{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/wikisource_The_Religious_Aspect_of_Philosophy_Preface/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/wikisource_The_Religious_Aspect_of_Philosophy_Preface","id":"wikisource_The_Religious_Aspect_of_Philosophy_Preface","license":"Public Domain / CC-BY-SA (see source)","rights_basis":"wikisource_site_inclusion_policy","source":"wikisource","source_url":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Religious_Aspect_of_Philosophy/Preface","summary":null,"tags":["Headers_applying_DefaultSort_key","Subpages"],"text":"PREFACE.\n\nThis book sketches the basis of a system of philosophy, while applying the principles of this system to religious problems. The form and order of the treatment depend on the nature of these latter problems themselves, and are not such as a system of philosophy, expounded solely for its own sake, would be free to take. The religious problems have been chosen for the present study because they first drove the author to philosophy, and because they, of all human interests, deserve our best efforts and our utmost loyalty.\n\nA large portion of this discussion seeks to appeal both to the special student of philosophy and to the general reader. A considerable part, again, can with the very best of fortune hope to interest the special student of philosophy, but cannot hope for more. The Preface must therefore tell what sort of appeal is made to each of the two classes of readers.\n\nTo begin with the general reader, who may have the curiosity to glance at this philosophic essay, the author must forthwith confess that while on the one\nhand he desires to trouble nobody with fruitless and\nblank negations, and while his aim is therefore on\nthe whole a positive aim, yet on the other hand, as\nhe has no present connection with any visible\nreligious body, and no sort of desire for any such\nconnection, he cannot be expected to write an apology for\na popular creed. This confession is made frankly,\nbut not for the sake of provoking a quarrel, and\nwith all due reverence for the faith of other men.\nIf the fox who had lost his tail was foolish to be\nproud of his loss, he would have been yet more foolish\nto hide it by wearing a false tail, stolen mayhap\nfrom a dead fox. The full application of the moral\nof the fable to the present case is moreover willingly\naccepted. Not as the fox invited his friends to\nimitate his loss, would the present writer aim to\nmake other men lose their faiths. Rather is it his\naim not to arouse fruitless quarrels, but to come to\nsome peaceful understanding with his fellows\ntouching the ultimate meaning and value and foundation\nof this noteworthy custom, so widely prevalent\namong us, the custom of having a religion. If the\nauthor ends by stating for his own part a religious\ndoctrine, it will yet be seen upon reading the same\nthat a man could hold that and much more too; so\nthat what is here said is rather proposed as a basis for a conceivable if very far off reconciliation, than\nas an argument to dissuade those who may think\nthat they can go further than the author, from\nproving in a philosophical fashion whatever they\ncan prove. Such people may manage to interpret\nmany of the negations that occur in these pages as\ndirected against an inadequate form, or imperfect\nunderstanding, of their more elaborate creed. If\nthey can do so, no one will be more heartily\ndelighted than the author, although he may not agree\nwith them.\n\nAs to the relation of this book to what is called\nmodern doubt, it is a relation neither of blind\nobedience nor of unsympathetic rejection. The\ndoctrine of philosophic idealism here propounded is not\nwhat in these days is popularly called Agnosticism.\nYet doubting everything is once for all a necessary\nelement in the organism of philosophic reflection.\nWhat is here dwelt upon over and over again is,\nhowever, the consideration that the doubts of our\ntime are not to be apologetically \u201crefuted,\u201d in the\nold fashioned sense, but that taken just as they are,\nfully and cordially received, they are upon analysis\nfound to contain and imply a positive and important\nreligious creed, bearing both upon conduct and upon\nreality. Not to have once thoroughly accepted as\nnecessary the great philosophic doubts and problems of our day, is simply not to have philosophized as a man of this age. But to have accepted these doubts without in time coming to find the positive truth that is concealed in them, is to treat them as the innocent favorite of fortune in a fairy tale always at first treats his magic gift. It is something common and dingy, and he lays it carelessly away in his empty house, feeling poorer than ever. But see: handle it rightly, and the fairy gift fills your transfigured home with a wealth of gems and gold, and spreads for you a wondrous banquet. To the author has come the fancy that modern doubt may be some such fairy gift as this. And he would like to suggest to some reader what may possibly prove the right fashion of using the talisman.\n\nThe general reader, if very \"benevolent,\" may be able to endure the \"First Book\" of the present volume in its entirety; but in the \"Second Book\" he will find much that is meant only for the student whose interests are decidedly technical. Some warnings are given in the text, to help the general reader in skipping. But perhaps it may be well for his purpose to confine himself at once in this Book II., at least upon the first reading, to the following passages, namely: in Chapter VIII., to the introductory remarks and the first and the last sections of the chapter; in Chapter IX., to the introductory remarks, and Sections I., II., III., and V.; in Chapter X., to the introductory remarks, and Sections I., II., and IV.; in Chapter XI., to the introductory remarks, and the concluding section only; and then he may try the whole of Chapter XII. Thus he will not be troubled by the technical statement of the proof of our doctrine, and he will see the trend of our thought, which may at least amuse him. If he is then still curious, he may take his own risks and look farther.\n\nThe student of philosophy will find in this volume a doctrine that undertakes to be in certain significant respects independent and original, but that, without ceasing to be the author's own system, frankly belongs to the wide realm of Post-Kantian Idealism. Of course no true lover of philosophy ventures, when he calls a doctrine his own, to pretend to more than the very moderate degree of relative originality that the subject in our day permits; and of course the author for his own part feels very deeply how much what he has to offer is the product of what he has happened to read and remember about philosophy and its history. Most of all he feels his debt to Kant; then he knows how much he has gained from Fichte, from the modern Neo-Kantians in Germany, and from the revivers of idealism in recent years in England and America. To Hegel also he has of course a decided debt to\nacknowledge.\n\nThere are in recent philosophical history two\nHegels: one the uncompromising idealist, with his\ngeneral and fruitful insistence upon the great\nfundamental truths of idealism; the other the technical\nHegel of the \u201cLogik,\u201d whose dialectic method seems\ndestined to remain, not a philosophy, but the idea\nof a philosophy. With this latter Hegel the author\nfeels a great deal of discontent; to the other Hegel,\nwhose insight, as we know, was by no means\nindependent of that of Fichte and other contemporaries,\nbut who was certainly the most many-sided and\ncritical of the leaders of the one great common idealistic\nmovement of the early part of the century, \u2014 to him\nwe all owe a great debt indeed. It is, however, a\nmistake to neglect the other idealists just for the\nsake of glorifying him. And it is an intolerable\nblunder to go on repeating what we may have\nlearned from him in the awkward and whimsical\nspeech of the wondrous and crabbed master. If\nHegel taught anything, then what he taught can be\nconveyed in an utterly non-Hegelian vocabulary, or\nelse Hegel is but a king of the rags and tatters of a\nflimsy terminology, and no king of thought at all.\nIt is therefore absolutely the duty of a man who\nnowadays supposes that he has any truth from Hegel to propound, to state it in an entirely fresh and\nindividual form. Of Hegelian language repeated to\nus in place of Hegelian thought, we have had by\nthis time a sickening surfeit. Let us therefore\nthank men who, like the late lamented Professor\nGreen, have at last been free to speak their own\nthoughts very much in their own way; and let us be\nglad too that the number of so-called Hegelians of\nsimilar independence is daily growing greater. The\nauthor, however, cannot call himself an Hegelian,\nmuch as he owes to Hegel.\n\nFurther especial acknowledgments the author\nwants to make to Professor William James, to Mr.\nShadworth Hodgson, to Professor Otto Pfleiderer,\nto Professor Hans Vaihinger, to Professor Otto\nLiebmann, to Professor Julius Bergmann, to\nProfessor Christoph Sigwart, and to Mr. Arthur\nBalfour, for the valuable helps in thought that, unknown\nto them, he, as a reader of their works, has\nfelt, and that he now recognizes as distinctly affecting\nthis book. To Professor William James once\nmore in particular, and also to Professor George\nPalmer, the author owes numerous oral suggestions\nthat have influenced him more than he now can\nexactly estimate or fully confess. And then there\nremain two thinkers to name, men very different\nfrom each other, but both for the author very valuable. Of these one was among the first of the German thinkers in the chance order of the author's early reading, the other was deeply influential both by his spoken words and by his writings; the former is that brilliant and stimulating master of contradictions, Schopenhauer, the other is the now departed Lotze, whose lectures the author will never forget nor disregard, although what is here taught is remote enough from most of Lotze's system.\n\nIn outer form this work may be considered by the philosophic student as a sort of roughly sketched and very incomplete Phenomenology of the religious consciousness, first on its moral, and then on its theoretical, side. The parts of the argument that the author supposes to contain most relative originality will be found in Book I., Chapters VI. and VII., and in Book II., Chapter XI. On these chapters all else hinges.\n\nThe discussion of the Problem of Evil, as it appears in Chapter XII., is, as the author has seen only since that chapter was in type, very closely parallel to part of the discussion of the same question in the new second edition of Pfleiderer's \"Religionsphilosophie.\" Yet, as the thoughts of this new edition of Pfleiderer's argument were indicated in his first edition, although not so clearly expressed, the author claims little originality here, save in the form of presentation, in the illustrations used, and in the reference of the whole to the arguments of Chapter XI. This last matter seems to him, of itself indeed, quite important.\n\nThe work as it here appears is an outgrowth of several separate lines of study. The questions of the present Chapter XI. were first attempted by the author in a thesis for the Doctor's degree of the Johns Hopkins University in 1878. The argument has since been essentially altered. Several fragments that are here used as organic parts of the whole book have appeared separately, in various degrees of incompleteness, in the \"Journal of Speculative Philosophy,\" in \"Mind,\" and elsewhere. The present form of the book has grown out of lectures on religious questions to the students of Harvard College; but only a small portion of the manuscript of these lectures has entered into the structure of the book, which, for its own part, tries to be no patchwork, but a single united, if incomplete, study of its chosen problem.\n\nCambridge, Mass., January 11, 1885.","title":"The Religious Aspect of Philosophy/Preface","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":1990}