Towards religious experience, Philosophy renders a service which is at once apologetic and critical, and is in both aspects helpful and indeed indis- pensable. Philosophy vindicates the validity and reasonableness of religion. In the words of the Master of Balliol, it provides ‘a vindication of the religious consciousness—the consciousness of the infinite—as presupposed in that very consciousness of the finite which at present often claims to exclude it altogether, or to reduce it to an empt: apotheosis of the unknown and unknowable’ (E.
aird, Essays on Literature and Philosophy, vol. i. p. 224). Philosophy at the same time has to con- sider the form in a a this religious experience at any particular epoch clothes itself. And if it shall appear that the form contradicts the universalit and comprehensiveness of the experience of whic it is the expression, and is, therefore, falsifying and imperilling that experience, Philosophy must ruth- lessly assail that form, and break it up, in name of that principle of reconciliation which is the inspira- tion and the goal both of thought and action. Religion holds an analogous position toward Philo- sophy, and has a work to do in its behalf, both constructive and critical. Religion discovers the principle for which Philosophy has been seek- ing, and exhibits it, not as a theory, but as a
ower, in the freshness and originality of actual ife, transforming character and inspiring service. Philosophy, sinking into exhaustion through the inadequacy of the synthesis which it has reached, is rejuvenated at the fountain of religious experi- ence, and is enabled to meet the deepening com- plexity of its problem with a more comprehensive and more detailed explanation. Religion at the same time has to consider the intellectual synthesis to which its own inspiration has given birth. And if it shall appear that this synthesis has omitted some element in the problem, and has obtained an appearance of harmony by neglecting some source οἱ discord, and is thus Be Enig the progress of thought short of its goal, Religion must resist the claim of this Philosophy to be absolute, must emphasize the neglected elements of the problem, and must proclaim again the harmony which triumphs over the discords of life,—a harmony found not in intellectual formule, but in the veri- fiable realities of spiritual experience. It follows that Philosophy and Religion can never in their inner meaning be opposed to one another. The are both necessities of the human spirit. Both alike presuppose the spiritual unity which pervades experience, and makes possible both thought and life. Each has its special function in apprehending and realizing this unity; and in their respective functions each is essential to the other. Those periods in which they come into close and con- VOL. I11.—S4
spicuous contact are peculiarly interesting in the history of each. The most important of these occurred in the beginning of the Christian era. In that period, Greek philosophy reached the oal of its long development. In this article we esire to show what that goal was, and how, in reaching it, Greek philosophy asked a question to which Christianity brought the only adequate answer.
I. THE PROBLEM OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY.— The movement of Greek thought falls into three well-marked stages. In the first of these, the principle of explanation is sought beyond conscious- ness. In the second, a spiritual principle has been won, and is used for the comprehension of all existence, and the erection of a system of encyclo- pedic knowledge. In the third, thought retreats to the standpoint of the individual; the problem of knowledge is raised in its acutest form; the exhaustion of Philosophy overtakes it, and an in- tense demand is made for a religious solution.
1. First Stage.—The early Greek thinker looks out upon nature with joyous curiosity, and asks, ‘What is the principle which underlies these multitudinous phenomena?’ The earliest philo- sophies contain brief dogmatic answers to this question. They are not valuable in themselves; but they are interesting as stating the problem of Philosophy, and indicating the goal of inane They are divided into four schools. The /Jonic School identified the explanation of all things with one element in nature, saying with Thales (B.C. 640-550), ‘all is water’; or with Anaxi- mander (B.C. 611-547), ‘all is matter,’ τὸ ἄπειρον ; or with Anaximenes (B.C. 588-524), ‘all is air.’ The Pythagorean School peseed from substance to the proportion which all things bear to one another, and taught that ‘all is number.’ The Lleatic School passed still further on the path ef abstraction, from ‘substance’ and ‘number’ te ‘being,’ saying with Xenophanes (B.C. 576-480), ‘all is one.’ The Physicists, in reaction from this abstractness, sought to analyze existence into its material elements. This period closes with Anaxagoras (B.C. 500-428). His great distinction as a thinker is that he relies on the principle of reason, νοῦς, as the principle of explanation. Νοῦς is a world-forming intelligence, acting on the primitive constituents of matter. Thus the first stage in the great movement of Greek philosophy has brought us to a spiritual panes le. This is its great achievement, the splendid heritage it hands on to succeeding generations of thinkers, But along with this it also hands on another and less satisfactory heritage, viz. dualism, the opposi- tion of the spiritual and the material, Thought and Extension.
2. Second Stage.—At the period of Greek history at which we have now arrived, about the middle of the 5th cent. B.c., we notice that the interest of thought is turning from the outer world of nature to the inner world of the human spirit. Thought, accordingly, becomes anthropological, and seeks the ultimate principles of truth, not beyond, but within man’s consciousness of himself.