THE PRE-REQQISITES OF A CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 223 



it is better to speak of a " deeper " rather than a " higher " level. 

 The quest of this deeper intellectual foundation may not always 

 be the result of pressure from within. Many men, I believe, 

 who have done good work in Philosophy have — without this 

 pressure — courted the disorganization for the sake of ultimate 

 intellectual gain. The Moral Science Tripos has no doubt 

 made, as well as attracted, philosophers. Let it not be assumed 

 that this sense of intellectual oiecessity, however valuable, is a 

 wholly indispensable qualification. But, looking at the matter 

 broadly, I am sure that Philosophy rests on, and responds to, 

 a radical need of cultured human society, and that without it, in 

 any form, our principles would become dead dogmas and our 

 watchwords shibboleths. 



Some minds require to think closely and connectedly and 

 to get back to first principles. The mental worlds of other 

 people may hang together without that, but not theirs. It is 

 no use telling them to settle their doubts by " common sense." 

 That only means bluff. Common sense was given to us for our 

 dealings in the common things of life, and not to intrude upon 

 Philosophy any more than upon Geology or Physics. 



Now let us ask our third question : "What is the Material of 

 Philosophy and the nature of its task ? " What is that range of 

 ideas that it must order and unify ? Clearly, the broadest and 

 most comprehensive, such as Life, Spirit, Personality, Cause, the 

 Universe, Matter, Necessity, Freedom, and so forth. Such ideas 

 are full of difficulties and apparent contradictions when we 

 begin to scrutinize them : for instance, there is the well-known 

 antithesis of Freedom and Law ; there are the apparently rival 

 claims of Eeason and Intuition, and of Soul and Body. And 

 there are countless more, when we dig deeper. 



All these terms clearly have a close bearing upon Religion. And 

 here we can see how Philosophy, so far from properly resting on 

 abstractions, has before it the task of abolishing them as abstrac- 

 tions: the task of uniting them together in their true unity. 

 Theistic Philosophy has to maintain that mechanism without 

 Will behind it is a meaningless abstraction : that so is Spirit or 

 Will without Personality, as against various forms of quasi- 

 Theism. Berkeley attacked the Materialists by seeking to prove 

 that Matter is an empty fiction, and that Spirit is the sole 

 reality. He partly failed, because he went too far, but he has 

 shown the fallacy of confusing Matter with Material. If, instead 

 of denying the reality of Matter, and regarding sensations per se as 

 the stuff of material objects, he had set out to prove that Matter is 

 but an abstract idea, real only as an element in our analysis of the 



