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strangest cases of self-delusion, and one of the boldest anachronisms committed by students of the history of religion.

I need hardly say that though in the science of religion as in the science of language, all my sympathies are with the Historical School, I do not mean to deny that the Theoretical School has likewise done some good work. The very opposition roused by such men as Schelling and Hegel has been of immense assistance. Let both schools work on, carefully and honestly, and who knows but that their ways, which seem so divergent at present, may meet in the end.

LECTURE IX.

HISTORICAL TREATMENT OF RELIGIOUS QUESTIONS.

I'

Is Religion Possible?

T has often been said, What can be the good of an historical study of religious questions? We do not want to know what Manu, or Buddha, or Socrates, or Christ thought about the questions which trouble us. We want to know whether any living man can give us an answer that will satisfy the requirements of our own age, or prescribe a remedy which will cure the complaints of our own society. The burning question of the day is not what religion has been, or how it came to be what it is. The real question is the possibility of any religion at all, whether natural or supernatural; and if that question has once been answered in the negative, as it has been by some of the most popular philosophers of our century, why not let the dead bury the dead?

The fact that, as far as history can reach, no single human being has ever, from his childhood to his old age, been without something that may be called religion, would carry very little weight. The limitation, as far as history can reach,' would at once be construed into a confession of our ignorance, so long as there remained a single nook or corner on earth that had not been explored by anthro

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pologists. In other cases, again, where the existence of a religion cannot be denied, the religion of the child would be explained as an hereditary taint, that of the old man as mere dotage or second childhood. The fact again that, so long as we know anything of the different races of mankind, we find them always in possession of something that may be called religion,-a fact which may now be readily granted, and that out of the sum total of human beings now living on this earth (that number varies from 1400 to 1500 millions 1-if you can realise such a sum or even such a difference) those who are ignorant and those who deny the existence of any supernatural beings form a mere vanishing quantity, would make no impression whatever on those who consider that the very word supernatural has no right to exist and should be expunged in our dictionary.

I do not wish to prejudge any of these questions; and in choosing for my own task a careful study of the historical development of religious thought among the principal nations of the world, I claim for it at first no more than that it may serve at least as a useful preparation for a final solution of the difficult problems which the great philosophers of our age have placed before us. It would be strange indeed if in religion alone we could learn nothing from those who have come before us, or even from those who differ from us. My own experience has been, on the contrary, that nothing helps us so much to understand and to value our own religion as a study

1 M. M. Selected Essays, ii. 228; Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte von Chantepie de la Saussaye, p. 41.

of the religions of other nations, and that nothing enables us better to deal with the burning questions of to-day than a knowledge of the difficulties inherent in all religions. These questions which are placed before us as the burning questions of the day, have been burning for centuries. Under slightly varying aspects they belong to the oldest questions of the world, and they occupy a very prominent place in every history of religion. If there is continuity anywhere, it is to be found in the growth of religious opinions.

History and Theory inseparable.

Even our modern philosophers and theologians are what they are, and think what they think, because they stand on the historical accumulation of the religious thoughts and religious theories of former ages; and the religious thoughts and religious theories of former ages were in their time of exactly the same kind as the thoughts of our present philosophers. And not till our young philosophers have learnt that lesson, not till they will consent to serve a humble apprenticeship under the guidance of those who came before them, is there any hope of a healthy development in our modern philosophy. If there is evolution everywhere, is there to be no evolution in philosophy alone?

Agnosticism.

Let us examine a few of the more important of our so-called burning questions of the day, in order to see what kind of help we may expect to derive from history in trying to answer them. We are told that Agnosticism is an invention of our own age, and that,

if it is once accepted, there must be an end of all that is called religion. This shows at all events a considerable agnosticism of the history of philosophy.

When a poet of the Veda (VII. 86, 2), though fully believing in Varuna, utters his complaint that he does not know how to get near him or into him, what is that but the most simple and primitive expression for the modern phrase, How can we know the Unknowable?

Modern Agnosticism has been defined as the profession of an incapacity to discover the indispensable conditions of either positive or negative knowledge 1. In that sense, Agnosticism simply represents the old Academic enoxń, the suspense of judgment, so strongly recommended by all philosophers 2, and so rarely observed by any one of them, not excluding the Agnostics. When the word is applied in a more special sense, namely as expressing man's inability to assert either the existence or the non-existence of God, there was the old Greek word Agnoia which would have avoided the ambiguity of the word Agnosticism. For Agnosticism seems at first sight merely the opposite of Gnosticism, and it has to be carefully explained that it has nothing to do with Gnosticism, in the usual sense of that word, not even as its negation. And even if we are told

1 Huxley, Hume, i. 60.

2 Cic. De Nat. Deor. i. 1, 'De qua (religione) tam variae sunt doctissimorum sententiae, ut magno argumento esse debeat, caussam, id est principium philosophiae, esse inscientiam, prudenterque Academicos a rebus incertis assensionem cohibuisse. Quid est enim temeritate turpius? aut quid tam temerarium tamque indignum sapientis gravitate atque constantia, quam aut falsum sentire, aut, quod non satis explorate perceptum sit et cognitum, sine ulla dubitatione defendere ?'

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