question. We read in the famous Finnish epic, the Kalevala 1: From the lower half of the egg Shall beam softly as moon in the sky; Stars may come in the sky.' Some scholars suppose that the Fins borrowed this idea from their Slavonic neighbours, especially the Lituanians, but Castrén accepts it as of Finnish origin. If we turn to Egypt, we find that there also the sun is represented as an egg2. Râ, the sun-god, is invoked: O Râ, in thine egg, radiant in thy disk, shining forth from the horizon, swimming over the steel firmament-thou who producest the winds by the flames of thy mouth, and who enlightenest the world with thy splendours, save the departed,' etc. In the Orphic mythology the mundane egg is frequently mentioned, but from what sources the Orphic poets took their ideas is as yet very doubtful. The Brahmanas are overflowing with similar speculations, all mere guesses at truth, it is true, but all flowing from the same conviction that the phenomenal world is not the real world, or, at all events, that behind what we see and know there is something which we do not see and which we do not know, that there is something real behind the contingent. In the beginning, the Brahmanas say, there was the real, the sat, that 1 Castrén, Finnische Mythologie, p. 289; Kellgren, Mythus de ovo mundano, Helsingforsiae, 1849. 2 Le Page Renouf, Hibbert Lectures, p. 190. which truly is, and from it came all that now is or seems to be. Here we see the root of the cosmological argument; and the whole history of religious thought, thus running in that self-made channel, seems to me stronger than any elaborate argument. It may be quite true, as Kant holds, that the category of causality is applicable to the deliverances of the senses only, and that therefore we cannot logically prove the existence of an extra-mundane cause. But if the human mind has once formed the concept of phenomena and of a phenomenal world, that very word and concept implies the admission of something non-phenomenal, by whatever name we like to call it. If there were no phenomena at all, if the world had not been seen through and found out to be transparent, then the case would be different, and Kant would be right in his demolition of the cosmological argument; but so long as we speak of the phenomenal, as Kant does himself, we speak at the same time of the non-phenomenal. It is this non-phenomenal, or trans-phenomenal, which the cosmological argument postulates, and has postulated through all ages; and it is this postulate, this craving for something more real than this so-called real world, which in itself is more convincing to me than any subtle argumentation in support of what is called the First Cause of all causes. Ask yourselves, Can you imagine the craving of hunger in nature unless there was something in nature to satisfy that hunger? I go even further, and ask, Can you imagine an eye without light, or an ear without sound? Neither can we imagine this craving for the Unseen, the Unheard, the Unperceived, or the Infinite, unless there was something to satisfy that craving, if only we look for it where alone it can be found. Teleological Argument. As soon as this non-phenomenal is represented in the likeness of man,—and man knows nothing better in the whole world, and in his whole mind than man, -the teleological argument comes in by itself. The author and creator of the universe, if once conceived, cannot be conceived except as a wise being, or, per viam eminentiae, as the wisest being, and man claims the right to look for his wisdom in his works. Thus one of the Vedic poets exclaims, VII. 86, 11: 'Wise and mighty are the works of him who stemmed asunder the wide firmaments (heaven and earth). He lifted on high the bright and glorious heaven; he stretched out apart the starry sky and the earth.' It may be said that the existence of a creator has not been proved, and that therefore it is folly to predicate anything of him or of his works. I do not deny this, I only assert as an historical fact, whatever that may be worth, that if once the phenomenal and the non-phenomenal had been conceived, man being what he is, was constrained, and, in that sense, justified in conceiving the author of both under the form of the best he knew, that is, under the form of man or anthropomorphically. Anthropomorphism. Man may know that anthropomorphism is wrong in the abstract, but it cannot be wrong for man, for 1 Selected Essays, i. 149. it is after all the best that, being what he is, he can conceive. If he could imagine or conceive anything better than man, naturally the anthropomorphic conception, or, at least some parts of it, would go. But unless it was possible to conceive anything wiser than wise, or better than good, the author and creator would always to human beings retain these human qualities, and his work, the phenomenal world, would necessarily be scanned for proofs of his purposes and his wisdom. This is the teleological argument in its most rudimentary form. Ontological Argument. As to the ontological argument we may discover traces of this also in the earliest speculations of Indian sages. We saw how they simply state: 'In the beginning this (world) was existent, one only, without a second.' But they add: Others say, in the beginning this world was non-existent, and from the non-existent the existent was born.' After these two alternatives follows an argument which, though it differs from the ontological in its present form, contains nevertheless the true germ of it: How could that which is, be born of that which is not?' This is the question asked by the author of the Brâhmana, and the very question supplies the answer, It could not. This may seem a very crude form in which to state the ontological argument, but it is its very crudeness that makes it instructive. I hope I shall not be understood as if I thought any of these crude attempts at solving the great problems of the world supplied a real solution of them. History cannot replace philo sophy, but it can assist it, it can serve as the best preparation for it. A Creator. It is quite true that the fact that the great portion of the human race believed in a creator, does in no way establish the existence of a creator. I am not even certain that we should find that the majority of the human race shared in the belief in a creator, that is to say, a maker, such as a carpenter or a potter. We know that the Buddhists, whose number is considerable, reject the idea of a creator, or at all events do not either assert or deny it. They adduce very good reasons for this abstinence, our incompetence to know anything beyond what comes to us first through the senses,—the very argument repeated by Kant; and secondly, the imperfection of the world, which ought to restrain us from ascribing its workmanship to a perfect being. In other countries, too, the idea of a creation was sternly rejected, as, for instance, by Heraclitus, who declares that no god and no man made this world, but that it was always and is and will be, an eternal fire, assuming forms and destroying them 1. And this protest, it should be remembered, came from a man who was able to say with equal honesty that God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, satiety and hunger-and that he is called according to the pleasure of every one 2. What I wish to put clearly before you is that neither the assertion of creation by certain Semitic authorities, nor the denial of creation by certain 1 Heracliti Reliquiae, ed. Bywater, xx. 2 See Pfleiderer, Heraklit, p. 353. Could we read őkws nûp okótŲ συμμιγές ? |