so infinitely nobler and purer, so much more truly pleasant, if they would but lift up their eyes and see. It is the same note which centuries after, in a poet-philosopher of a very differ. ent school, gives poignancy to the lament of Lucretius over the caeca pectora of mankind. Why will ye die? There are realms. of eternal bliss to which man can attain; not by abstract contemplation, as Aristotle seems to say (Ethics, Bk X ad fin); not by a short cut through the kingdom of Sensuality (Gorgias

passim, and especially the concluding paragraph) or the Land of Mysticism (Repub. 519 C.)-those two roads which at first sight seem so alluring, and which so many ardent souls have ere now trodden in vain, but by a course of hard scientific and philosophic study, and of still harder service of our fellow men, stooping the lofty spirit to the petty tasks of everyday life (Repub. 540), so at last, keeping the eye of the soul bright and clear, we shall attain unto the vision beatific, to that city laid up eternal in the heavens, to the perfect pattern in the mount to which all earthly beauty is a faint approximation. For the unjust man Plato can imagine no more dreadful condemnation than that he may continue on in its wickedness forever (ἵνα ἀθάνατος ᾖ ἄδικος ὤν); an immortality of contented injustice, bereft of the higher joys which only the initiated know, is punishment enough..

It is a noble ideal; can man attain to it? Grant that he is free, that he is not tempted above that he is able, then the stern course of discipline prescribed by Plato has no terror for the earnest soul, however much the body shrinks from the prospect. But man's freedom is for Plato rather an article of faith than a reasoned conviction. His statement in the Timæus, that evil in nearly all cases is due to defective physique and faulty training, is in spite of its similarity in sound to certain modern theories really on the side of freedom; but his view is best summed up in the tremendous words of "the maiden daughter of Necessity," "The guilt be his who chooses; God is guiltless.” (airia éλoμévov* Béos àvairios. Repub. X.) It is an intuitive conviction, rooted in the deepest fibres of his being, that man is the author of his own destiny, and can work out his own salvation; but unlike the great modern teacher of Germany, whose deep moral earnestness verging on asceticism, so often recalls the pure spirit of Plato, he has not encumbered his conviction with a somewhat doubtful proof.

W. L. GRANT.

RECENT THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY.

The Fundamental Ideas of Christianity. By John Caird, D.D., LL.D., late Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Glasgow. With a memoir by Edward Caird, D.C.L., LL.D., Master of Balliol. 2 Vols, Glasgow: James MacLehose & Sons. New York: The Macmillan Co. 1899.

THE

HE hope held out in the Preface to the late Principal Caird's University Sermons, that his Gifford Lectures would be shortly published, has been promptly fulfilled. The editor, who has discharged a difficult and delicate task with admirable discretion, tells us that, while his brother's "craving to make things clear and intelligible to himself was very deep in his nature," his faith "was too closely bound up with his life and wrought into all his habits of mind by years of pastoral work" to be seriously shaken. "I think that it may fairly be said," says the Master of Balliol, "that his philosophy, as it grew to clearness in his mind, seemed rather to confirm and deepen his faith in Christianity, by rendering its most mysterious doctrines luminous, and showing how its principles serve to explain the life of man and of the universe, than essentially to disturb or change it." Of his brother's noble and beautiful character the editor speaks with fine feeling. "He was, I think, the most modest man I ever knew in his estimate of his own abilities and acquirements; and his great power as a speaker never seemed to awake in him any feeling of self-satisfaction. It was, indeed, so habitual, and, I might say, natural to him to move men by his gift of speech, that he never seemed to attach any special importance to it. On the other hand, he was apt to idealize and over-estimate the gifts of others, especially if they had any knowledge or ability which he did not himself possess." How perfectly these words characterize the man, those who were so fortunate as to profit by his teaching when he was Professor of Divinity in Glasgow will at once recognize. It might be added that as a teacher his criticism was as candid as it was kind. While he was capable on occasion of very plain speech, he was never swayed by personal feeling, or by anything but the deepest regard for truth and for the good of his students.

In the two opening lectures the author urges that the content of Christianity is essentially rational, and therefore that

there can be no absolute opposition between faith and reason. The aim of the following lecture is to show that the doctrine of the Trinity, the distinctively Christian idea of God, is not an unintelligible dogma, but a profound truth. In the conception of the Logos or Son of God is expressed the only tenable conception of God, viz., that He is a spiritual being, or, in other words, that there is "a self-revealing principle or personality within the very essence of the Godhead." If God must for ever realize Himself in all the infinite riches of his nature, there must be something to call forth that wealth, something to be known and loved by God. "Nay, seeing that love reaches, and can only reach, its highest expression in suffering and sacrifice, and that the richest purest blessedness is that which comes through pain and sorrow, can it be wrong to ascribe to God a capacity of self-sacrifice, a giving up of Himself, a going forth of His own being for the redemption of the world from sin and sorrow?" To the objection that this seems to make God simply "the Spirit of the world, growing with its growth and partaking of its incompleteness," it is answered that "we must think of all that unfolds itself progressively in the history of the world......as already comprehended in the eternal self-revelation of God,"-as "only the temporal manifestation of what has existed ideally and eternally in the mind and purpose of God."

The next four lectures deal with the relation of God to the world. The inadequacy of the pantheistic and deistic views of this relation is exhibited with convincing force, and the attempt is made to make the Christian view intelligible. The only adequate conception must be " one which, without throwing doubt upon the absoluteness and infinitude of the divine nature, must yet be consistent with the reality of the outward world and the freedom and individuality of man." This conception involves (1) "that it is Infinite Mind or Intelligence which constitutes the reality of the world, not simply as its external Creator, but as the inward Spirit in and through which all things live and move and have their being; (2) that by its very nature, Infinite Mind or Spirit has in it a principle of self-revelation-a necessity of self-manifestation to and in a world of finite beings; (3) that the infinitude of God, conceived of as Infinite Spirit, so far from involving the negation or suppression of the finite world, is