The sun., 1909-02-21

What. then. are the chief forces OF
? Western civilization as Baron Hdgel
would define themy Summing up the
: purport of his first fifty pages he points
out that there is, first. the ancient Greek
. contribution, chiefly Intellectual and
= aesthetic, mostly cold and clear, quick and
conclusive with upon the whole but a
slight apprehension Of personality and
freedom Of conscience and Of sin, and
little or no sense Of the difference and an
tagonsn between these realities on the
one hand and simply mathematical, me-
e chanical laws and concepts on the other.
. He finds this Hellenic view profoundly
abstract and at bottom determinist: the
. will follows the intellect necessarily In
r exact proportion to the clearness OF in
formation given 10 the former. THE
strength OF this view, which was possible
even to that gifted Hellenic race only
because of the restrctedness of its knowl-
edge concerning the length and breadth
of nature and Of history, and still more
with regard TO the depths of the human
character and conscience. consists in its
freshness. completeness and unity Our
author feels that this ideal Of an ultimate
harmoniZation of our entire life and Of
its theory we ought never 10 lose. more
and more difficult though realization Of
il has of necessity become.
Next in order of time there is the Chris
tian contribution. directly moral and re-
Rgious, deep and dim and tender. slow
and far reaching, immensely costly,
infinitely strong; with its discovery ana
c1empliAcation Of the mysterious depth
and range and complexity of human
personality and freedom of conscience
and Of sin, view profoundly concrete
and at bottom libertarian. The good
b will here first precedes and then out
% strips and determines the information
supplied by the intellect: Blessed are
tla clean Of heart for they shall see God.
The strength of this position consists
. in its being primarily not a view but a
lie, a spiritual religious life, requiring.
Implying, indeed proclaiming definite
+, doctrines concerning God and man and
heir relations to each other, but never
ey hausted b. these doctrines even in
..tacir coiiectiyity, insXhaustible though
these in their turn are, by their union
'twfth tho life Of the spirit. their origin
sand end.
There is. finally. the modern scientific
contr .butiou, intensely impersonal and
daterminist, directly neither metaphysi-
Cd nor religious, but more abstract even
than the Greek view, in the nathema, cal
constituent Of its method. and more con-
crete in a sense than Christianity itself.
in the other constituent, the sensible ex-
y pertinent constituent Of its method The
most undeniable of distractions, those Of
mathematics (undeniable just because Of
their enunciation Of nothing but certain
most simple relations between objects,
those OBJ jects being assumed 10 exist,
are by the scientist applied to the most
undeniable Of concretions. the direct
experiences Of the senses" This mys-
terious union, which on the surface is
d. so utterly heterogeneous, is itself at all
explicable only on mental metaphysical
assumptions and on the admission OF the
reality and priority Of mind II is a
union that has turned out az unassaila-
Bile in its own province as IL is incapable
OF suppressing or replacing the wider and
; deeper truths and lives discovered for us
I respectively by Hellenism and Christian
2 ity. Baron Hugel goes on to say that
only in the case that man could but reck on
r mathematicaly and observe with his
senses, or in the case that man were in
deed provided with other faculties but
found reality outside him and within him
to be properly apprehensible be the
nathematioo experimental process alone,
could there be any serious question Of
such a final suppression Of by far the
greater and deeper portion Of himself.
SInstead Of any such deadlock the facts
Of the last four centuries bear out the
contention that neither can the religious
life suppress or do without the philo-
sophical and the scientific. nor can either
.; theae other two lives suppress or per-
manently do without its fellow or without
raligion.'
Thus formulated with relative con-
ciseness are the principles propounded
ip the book before US. Let us glance
, at some of their applications, The au-
thor undertakes an inquiry as TO where
and how the three elements of religion
juA defined appear among the periods
Of mans life, among the human profes-
sons and among the races OF mankind;
then how they succeed each other in his
tory generally; and finally, how they
. erist among the chief types and phases
70 Of IA" Oriental, classic Graco-Roman
= and Judeo- Christian religions. II Ia a
mate of observation that chldrc n
incline to the memory side, TO the exter-