The Religious Aspect of Philosophy/Chapter 10

by Josiah Royce

CHAPTER X.

IDEALISM.

Εἰς τὸν ὅλον οὐρανὸν ἀποβλέψας τὸ ἓν εἶναί φησι τὸν θεόν.

Aristotle, concerning the doctrine of Xenophanes.

Still we are seeking the Eternal. Postulates about it we must indeed make, or else we shall do nothing. But can we not go beyond the mere postulates? Is there no other road open to the heart of things? In fact many other ways have been suggested. The religiously interesting efforts towards a suggestion of such ways have been the special work of philosophical Idealism in the past. Let us then see to what results philosophical Idealism offers to lead us.

I.

“The world of dead facts is an illusion. The truth of it is a spiritual life.” That is what philosophical idealism says. This spiritual life may be defined in many ways. But the multitude of the ways of defining it do not altogether obscure the sense of the doctrine. Plato and St. Augtistine and Berkeley and Fichte and Hegel give us very various accounts of the spiritual life that is to be at the heart of things, but they agree about the general thought. As to the proof of the doctrine, very many writers have presented this idealism as a sort of prod- uct of poetical fantasy, and have thereby helped to bring it into disrepute. We profess no such enthu- siasm. If we are to give any foundation for our postulates by means of an idealistic doctrine, then this foundation must be no mere poetic fancy, but a well-framed philosophic doctrine, able to stand crit- icism, and to satisfy very unemotional aims, as well as the higher moral aims themselves. But if ideal- ism is to receive rigid theoretical tests, we may still, in view of our present discussion and its needs, be helped on our way more directly if we first consider very generally and briefly what idealism could do for us if it were established, thereafter going on to the theoretical consideration of its claims.

That the Eternal is a world of spiritual life is what the idealists of the past have maintained, and the religious force of their doctrine lay not so much in the insight that was thus offered concerning the nature of the powers that are in the world, as in an- other insight. Just here idealistic doctrine and its outcome has been seldom comprehended, even by the idealists themselves. The world, merely viewed as a heap of warring Powers, cannot be a world of spiritual life. If the real world is nevertheless a world of such spiritual life, it must be so because, beyond and above the Powers, there is this higher spiritual Life that includes them and watches over them as the spectator watches the tragedy, — a Life in which they live and move and have their being. The characters in a tragedy do not constitute as war- ring powers, in their separate existence, the signifiPage:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/360 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/361 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/362 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/363 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/364 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/365 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/366 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/367 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/368 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/369 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/370 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/371 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/372 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/373 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/374 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/375 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/376 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/377 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/378 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/379 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/380 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/381 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/382 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/383 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/384 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/385 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/386 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/387 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/388 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/389 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/390 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/391 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/392 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/393 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/394 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/395 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/396 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/397 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/398 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/399 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/400 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/401 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/402 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/403 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/404 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/405 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/406 Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/407 late, when we have a more serious doctrine behind. The inveterate prejudices and misunderstandings to which idealistic theories fall prey, furnish our excuse for trying to reconcile ourselves to an imperfect form of idealism as a mere postulate, before going on to set forth an absolute idealism as a demonstrable theory.