Marcu 26, 1914] 
NATURE 81 
SUPERNATURAL RELIGION. 
(1) Modern Substitutes for Traditional Christianity. 
By Edmund McClure. Pp. vilit145. (Lon- 
Bon: Shee ine eiol3.) Price 25.: net: 
(2) Modern Rationalism as Seen at Work in its 
Biographies. By Canon Henry Lewis. Pp. x 
Pais. (lemon 5.P.C. Ke T9n3.) Price 4s. 
net. 
(3) All Men are Ghosts. By L. P. Jacks. Pp. 1x 
+ 360. (London: Williams and Norgate, 1913.) 
Price. 5s. nets 
(4) The Latest Light on 
Py S: P..,Gandcock. 
Sab.C. K., 19%.) 
Bible Lands. By 
Pp. xii+ 371. (London: 
Price 6s. net. 
(5) The Divine Mystery. By Allen Upward. Pp. 
xv+ 309. (Letchworth: Garden City Press, 
Hie. Tora jee rice tos. 6d2net. 
HE realities of spiritualistic belief are, 
so far, psychological, subjective. The | 
“ 
pathetic paradox about its “apologetics” (science 
though this styles itself) is that it claims for its 
realities not only an objective, but a physical, 
existence. The apologist who condemns “ mechan- 
istic”? and “materialistic”? conceptions of the 
universe in the same breath introduces a series 
of super-mechanism and super-matter. Science 
can do nothing with spiritual entities until they 
are proved to exist objectively; when this is 
proved, then they become part of the subject- 
matter of -science, and, therefore, part of the 
“stuff”? of the universe. Matter and mechanism 
are good terms, but the spiritualist rages at them. 
The world-substance must be designated by some 
convenient term; one may ‘serve as well as 
another; but it is absurd to object to a term 
because its popular significance suggests solidity 
and excludes mind. 
It is a curious fact that the religion of Western 
Europe, which from its birth has had an uninter- 
rupted career of success, should have been, from 
the first, “‘apologetic.” Christianity certainly 
marked a development of the social consciousness ; 
but it seems as if this apologetic attitude repre- 
sented a certain mistrust of the spiritualistic 
material which this last of the old-world religions, 
and the first and only of the new world, carries 
with it, apparently as an essential! content. The 
religious impulse is a fact of the emotional life, 
and with the majority of men requires expression. 
But Buddhism and Confucianism prove that the 
religious impulse may be satisfied with a subject- 
matter that is not supernatural or spiritualistic. 
If this is so, and if the Christian consciousness is 
at all mistrustful of traditional supernaturalism, 
then there is inevitably an air of insincerity about 
apologetics. 
NO. 2aig, VOL. 93 
(1) Canon McClure, in an interesting sketch of 
some modern variations of the supernaturalist 
point of view, uses the language of science. 
Miracles, for instance, are “like the mutations 
or the ‘sports’ of modern Darwinism.” This is 
good metaphor, but ‘‘ metaphors are not reasons.” 
He quotes an instance of a frequent temptation 
to use new scientific discoveries, which have 
changed our views of matter, as an argument for 
the objective reality of the supernatural :— 
“The very active ‘ things ’ which give the atom 
being are called electrons, and the point of inter- 
est to religiously minded people is this, that we 
have, in these electrons, according to an investi- 
gator of world-wide reputation, the nearest analogy 
to the concept of a disembodied spirit, that is, a 
charge of electricity pure and simple.” 
This seems childish; at least, it has no bearing 
on the argument, and does not help us “to recog- 
nise more fully than before that nature and revela- 
tion are not in antagonism.” The neo-vitalism of 
Bergson is metaphysical, not scientific. It is re- 
garded by Canon McClure, together with James’s 
similar speculations, as a strong buttress to tradi- 
tional Christianity. The old religion is better and 
saner than the modern “substitutes”; why, then, 
should apologists waste time in trying to prove 
the material reality of the subject-matter of its 
creed? The permanence of the religious impulse 
is not, as this author thinks, a proof of the “valid- 
ity” (i.e. material reality) of supernatural entities ; 
it is a proof of the validity of the religious impulse. 
This, surely, is enough. The mysticism of 
Eucken, and the superman of Nietzsche, “ theo- 
sophy”? and “Christian science,” “secularism re 
and “rationalism,” are well described and “re- 
futed.” It is curious that they should need refuta- 
tion by a Christian apologist. 
(2) Canon Lewis treats of the life and death of 
famous “rationalists” or “agnostics” by way of 
showing that the religious temperament produces 
finer characters than does the agnostic. Voltaire, 
Paine, J. S. Mill, Renan, Bradlaugh, Spencer, 
| Nietzsche, Goethe, Schopenhauer, George Sand, 
Shelley, Huxley, George Eliot, Sidgwick, 
Romanes, and others are described, with em- 
phasis on their moments of dissatisfaction and 
despair, and with full details of the meannesses of 
which one or two were guilty. Canon Lewis 
seems to think that disbelief in the objective reality 
| of certain tenets of Christianity proves a lack of 
“heart and soul.” It proves nothing of the kind; 
but merely that the person has thought for him- 
self, instead of taking his thinking at second- 
hand. 
(3) ‘“‘Supernaturalism ” has a permanent interest 
for the imagination. The “ghost story” is as 
