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approach between the physical nature of an ape and that of a man, the wider and the more wonderful will that gulf appear which language has fixed between them 1.

Necessity of Historical Study of Religion.

If therefore I maintain the necessity of an historical and comparative study of religion, or venture to represent it as the best preparation for the study of what is called the philosophy of religion, what I mean is that it acclimatises and invigorates our mind, and produces that judicial temper which is so essential in the treatment of religious problems. Whatever philosophy may have to teach us hereafter, it will prove useful in the mean time to have learnt from history at least so elementary a lesson as that no opinion is true, simply because it has been held either by the greatest intellects or by the largest number of human beings at different periods in the history of the world. No one can spend years of his life in the study of the religions of the world, beginning with the lowest and ending with the highest forms, no one can watch the sincerity of religious endeavour, the warmth of religious feeling, the nobleness of religious conduct among races whom we are inclined to call either pagan or savage, without learning at all events a lesson of humility. Anybody, be he Jew, Christian,

1 Mr. Romanes, in his recent work on Mental Evolution in Man, 1888, has summed up the old arguments in favour of a possible transition from animal to human intellect with great ingenuity, but he has not refuted the facts on the other side, and in several cases hardly apprehended their force. Even his conception of evolution seems to me far from correct. Again, when he states that I admit not more than 121 roots as the residue of an analysis of Aryan speech, he mistakes roots for radical concepts, and Aryan for Sanskrit. Whatever we may hope to achieve in future, we have not as yet reduced the number of Sanskrit roots to less than 800.

Mohammedan or Brahman, if he has a spark of modesty left, must feel that it would be nothing short of a miracle that his own religion alone should be perfect throughout, while that of every other believer should be false and wrong from beginning to end.

History teaches us that religions change and must change with the constant changes of thought and language in the progress of the human race. The Vedic religion led on to the religion of the Upanishads, the religion of the Upanishads led on to the doctrines which Buddha embodied in a new religion. Not only the Jewish religion, but the religion of Greece and Rome also, had to yield to Christianity as more on a level with the height of thought reached after long struggles by the leading nations of the world. It is wonderful, no doubt, to see religions belonging to an almost prehistoric stratum of thought, such as ancient Brahmanism, surviving to the present day in a modified, yet not always more elevated form. But even this becomes historically intelligible, if we consider that society consists of different intellectual strata. Some of the reformers of our own religion four hundred years ago stood on an eminence which even now is far beyond the reach of the majority. In theology, as in geology, the whole scale of superimposed strata is often exhibited on the surface of the present day, and there may still be Silurians walking about among us in broad daylight. It seems as if an historical study of religion alone could enable us to understand those Silurians, nay help us to sympathise with them, and to honour them for the excellent use which they often make of the small talent committed to them.

Criticisms answered.

After having said so much in support of the Historical School, more particularly for a right study of religion, I feel bound in conclusion to notice some recent criticisms which seem to me to arise from a complete misapprehension of the character of that school. It has been observed by an eminent Scotch theologian 1, that the tendency to substitute history for science, and the historical method for the scientific method, is prevalent in the present day in theology, as well as in ethics and jurisprudence, social philosophy and political economy. 'Obviously, however,' he says, 'it rests on exaggeration and illusion, and confounds things which ought to be distinguished. Neither history of the objects of a science, nor history of the ideas or doctrines of a science, is science, and the historical method of itself can only give us, in connexion with science, either or both of these forms of history. It is therefore inherently absurd to suppose that the historical method can be sufficient in such theological disciplines as Natural Theology and Christian Dogmatics. In reality it is not directly or immediately available in the study of these disciplines at all, and that just because it does not directly or immediately yield theory, doctrine, science. Only he who knows both the history of the objects and the history of the ideas of a science, and especially of a psychological, social, or religious science, can be expected to advance the science.'

Is not that an admission which covers all we claim for the Historical School, namely that it alone is able to advance the science of religion? But 1 R. Flint, in Encyclopædia Britannica, s. v. Theology, p. 266.

he goes on:-'In the sphere of religion, as in every other sphere, to confound history with science is to eliminate and destroy science; but in no sphere is knowledge of history more a condition of the attainment of science, and historical research, properly conducted, more serviceable to scientific investigation, than in that of religion."

I claim no more, and should be quite satisfied by this admission.

And lastly: To the historical method we owe, not only the historical disciplines of theology, but also in a considerable measure the recent progress of its positive or theoretical disciplines. It can never, however, be, as some fanatical disciples of the historical school would have us to suppose, the method of these last.'

This is, as you will perceive, very strong language, arising no doubt from a very strong conviction. But you will generally find that if one philosopher, who is not a fool, calls another philosopher who is not a fool either, absurd, there is some misunderstanding between the two. Now the historical school, because it calls itself historical, does not profess to devote itself to the history only of any given science. There are, for instance, the inductive sciences, and there is a history of the inductive sciences. Now the historical school never intended to limit itself to the study of the history of these sciences. That is a subject by itself. What the historical school meant to teach was that no actual problem of any science should be studied without a reference to what had been said or written on that problem from the day on which it was first started to the present day. I see no other,

or at all events, no better means by which the mind could be strengthened and matured for grappling with any problem. The very mistakes of those who came before us, serve us often as finger-posts for our own line of research. Suppose a man were to study Comparative Philology without making himself acquainted with the labours of Bopp, and Pott, and Grimm, with their false as well as their true discoveries, what a waste of time would it entail on him to explore afresh all the avenues which they had explored and many of which they had found to lead to nothing! Or suppose a man should attempt the etymology of a modern word, without tracing it back, first of all, to its earliest form that is within our reach. We should then have again such etymologies as ear of corn being the same as ear, while, if we only go as far back as Gothic, we find ahs for ear of corn, but ausó for ear.

Nor should it be supposed that history ends with the last century. The principle of the historical school is not to ignore the present, but to try to understand the present by means of the past. A man may be a philosopher, no doubt, without knowing Plato or Aristotle or Descartes or Kant; but unless he is a man of marvellous intuition, he will never acquire that sure judgment and that sense of proportion which can only be acquired by an acquaintance with many minds. His philosophy will be in great danger of becoming an anachronism.

But whatever may be possible in other sciences, let no one venture on the open sea of religious discussion without having the compass of history steadily before his eyes. Let no one attempt to study Natural

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