Nineteenth-Century Science and Religion ijj 



shall we distinguish the legitimate passages from those which are 

 arbitrary ? It is very dangerous to trust to inspiration, because all 

 subjective imaginations can be justified in that way. 



If the illative sense is infallible, as Newman asserts, why do not 

 men furnished with one and the same moral conscience all arrive 

 equally at the same religion ? How can we explain the existence 

 of so many different religious professions, even in men who agree 

 among themselves in moral feelings ? Ought not the illative 

 sense, beginning with these, to arrive always at the same conclusion 

 if it is really infallible ? We cannot maintain that Christians alone 

 have the privilege of morality, others too could assert that their 

 particular religious creed is a development of that which was con- 

 tained potentially in the moral conscience by virtue of the illative 

 sense. 



In this way we are sure to fall into subjectivity. We shall 

 never have the right to say that one inspiration is true in preference 

 to another while we lack some objective criterion of judgement. 

 Nor does Blondel's method of action succeed any better in makng 

 us overcome subjectivism. First of all from the fact that our will 

 never succeeds in satisfying itself in the world of phenomena, it is 

 not right to argue that there must be an object such as to satisfy it 

 fully. Who authorises us to exclude the idea that our individual 

 life must not instead develop without ever reaching the desired 

 goal ? It must not of necessity exist because there is need of it. 

 Could not the ideal at which the will aims be inexhaustible and 

 therefore unable to effect itself completely ? Everything which 

 is willed need not of necessity exist ; nor, on the other hand, do 

 things exist solely in so far as they are willed. Blondel founds all 

 his philosophy on an entirely arbitrary equation, that " to exist " 

 equals " to be willed." 



On the other hand, not only do other beings exist, but we our- 

 selves exist, even in despite of our will. Perhaps that which we 

 must endure passively is not real because we have never succeeded 

 in dominating it .? It is exactly the contrary ; at the very point 

 where we fpel external compulsion most strongly there is a more 

 evident sign of objective, independent reality. 



The assertion of existence from the desire of something cannot 

 and must not be confused with the desire for that same thing. We 

 do not recognise the existence of our Ego, of our ideas, or of our 

 feelings, by being convinced that all this does not depend on our 



