256 PRESENT-DAY RATIONALISM 



and concrete are brought violently into contrast ; thus, 

 to avoid being either too suspicious or too credulous when 

 attending a spiritualistic seance, you should try to " /ii^ 

 the happy medium ". 



With regard to the preceding and all other kinds of 

 " play of our feelings " the author quoted says : " We 

 know that any explanation lies within the realm of 

 physiology"; but physiology and psychology are only 

 names for co-ordinated observations on the phenomena of 

 life. What is it which has primarily caused the pheno- 

 mena which we group under the terms of physiology and 

 psychology? All the examination of brain and nerves 

 would never have suggested the results of pleasure and 

 enjoyment, of wit, fun and laughter and all the aesthetic 

 pleasures. 



The author makes the postulate, "given life and 

 feeling," then everything else follows. Possibly so ; but 

 Who first gave the Life and the Feeling ? 



We have now seen what a Rationalist has to say about 

 the senses and God. The Monist Haeckel declares that 

 there is no God ; while Secularists and Agnostics assert : 

 " I do not know what you mean by the term. There 

 may be one but the word God conveys nothing to my 

 mind " (Bradlaugh). 



Now let us turn to a Metaphysician. The latest 

 exponent of a conception of God is given in a work by 

 Mr. Herbert Rix.^ 



He begins by saying that there is " the need of a 

 Faith " ; a statement which no one will dispute ; and he 

 recognises enthusiasm, as in art, etc., as worthy of the 

 name of religion. In this he has followed the late Sir J. 

 Seeley in his Natural Religion ; but this is jiot what 



^ A Dawning Faith, or The World as a Spiritual Organism (1903). 



