was the extreme limit of the world-to the Buddhists the golden gate that opens to receive the setting sun in the West has become the Eastern gate of a more distant West, of Sukhâvatî, the land of bliss.

The infinite in time.

And what applies to space applies to time. As we cannot perceive and therefore conceive anything in space without a something beyond, we cannot perceive or conceive anything in time without a something beyond, a before and an after. Here, too, imagination has stretched its view as far as language will carry it. The number of years by which Hindus and Buddhists have tried to measure the infinitude of time are simply appalling--yet beyond the giddy height and depth which they have reached, there always remained that eternal Beyond from which no human mind can escape.

The infinite as cause.

Closely connected with the infinite, as it is postulated in space and time, is a third infinite, namely, that of cause. This has been called by some philosophers a mere illusion, a mere weakness of the human mind. There are some strong-minded philosophers who hold that a world is possible in which there is no cause and no effect, and in which two and two would not make four. But wherever that Erehuon may be, in our sublunary world, and I may add in our sublunary language, two and two will always make four, and as we can never shake off the chain of causality, we shall always be forced to admit not only a beyond beyond all beyonds, but also a cause beyond all causes.

If therefore our ordinary sensations and perceptions

are at the same time both of the finite and of the infinite, they naturally call forth and leave in our mind and in our language the concept of finite, and at the same time the concept of infinite. I speak here of a logical and psychological necessity only; and not yet of the realisation of these concepts of finite and infinite in history.

Misunderstandings ̧

It is extraordinary how difficult it is to avoid misunderstandings even on the part of honest critics, to say nothing of dishonest opponents. In answer to what I tried to show, that every single perception, so far as it is finite, involves, whether we are conscious of it or not, some perception of the infinite-which is really only a freer rendering of the old scholastic formula, omnis determinatio est negatio, I am told that there are many savage tribes even now who do not possess a word for finite and infinite. Is that an answer?

Savages without words for finite and infinite.

No one can doubt that the idea of the infinite, as a pure abstraction, is one of the latest, and that when we trace religion back to a perception of the infinite in nature or in man, we can mean no more than that the infinite, as hidden in the finite, left some impression on our senses and on our mind from the very first dawn of human intelligence, and that it is that very impression which, after passing through a long hibernation, grows and grows, and bursts forth at the very last, like the butterfly from the chrysalis, as the infinite in its most general, most abstract, most purified sense. It is very easy to be positive about the languages of

ancient savages, for we know so little about them. But supposing that languages spoken by ancient savages were known in which no words occur for the boundless sky or the shoreless sea, this would not in the least affect our position. On the contrary, the more savage tribes can be produced without names and concepts for what is endless, deathless, or infinite, the stronger the proof that these concepts were only gradually evolved out of percepts in which they were contained, but from which they had not yet been separated.

The Duke of Argyll's Definition of Religion.

I must try to define my position as clearly as possible. I hold that the only justification for a belief in a Beyond of any kind whatever, lies in the original perception of something infinite which is involved in a large class of our ordinary sensuous and finite perceptions. But I hold equally strongly that this perception of a Beyond remained undeveloped for a long time, that it assumed its first form in the numberless names of what we call deities, till at last it threw off its husk and disclosed the ripe grain, namely the name and concept of a Beyond, of an Infinite, or, in the highest sense, of a Supreme Being.

Here is the point where I differ, for instance, from the Duke of Argyll. In his great work, The Unity of Nature, the Duke arrives at the conclusion that religion begins with 'a belief in supernatural beings, in living agencies, other and higher than our own' (p. 466), and he maintains that 'to conceive of the energies that are outside of man as like the energies that he feels within him, is simply to think of the un

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known in terms of the familiar and the known.' think this,' he writes, 'can never have been to man any matter of difficult attainment. It must have been, in the very nature of things, the earliest, the simplest, and the most necessary of all conceptions' (p. 474).

We shall see hereafter that this definition contains a great deal of truth. The reason why I cannot accept it is that it makes religion begin with concepts, and not with percepts, and it is with percepts that all our knowledge, even the most abstract, ought to begin. We cannot perceive supernatural beings, or living agencies, but we can perceive the sky, and in perceiving it as finite, perceive at the same time the necessary complement of the Infinite. There are many steps which must have preceded such concepts as ' energies without, being like the energies within us.' To conceive and name energies within us is a process unknown to the large majority of mankind even at the present day, and to think of energies without as like the energies within, is very different from seeing the sky or the fire, and conceiving and naming such beings as Dyaus or Zeus, as Indra or Agni. The Duke speaks of a belief in superhuman beings, and considers such concepts as a being and a superhuman being as very early and very simple. But the very verb to be is a very late creation, and the noun being much later still. Even Cicero looked still in vain for such a word as ens or essentia 1.

It is, on the contrary, one of the most interesting subjects for the historian of religion to see how the more abstract concept of superhuman beings was slowly evolved out of such concrete and full concepts as Dyaus, 1 Seneca, Epist. 58.

sky, Agni, fire, Vâyu, wind, Sûrya, sun. Instead of the more general concept coming first and being gradually invested with differentiating attributes, history shows that the differentiated and almost dramatic characters came first, and, by being divested of their various attributes, left behind them the more general, but, at the same time, more exalted concepts. of beings or superhuman beings. There is no trace whatever, so far as I know, of any of the early nations having first elaborated the concepts and names of superhuman beings, and then having connected them with various attributes. Among most nations also, so far as historical evidence enables us to judge, a belief in many superhuman beings preceded a belief in one superhuman being, and for a long time what seem to us two contradictory beliefs, a belief in one and a belief in many gods, were held to be perfectly compatible in the same religion. The Duke of Argyll, unless his own words misrepresent him, represents the connection of these superhuman beings with material objects as a later phase. The nature of that connection,' he writes, ' may not be always, it may not even in any case, be perfectly clear and definite. Sometimes the material object is an embodiment, sometimes it is a symbol, often it may be only an abode. Nor is it wonderful that there should be a like variety in the particular objects which have come to be so regarded. Sometimes they are such material objects as the heavenly bodies. Sometimes they are natural productions of our own planet, such as particular trees, or particular animals, or particular things in themselves inanimate, such as springs, or streams, or mountains. Sometimes they are manufactured articles,

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