study, doubt has a curious and very valuable place in philosophy. Philosophic truth, as such, comes to us first under the form of doubt; and we never can be very near it in our search unless, for a longer or shorter time, we have come to despair of it alto/ gether. First, then, the despair of a thorough-going doubt, and then the discovery that this doubt contains in its bosom the truth that we are sworn to discover, however we can, — this is the typical philosophic experience. May the memory of this suggestion support the failing patience of the kindly disposed reader through some of the longer and more wearisome stretches of dry skeptical analysis over which we must try to journey together. Whatever may be the truth, it must lie beyond those deserts. CHAPTER II. THE GENERAL ETHICAL PROBLEM. "Certain spirits, by permission, ascended from hell, and said to me, You have written a great deal from the Lord, write something also from us. I replied, 'What shall I write?' They said, 'Write that every spirit, whether he be good or evil, is in his own delight, - the good in the delight of his good, and the evil in the delight of his evil.' I asked them, What may your delight be?' They said that it was the delight of committing adultery, stealing, defrauding, and lying. I said, 'Then you are like the unclean beasts.' They answered, 'If we are, we are.'" - SWEDENBORG, Divine Providence. "There's nothing, either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." Hamlet. ... WITH which of the two considerations mentioned in our introduction shall a religious philosophy begin? Of its two chief considerations, the moral code, and the relation of this code to reality, which is the one that properly stands first in order? We have already indicated our opinion. The philosophy of religion is distinguished from theoretic philosophy precisely by its relation to an ideal. If possible, therefore, it should early be clear as to what ideal it has. The ideal ought, if possible, to be studied. first, since it is this ideal that is to give character to our whole quest among the realities. And so the first part of religious philosophy is properly the discussion of ethical problems. I. The theoretic philosopher might interpose just here, and insist that as one can be moral only in a real world, the philosopher has a theoretical right and duty to point out, first of all, wherein consists the reality of the world and whereon is based our assurance of this reality. Yet this strictly logical order we must decline, in the present discussion, to follow. Our interest is, first of all, with the ideal. in its relation to human life. So much of the world of commonplace reality as we have to assume in any and every discussion of the ideal, we accept in this first book wholly without theoretical question. For such questions, in their relation to religious philosophy, the proper place will come later. But at the outset we will suppose a moral agent in the presence. of this concrete world of human life in which we all believe ourselves to exist. Beyond the bright circle of these commonplace human relations, all shall for the present remain dark to this moral agent. His origin, his destiny, his whole relation to nature and to God, if there be a God, he shall not at the outset know. But he shall be conceived as knowing that he is alive in the midst of a multitude of living fellows. With them he is to have and to define and to develop certain moral relations. For his life, or for human life in general, he is to form his ideal. Then later, after forming and striving to realize this ideal of his, he is to come to the real physical world, and to ask of it how it stands related to these, his moral needs. In the answer to this question he is |