272 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



14. 

 Historical 

 point of 

 view. 



or religious belief as a peculiar side of the inner life. 

 This point of view deals not so much with spiritual 

 truths as with the nature and essence of religion and 

 spiritual life as subjective mental phenomena. 



These two prominent positions, identified with the 

 names of Kant and Schleiermacher, were taken up before 

 the historical spirit and philological criticism had at- 

 tained that great hold upon German research and 

 learning which has been such a characteristic feature of 

 them during the later and greater part of the nineteenth 

 century.^ When this influence had been firmly estab- 

 lished, a third point of view was gained from which to 

 study religious and spiritual phenomena. From this 

 point of view was conducted that enormous volume of 

 research into the history of religion and of religious 



^ These two aspects of the 

 religious ijroblem may be identi- 

 fied respectively with the two 

 terms Religious Philosophy and 

 Philosophy of Religion. The dis- 

 tinction implied is analogous to 

 that in ethics, which may be con- 

 sidered either as the exposition of 

 a code of morality or as a doctrine 

 and theory of the moral sense, the 

 feeling of obligation. If, with 

 Kant and others, we define the 

 moral sense as the sense of obliga- 

 tion, and with Schleiermacher the 

 religious sense as the feeling of 

 absolute dependence, then a further 

 question arises in both instances. 

 In the first, the question would be : 

 To whom or to what are we under 

 the sense of obligation ? in the 

 second, on whom or on what are we 

 absolutely dependent? And this 

 question leads in both cases to a 

 systematic or metaphysical treat- 

 ment, whereas the investigation of 

 the moral and of the religious sense 



is mainly psychological. In both 

 cases we have a further and more 

 recent development : the historical 

 account of the moral and of the 

 religious consciousness of mankind, 

 and, following out of this, a tend- 

 ency, rightly or wrongly, to decide 

 as to the validity and value of moral 

 and religious doctrine through an 

 investigation of their origin and 

 beginnings. It seems that in 

 France Philosophy of Religion, as 

 distinguished from Religious Phil- 

 osophy, is of quite recent date, 

 almost synchronous with the exist- 

 ence of the 'Revue de Meta- 

 physique et de Morale.' Earlier 

 writings, such as de Remusat's 

 little treatise on 'Religious Phil- 

 osophy in France and England,' 

 quoted above, identified religious 

 philosophy with what is otherwise 

 termed Natural Religion or Natural 

 Theology, a philosophical treatment 

 of fundamental religious beliefs. 



