LITERARY NOTICES. 



703 



tem to religious problems. The form and 

 order of the treatment depend upon the na- 

 ture of these latter problems themselves, 

 and are not such as a system of philosophy, 

 expounded solely for its own sake, would be 

 free to take. The religious problems have 

 been chosen for the present study because 

 they first drove the author to philosophy, 

 and because they, of all human interests, 

 deserve our best efforts and our utmost loy- 

 alty." 



It seems, therefore, that our author was 

 driven to philosophy by some sort of relig- 

 ious disquiet or perplexity. We gather 

 from what follows that he had lost his faith, 

 or was fearful of losing it, and went to phi- 

 losophy for relief. What he found it is the 

 office of the book to tell, but it is evidently 

 something very different from that which 

 had left him at first. He says : " As he has 

 no present connection with any visible relig- 

 ious body, and no sort of desire for any 

 such connection, he can not be expected to 

 write an apology for a popular creed. This 

 confession is made frankly, but not for the 

 sake of provoking a quarrel, and with all 

 due reverence for the faith of other men. 

 If the fox who had lost his tail was foolish 

 to be proud of his loss, he would have been 

 yet more foolish to hide it by wearing a false 

 tail, stolen mayhap from a dead fox. The 

 full application of the moral of the fable to 

 the present case is, moreover, willingly ac- 

 cepted. Not as the fox invited his friends 

 to imitate his loss, would the present writer 

 aim to make other men lose their faiths. 

 Rather is it his aim not to arouse fruitless 

 quarrels, but to come to some peaceful un- 

 derstanding with his fellows touching the 

 ultimate meaning and value and foundation 

 of this noteworthy custom, so widely preva- 

 lent among us, the custom of having a re- 

 ligion." 



Nevertheless, the philosophy he sought 

 seems to have answered the author's pur- 

 pose, as it showed him that the skepticism 

 he dreaded was not so bad a thing after all. 

 Again he says : " As to the relation of this 

 book to what is called modern doubt, it 

 is a relation neither to blind obedience nor 

 of unsympathetic rejection. The doctrine 

 of philosophic idealism here propounded is 

 not what in these days is popularly called 

 agnosticism. Yet doubting everything is 



once for all a necessary element in the or- 

 ganism of philosophic reflection. What is 

 here dwelt upon over and over again is, 

 however, the consideration that the doubts 

 of our time are not to be apologetically ' re- 

 futed,' in the old-fashioned sense, but that, 

 taken just as they are, fully and cordially 

 received, they are upon analysis found to 

 contain and imply a positive and important 

 religious creed, bearing both upon conduct 

 and upon reality. Not to have once thor- 

 oughly accepted as necessary the great phil- 

 osophic doubts and problems of our day, is 

 simply not to have philosophized as a man 

 of this age. But to have accepted these 

 doubts without in time coming to accept the 

 positive truth that is concealed in them, is 

 to treat them as the innocent favorite of 

 fortune in a fairy tale always at first treats 

 his magic gift. It is something common and 

 dingy, and he lays it carelessly away in his 

 empty house, feeling poorer than ever. But 

 see : handle it rightly, and the fairy gift fills 

 your transfigured home with a wealth of 

 gems and gold, and spreads for you a won- 

 drous banquet. To the author has come the 

 fancy that modern doubt may be some such 

 fairy gift as this, and he would like to sug' 

 gest to some reader what may possibly prove 

 the right fashion of using the talisman." 



More light is thrown upon the author's 

 position by a passage from his introductory 

 chapter, where he remarks : " The short and 

 easy agnostic method is not enough you 

 must supplement skepticism by philosophy ; 

 and when you do so, you will find yourself 

 forced to accept, not indeed the old theology 

 of your childhood, but something that satis- 

 fies oddly enough certain religious longings 

 that, as skeptic, you had carefully tried to 

 forget. Then you'll find yourself with what 

 you may have to call a religious doctrine ; 

 and then you may have to state it as we are 

 here going to do, not in an easy or fascinat- 

 ing way, such as the pure skeptic can so 

 well follow, but at all events with some ap- 

 proach to a serious and sustained effort to 

 consider hard questions from many sides. 

 The skeptical method is not only a good but 

 also a necessary beginning of religious phi- 

 losophy. But we are bound to go deeper 

 than mere superficial agnosticism." 



From these quotations the reader will 

 be able to form some tolerable conception 



