In fact, inclination and will, not objective truth, are the measure and norm of free-thought. This Paulsen again expresses with astonishing candour. According to him, intelligence is after all nothing else than a transformation of the will, this doctrine is rooted in the more modern voluntaristic monism, and is akin to subjectivism. If our cognition itself forms its object, then the real concept of cognition has been lost to us, and in its place we have the will determining the action even of the intellect. Paulsen says emphatically, Intelligence is an instrument of the will in the service of preservation of life Perhaps it can be said that even the elementary formations of thought, the logical and metaphysical forms of reality, are already codetermined by the will. If the forms of abstract thought are at all the result of biological evolution, then this must be accepted: they are formations and conceptions of reality, which have proved effective and life-preserving, and have therefore attained their object. The principle of identity is in reality not a mere statement, not an indicative, but an imperative: A is A; that is, what I have put down as A shall be A and remain A If this be so, if thought and cognition be determined fundamentally by the will, then it is altogether unintelligible how it might finally turn against the will, and force upon it a view against its will (Kant's Verhaeltniss zur Metaphysik, 1900, p. 31 f.).
We have to do here with a confusion of ideas possible only when correct reasoning has sunk to a surprisingly low level. To think with the will, to draw conclusions with intention, is degenerate thinking. But now we understand better what is meant by autonomy of thought. It gives man license to disregard by shallow reasoning everything that clashes with his own will. What I have put down as A shall be A and remain A!
It is now clear that subjectivism and autonomism in thinking are rooted in the positive disregard of objective truth, in the refusal of an unconditional subjection to it; they mean emancipation from the truth. Here we have the most striking and deepest difference between modern subjectivistic and Christian objective thought. The latter adheres to the old conviction that our thoughts do not make the truth, but are subject to an objective order of things as a norm. For this reason autonomous freedom and subjective caprice, a manner of reasoning that would approach truth as a lawgiver, and even change it according to time and circumstance, are unintelligible in the Christian objective thought. This thought submits unselfishly to truth wherever met, be it without a divine revelation or with it, if the revelation be but vouched for. And the reward of this unselfishness is the preservation of the truth.
But subjectivism, with its freedom, leads inevitably to the loss of the truth; it is scepticism in principle, in fact, if my thoughts are not a counterpart of an objective world, but only a subjectively produced image; not knowledge of an external reality, but only a figment of the imagination, a projection, then I can have no assurance that they are more than an empty dream.
The Modern Separation of Knowledge and Faith
Of course it would be too much to expect that subjectivism in modern thought and scientific work should go to the very limit, viz., to disregard all reasoning, to advance at will any theory whatever, to silence disagreeable critics by merely referring to one's autonomy in thinking, and denying that any one can attain to absolute truth. Errors in empirical speculation never prosper as others do; the power of natural evidence asserts itself at every step, and tears down the artificial cobwebs of apparently scientific scepticism. It asserts itself less strongly where the opposing power of natural evidence is weaker, than is the case in matters of actual sense-experience. Here indeed one sees the objective reality before him, which he cannot fashion according to his caprice. The astronomer has no thought of creating his own starry sky, nor does the archæologist wish to create out of his own mind the history of ancient nations. They both desire to know and to reveal the reality. But in the suprasensible sphere, in dealing with questions of the whence and whither of human life, where there is question of religion and morals, there autonomy and scepticism assert themselves as though they were in their own country, there the free-thinker steps in, boasting of his independence and taking for his motto the axiom of ancient sophistry: the measure of all things is man.
Here at the same time the natural product of subjectivism, sceptic agnosticism, has full sway. In such matters, we are told, there is no certain truth; nothing can be proved, nothing refuted: they are all matters of faith not faith, of course, in the Catholic sense. The latter is the acceptance by reason of recognized divine testimony, hence an act of the intellect. The modern so-called faith, on the contrary, is not an act of the intellect, but is supposed to be a vague feeling, a want, a longing and striving after the divine in one's innermost soul, which divine is then to be grasped by the soul in some mysterious way as something immediately present in it. This feeling is said to emerge from the subconsciousness of the soul, and to raise in the mind those images and symbols which we encounter in the doctrines of the various religions, varying according to times and men. They are only the symbols for that unutterable experience of the divine, which can be as little expressed by definitions and tenets as sounds can by colour. It is a conviction of the ideal and divine, but different from the conviction of reason; it is an inner, actual experience. Hence there can no longer be absolute religious truth, no unchangeable dogmas, which would have to be adhered to forever. In religion, in views of the world and life, the free feeling of the human subject holds sway, a feeling that experiences and weaves together those thoughts and ideals that are in accord with his individuality. This is the modern doctrine.
The dark mysticism of the ancient East and the agnosticism of modern times here join hands. This modern method of separating knowledge and faith is, as we all know, a prominent feature of modern thought. Knowledge, that is, cognition by reason, is said to exist only in the domain of the natural sciences and history. Of what may be beyond these we can have no true knowledge. Here, too, Kant has led the way; for the important result of his criticism is his incessant injunction: we can have true knowledge only of empiric objects, never of things lying beyond the experience of the senses; our ideas are merely subjective constructions of the reason which obtain weight and meaning only by applying them to objects of sense experiment. Hence God, immortality, freedom, and the like, remain forever outside the field of our theoretical or cognitive reason. Nevertheless Kant did not like to drop these truths. Hence he constructed for himself a conviction of another kind. The practical reason is to guide man's action in accomplishing the task in which her more timid sister, theoretical reason, failed. And it does it, too. It simply postulates these truths; they are its postulates, since without them moral life and moral order, which it is bound to recognize, would be impossible. No one knows, of course, whether this be truth, but it ought to be truth. Stat pro ratione voluntas. The Gordian knot is cut. It is so, the will now cries from the depths of the soul, I believe it; while the intellect stands hesitatingly by protesting I don't know whether it is so or not. Doubt and conviction embrace each other; Yes and No meet peacefully. I had to suspend knowledge, Kant suggests, in order to make room for faith (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 2. Vorrede). It is an exigency of pure practical reason based on duty, he further comments on his postulate, to make something the highest good, the object of my will, in order to further it with all my power. Herein, however, I have to assume its possibility, and therefore its conditions, viz., God, freedom, and immortality, because I cannot prove them by speculative reason, nor yet disprove them. Thus the just man may say I wish that there be a God; I insist upon it, I will not have my faith taken from me (Kritik der prakt. Vernunft, 1. Teil, 2. Buch, 2 VIII).
Others have followed the lead of Kant. For philosophers, Protestant theologians, and modernists, he has become the pilot in whom they trust.
Kant's critical philosophy, says Paulsen, gives to knowledge what belongs to it the entire world of phenomena, for the freest investigation; on the other hand, it gives to faith its eternal right, viz., the interpretation of life and the world according to their value(Immanuel Kant, 1898, 6). Faith does not simply rest upon proofs, but upon practical necessity; it does not come from the intellect, but from the heart and will (Einleitung in die Philosophie, 10th ed., 1903, 271, 269). Religion is not a science, hence it cannot be proved nor disproved. Therefore man's view of the world does not depend on the intellect, but solely on his will The ultimate and highest truths, truths by which man lives and for which he dies, have not their source in scientific knowledge, but come from the heart and from the individual will. In a similar strain R. Falkenberg writes: The views of the world growing out of the chronology of the human race, as the blossoms of a general process of civilization, are not so much thoughts as rhythms of thinking, not theories but views, saturated with appreciations Not only optimism and pessimism, determinism and doctrine of freedom, but also pantheism and individualism, idealism and materialism, even rationalism and sensualism, have their roots ultimately in the affections, and even while working with the tools of reason remain for the most part matters of faith, sentiment, and resolve (Geschichte der neuen Philosophie, 5th ed., 1905, p. 3).
You may look up any books or magazines of modern philosophy or Protestant theology, and you will find in all of them that faith is a kind of conviction for which there is no need of proof (H. Luedemann, Prot. Monatshefte IX, 1903, 367). This emotional faith has been introduced into Protestant theology especially by Schleiermacher. It is also this view of the more recent philosophy that the modernists have adopted. They themselves confess: The modernists in accord with modern psychology distinguish clearly between knowledge and faith. The intellectual processes which lead to them appear to the modernists altogether foreign to and independent of one another. This is one of our fundamental principles (Programma dei Modernisti (1908), 121).
Religious instruction for children will then have to become altogether different. The demand is already made for a recast of thought from the sphere of the intellect into the sphere of affection. Away, so they clamour, away with the dogmas of creation, of Christ as the Son of God, of His miracles, as taught in the old schools! For all these are religious ideas. Pupils of the higher grades should be told the plain truth about the degree of historicity in elementary religious principles The fundamental idea of religion can neither be created nor destroyed by teaching, it has its seat in sentiment, like excuse the term an insane idea (Fr. Niebergall, Christliche Welt, 1909, p. 43).
This dualism of faith and knowledge is as untenable as it is common. It is a psychological impossibility as well as a sad degradation of religion.
How can I seriously believe, and seriously hold for true, a view of the world of which I do not know whether it be really true, when the intellect unceasingly whispers in my ear: it is all imagination! As long as faith is a conviction so long must it be an activity of the intellect. With my feeling and will I may indeed wish that something be true; but to wish simply that there be a God is not to be convinced that there actually is a God. By merely longing and desiring I can be as little convinced as I can make progress in virtue by the use of my feet, or repent of sins by a toothache. It is μετβασις ες λλο γνος. A dualism of this kind, between head and heart, doubt and belief, between the No of the mind and the Yes of the heart, is a process incompatible with logic and psychology. How could such a dualism be maintained for any length of time? It may perhaps last longer in one in whom a vivid imagination has dimmed the clearness of intellect; but where the intellectual life is clear, reason will very soon emancipate itself from a deceptive imagination. One may go on dreaming of ideal images, but as soon as the intellect awakens they vanish. Hallucinations are taken for real while the mind is affected, but they pass away the moment it sees clearly.
Kant himself, the father of modern agnostic mysticism, has made it quite clear that his postulates of faith concerning the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, have never taken in him the place of earnest conviction. Thus in the first place Kant holds that there are no duties towards God, since He is merely a creature of our mind. Since this idea proceeds entirely from ourselves, and is a product of ours, we have here before us a postulated being towards whom we cannot have an obligation; for its reality would have to be proved first by experience (or revealed); but to have religion is a duty man owes to himself. Again, he dislikes an oath, he asks whether an oath be possible and binding, since we swear only on condition that there is a God (without, however, stipulating it, as did Protagoras). And he thinks that in fact all oaths taken honestly and discreetly have been taken in no other sense (Metaphysik der Sitten, II, § 18, Beschluss).
Prayer he dislikes still more. Prayer, he says, as an internal form of cult, and therefore considered as a means of grace, is a superstitious delusion (feticism) A hearty wish to please God in all our actions, that is, a disposition present in all our actions to perform them as if in the service of God, is a spirit of prayer that can and ought to be our perpetual guide. By this desire, the spirit of prayer, man seeks to influence only himself; by prayer, since man expresses himself in words, hence outwardly, he seeks to influence God. In the former sense a prayer can be made with all sincerity, though man does not pretend to assert the existence of God fully established; in the latter form, as an address, he assumes this highest Being as personally present, or at least pretends that he is convinced of its presence, in the belief that even if it should not be so it can do him no harm, on the contrary it may win him favour; hence in the latter form of actual prayer we shall not find the sincerity as perfect as in the former. The truth of this last remark any one will find confirmed when he imagines to himself a pious and well-meaning man, but rather backward in regard to such advanced religious ideas, surprised by another man while, I will not say praying aloud, but only in an attitude of prayer; any one will expect, without my saying so, that that man will be confused, as if he were in a condition of which he ought to be ashamed. But why this? A man caught talking aloud to himself raises at once the suspicion that his mind is slightly deranged; and not altogether wrongly, because one would seem out of mind if found all alone making gestures as though he had somebody else before him; that, however, is the case in the example given (Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, 4. Stueck, 2, § 4, Allgemeine Anmerkung). Thus it happens that in his opinion those who have advanced in perfection cease to pray.
Nor does it seem that Kant is serious about his postulate of the immortality of the soul. Asked by Lacharpe what he thought of the soul, he did not answer at first, but remarked, when the question was repeated: We must not make too much boast of it (H. Hettner, Literat. Gesch. des 18. Jahrh., III, 4. ed., 3, p. 26. From Varnhausen'sDenkwuerdigkeiten).