the deepest wounds of our present social state and satisfy the highest aspirations of humanity. In the first place, we have to come to an understanding with each other as to the primary definitions and their simplest mode of

statement.

SECTION IV.

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF AND THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF GOD.

Man finds in himself a sense of good and evil, of right and wrong, which we call conscience; and a power of distinguishing the true from the false, the cogitable from the incogitable, which in a broad way we denominate as Reason. Both claim implicit obedience, as much as the natural impulse of animals, which we call instinct; and men continually refer their disputes about the practical application of reason and conscience back to the tribunal of reason and conscience themselves. Thus both challenge universal trust, and the man who doubts of either, falls a prey to insanity or to brutish stupidity. All Man's intelligent intercourse with himself and the outer world rests upon this faith in Reason and Conscience; all language, art and science, as well as all political and ecclesiastical order among men, have issued from it. But this faith is at bottom a belief in the unity of Conscience and Reason; therefore the belief that Conscience is reasonable, and Reason moral; or, in other words, that the Good is true, and the True good. And it is this instinctive assumption-this faith-which binds together the Divine and the Human, links the Finite to the Infinite, and reconciles the world with God.

In the antithesis between God and the Universe, lies the ground of that duality which we find in the expressions of this great fundamental consciousness of a moral Reason. For, according to the prevailing tendency of a

particular race or age, it meets us, now as a consciousness of God, i. e. of the Eternal Thought and Will, from which the objects developed in space and time have proceeded; now as the consciousness of human historical facts. These are the two starting-points, or poles of Consciousness. On the human side, the dominant idea is that of Humanity as an organized Whole, as a moral Kosmos; in which is involved the assumption, that all the constituent parts of this Whole are moulded and developed, are born and die, according to the same laws. But since our mind is so constituted, that we become conscious of the Infinite only through the Finite, while the Finite is only intelligible to us through Thought and Will, which belong to the region of the Timeless and Infinite; it follows that our consciousness of God and our consciousness of Humanity mutually presuppose each other.

Thus the conscious, moral, rational personality of the individual man finds itself placed midway between God and Humanity. The union of both, and the essential connection of his conscious personal identity with both, is the necessary presupposition of all his reflection upon either. As a man cannot consciously act contrary to his moral sense without unreasonableness, nor contrary to his reason without impiety in the deepest sense, so he cannot love God without loving Humanity, or love Humanity without loving God.

Both historically and psychologically, our consciousness of God is not in the first instance awakened by the metaphysical conception of God, as the first and eternal Cause of the Universe and Man, although it rests ultimately on the existence of the Infinite and our apprehension of it. The original object of the religious faith of mankind is not God in Himself, but God as manifested in the Creation. and in Humanity, of which he is at once the Cause and the Uniting Element. Let us call the former manifestation God in Nature, and the latter, God in History. It is

1 It is with the sanction of the Author's son and literary representative that I have thus briefly rendered the meaning of a sentence which I subjoin VOL. I.

C

clear that the pure ideal consciousness of God is no more excluded by our consciousness of God's manifestation of Himself in the history of Mankind, than Deity parts with self-subsistence through the unfolding of the Divine in the Universe and in History. On the contrary, our consciousness of God as revealed through Humanity might not unjustly be regarded as our fullest and highest consciousness of the Divine; for it can no more exist divested of the consciousness of the Infinite, than of the consciousness of the Finite; it presupposes the ideal consciousness of God, equally with the consciousness of the physical Kosmos. But on the other hand these two do not necessarily involve the consciousness of God as present in the facts of history. Thus our fullest knowledge of God, that which must be at once the most operative and really practical, rests on our recognition of the Infinite in the Finite, of the Ideal in the Actual, and moreover in its conscious, not merely its unconscious realization. It shows us God in the Kosmos; that is to say, in an ordered whole. Within the limits of this finite world, the finite Reason is developed by the germinating energy of the Eternal Reason, Human Freedom by the Divine Freedom, and thus the Eternal Thought shapes itself into Finite Being, in Time and Space, with ever wider unfolding of the Divine in the Universe. To speak with Jean Paul, "the Eternal Reason mirrors itself in the world-stream like the sunlight in the waterfall"; -as the eternally unchangeable in the ever-changing phenomena. Now, since we are compelled to recognize our consciousness of the Divine activity in the History of Mankind, to be our fullest consciousness of God's presence; that which necessarily presupposes the other modes in

for the benefit of the German reader, but which I have not literally translated, as it contains only the definition of certain compound terms invented by the Author, which must always be rendered by a paraphrase in English.-TR. "Man könnte nun das Bewusstsein Gottes in der Natur, WELTBEWUSSTSEIN, oder GOTTWELTBEWUSSTSEIN nennen: das BEWUSSTSEIN Gottes aber in der Geschichte der Menschheit, das MENSCHHEITLICHE GOTTESBEWUSSTSEIN oder, mit einem Worte, GOTIMENSCHHEIT-BEWUSSTSEIN."

which we are cognizant of Him, we shall for the future throughout this work, denominate this simply our Consciousness of God. This consciousness is therefore to us the inmost ground of all religion, that is to say, of all worship and of all knowledge of Divine things; but its present aspect for us is, more especially, the apprehension that the Divine develops itself in the history of Man, according to eternal, cognizable laws.

Now this historical religious consciousness reveals itself in the progress of Mankind, sometimes as intuitive; i.e. not obtained through the conscious recognition of its laws and cause; sometimes as knowledge worked out dialectically, and deduced with more or less completeness from its appropriate arguments. The former is what we simply term our consciousness of God, or our religious consciousness; the latter, in so far as it exhibits the reasonableness of the Historical Kosmos, we should be inclined to call world-wisdom, or the Philosophy of History. The difference between the popular religious consciousness and that science which gathers up historical materials into a free philosophical form, we shall express by the phrases the Moral Intuition of the Universe, and the Moral Contemplation of the Universe.

Lastly, that Order itself, which we hereby recognize as actually existing, nay, assume as that, in virtue of which, all human things subsist and develop themselves, have their beginning and their end, we term the Moral Order of the World. The faith in this, which is sometimes called faith in Providence, sometimes faith in the moral government of the world, is as old as Humanity. All revealed religion, i.e. all historical religion derived from the teachings and experience of men of God, rests on this primary faith of Mankind. Its antithesis-Natural Religion -is the consciousness of God which is awakened in us by Nature, or the visible Creation. Christianity presupposes a faith in the presence of God in Nature and in History, but does not set herself to demonstrate that presence.

SECTION V.

A CONSIDERATION OF THE FORMSIN WHICH IT HAS BEEN ATTEMPTED TO DENY THE EXISTENCE OF A MORAL ORDER OF THE world.

Before we proceed to consider the application of the fundamental principles we have stated, it will be well for us to examine somewhat more closely the methods in which it has been attempted either to deny or to demonstrate the Divine Order of the World.

The first commencement of dialectic thought, the transition from the mere contemplation of the Universe, to the philosophizing upon its phenomena, is usually accompanied, both in individuals and in nations, with a weakening of the former implicit belief. The faith of childhood is at an end, while Reason has not as yet attained either the freedom or the strength requisite to replace it by knowledge. At this stage, three questions suggest themselves:

Does there really exist a Moral Government of the world? If there be one, does it only regulate the Universe as a whole, or does it also concern itself with the life of the individual? Do we find any actual foundation in the experience of life and in the conclusions of reason for the general moral and religious beliefs of nations?

These questions are the mightiest which Man can propose to himself; and the answers to them are as old as conscious reflection in Humanity. At a certain epoch in life, they must inevitably receive some answer: and on the nature of this answer-the extent to which doubt is met by truth-depends whether the future progress of the moral nature shall tend towards inward estrangement from God or towards a true wisdom.

If there be no moral government of the world, then that feeling of the immediate relationship of each man to a conscious Thought and Will is also a delusion. So too are those fundamental assumptions, upon which repose all historical religions, all public worship, all ennobling