Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge by D. Litt. (Oxon.), D.C.L. (Dunelm.) Fellow of the British Academy Fellow and Tutor of New College, Oxford London: Duckworth & Co. 3 Henrietta St. Covent Garden 1909 All rights reserved {v} Man has no deeper or wider interest than theology; none deeper, for however much he may change, he never loses his love of the many questions it covers; and none wider, for under whatever law he may live he never escapes from its spacious shade; nor does he ever fi

1. Is Materialism possible? There is no immediate knowledge of Matter; what we know is always Self + Matter. The idea of a Matter which can exist by itself is an inference: is it a reasonable one? 2. No. For all that we know about Matter implies Mind. This is obvious as to secondary qualities (colour, sound, etc.); but it is no less true of primary qualities (solidity, magnitude, etc.). Relations, no less than sensations, imply Mind, . . . . . . . . . . . 8 3. This is the great discovery of Berk

1. We have been led by the idealistic argument to recognize the necessity of a Mind which thinks the world. Insufficiency of this view. {xiii} 2. In our experiences of external Nature we meet with nothing but succession, never with Causality. The Uniformity of Nature is a postulate of Physical Science, not a necessity of thought. The idea of Causality derived from our consciousness of Volition. Causality=Activity, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 3. If events must have a cause, and we kn

1. The empirical study of Nature ('red in tooth and claw') can tell us of purpose, not what the purpose is. The only source of knowledge of the character of God is to be found in the moral Consciousness. 2. Our moral judgements are as valid as other judgements ( e.g. mathematical axioms), and equally reveal the thought of God, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 3. This does not imply that the moral consciousness is not gradually evolved, or that each individual's conscience is infallib

1. Is the world created? There may or may not be a beginning of the particular series of physical events constituting our world. But, even if this series has a beginning, this implies some previous existence which has no beginning. 2. Is the whole-time series infinite? Time must be regarded as objective, but the 'antinomies' involved in the nature of Time cannot be resolved, . . . . . . . . 90 3. Are Spirits created or pre-existent? The close connexion and correspondence between mind and body ma

1. There is no special organ of religious knowledge, but religious knowledge has many characteristics which may be conveniently suggested by the use of the term 'faith,' especially its connexion with character and Will. 2. The psychological causes of religious belief must be carefully distinguished from the reasons which make it true. No logic of discovery. Many religious ideas have occurred in a spontaneous or apparently intuitive way to particular persons, the truth of which the philosopher ma

I have been invited to speak to you about the relations between Religion and Philosophy. To do that in a logical and thoroughgoing way it would be necessary to discuss elaborately the meaning first of Religion and then of Philosophy. Such a discussion would occupy at least a lecture, and I am unwilling to spend one out of six scanty hours in formal preliminaries. I shall assume, therefore, that we all know in some general way the meaning of Religion. It is not necessary for our present purpose t

The reader who wishes to have the idealistic argument sketched in the foregoing chapter developed more fully should read Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge . For the correction of Berkeley's sensationalistic mistakes the best course is to read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason or the shorter Prolegomena to any future Metaphysic or any of the numerous expositions or commentaries upon Kant. (One of the best is the 'Reproduction' prefixed to Dr. Hutchison Stirling's Text-book to Kant .) The non-

As has been explained in this Lecture, many idealistic writers who insist upon the necessity of God as a universal, knowing Mind to explain both the existence of the world and our knowledge of it, are more or less ambiguous about the question whether the divine Mind is to be thought of as willing or causing the world, though passages occur in the writings of most of them which tend in this direction. 'God {57} must be thought of as creating the objects of his own thought' is a perfectly orthodox

The subject is more or less explicitly dealt with in most of the works mentioned at the end of the last two lectures, and also in books on Moral Philosophy too numerous to mention. Classical vindications of the authority of the Moral Consciousness are Bishop Butler's Sermons , and Kant's Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals and other ethical writings (translated by T. K. Abbott). I have expressed my own views on the subject with some fullness in the third book of my Theory of Good

See the works mentioned at the end of the next Lecture, to which, as dealing more specially with the subject of Lecture v., may be added Professor Sanday's Inspiration , and Professor Wendt's Revelation and Christianity . [1] Throughout his writings, but pre-eminently in the Theoetetus . [2] If it be said that Judaism or any other Religion does now teach these truths as fully as Christianity, this may possibly apply to the creed of individual members of these Religions, but it can hardly be clai

The literature is here too vast to mention even the works of the very first importance: I can only select a very few books which have been useful to myself. The late Sir John Seeley's Ecce Homo may be regarded as in the light of modern research a somewhat uncritical book, but it remains to my mind the most striking expression of the appeal which Christ makes to the Conscience of the modern world. It has proved a veritable fifth Gospel to many seekers after light. Bishop Moorhouse's little book,