If I were to state in one word the message of this series of studies it would be that the religious consciousness of today is not an adventitious growth, merely modelled more or less generally upon the social life of various levels of culture, but rather an organic part of the great process of human development, built up in exactly the same way that human society has integrated, and capable of being interpreted satisfactorily only by constant reference to the social matrix within which it was formed.

THE MORAL ARGUMENT OF THEISM

GEORGE A. BARROW

MILFORD, MASS.

Construction rather than destruction is, in its time and place, a good motto, but to attempt a reconstruction without first clearing the ground is likely to make the resulting building unstable. In the last quarter-century we have been attacking one by one the received views in theology, and now we are ready for constructive work, but unfortunately, as many students know who are in theological seminaries, even some marked as "liberal," there is little fundamental criticism of the general basis of theism. Theology has made use of the philosophical progress, but has made comparatively little advance in its own field. So we find the traditional arguments for God's existence repeated in only very slightly modified form. It is in the attempt to bring home to us the necessity for a thorough-going criticism that this examination of one of the traditional arguments for God's existence has been undertaken.

It is well, to begin with, to restate the "moral argument" from a non-theistic point of view, to see what it means when put in words that do not imply its results. If the existence of morality in the world proves the existence of God, it is because morality involves the fundamental categories of being. If it does involve them, it is at least as fundamental a part of real being as the nonmoral or physical world. We could rest here, if the two were two separate compartments of reality, each contributing its part. Instead, they are closely interrelated. What we do as moral beings affects physical nature, at the least moves our bodies; and physical nature, as represented by our bodies, aids or hinders our moral actions. If, then, morality involves as much of real being as does physical existence, or even more than as much, and if that real being is, as theism declares, one, then the two are in harmony, and the morality is a component part of the same world with the physical life. This view requires that physical

life shall not, in the last analysis, make morality impossible. That is the same as saying that the moral will shall have power to exist in the physical world. This statement of the problem shows it to be even more important than as a merely additional proof of the existence of God. We have to ask whether the fact and nature of morality prove that existence must be such that life is explainable only by One who is self-existent good, the guarantor of the power of morality in physical life.

We have, in treating first the nature of morality, to make somewhat clearer the idea of the morally good, and to inquire whether it involves power over the physical. For our purpose it is enough to point out that it is a human concept, that it involves the conscious will, that it is a social concept, and that it is finite, yet not necessarily involving physical powers.

man

In the first place, it originates with man. The conception of good comes to us from the life of man. We do apply the terms good and bad to physical events, but only when those events affect man. To call an earthquake evil, simply because it caused loss to man, when it may be the necessary outcome of conditions and the necessary preliminary to further events, is correct only if the good of the universe is coincident with the good of To assume that it is so, is to beg the question. All that is essential in the idea of good is that it take account in some way of man's needs. Historically, the moral ideas have originated only among men. Even the highest animals below man seem to have no idea of it. Also good implies the existence of purpose and knowledge of an end. Nowhere in the universe known to us, outside of man, do we find anything but causal sequences. Animals seem not to have reflective actions. But even if they have, it would but extend morality to them, not to inanimate nature. What is good, then, if it is to be existent, must be found in that part of the world where man exists. If the concept then proves to include all existence, all is well, but it must be shown to be thus all-inclusive. The good, starting from the ideas of man's duty and best aim in life, can hardly be taken to imply good in everything. A concept cannot rise higher than its source. Of the things which man possesses in common with all existence, the idea derived from his experience will be valid for all, but in

those things which are peculiar to man the concepts must be limited by the limited field from which they are derived. Good, as a concept, does not include inanimate nature, so yields no inference as to any relation to it.

In the second place, the concept is one of will. If will ceases to exist, then the good must cease to exist. This brings to light the fact that the good must inhere in a will. We have too long dissociated the process and the result. The only thing that gives any concrete good its existence is that it is the object of some conscious will. It is because we must will something that the question, what is best to will, arises. If there is no will, there is no question, and no idea of good. In the world, then, where there is no conscious will, and only as such is the physical world known to us, there can be no self-existent good. What relation there is, is for metaphysics to say; it is not a deduction from the nature of good. The nature of the concept of good as involving conscious will also yields us no inference as to any power over non-conscious nature.

Thirdly, it is a social concept. To the possible objection that our argument about the origin of the idea of good with man has seeming validity only because of its confusion of the historical and genetic with the logical, we reply that the two cannot be entirely separated. Of course we cannot take the earliest forms of morality and call them typical, but neither can we take the moral ideals to concern simply the individual, when they have their principal significance only in the larger world where the individual must sink his private good for the good of the whole. The formal concept of the self-existent good must be a social concept. "Good for something" must tag every act of the human individual. It is only society which can enshrine a larger vision. But the will of society is even more held down to earth than the will of the individual. Unless we accept a theory of thoughttransference, and this is hardly inherent in any ethical system, the social will must be mediated in terms of time and space. The good-in-itself, depending on the existence of some will, and effective only through a social will, can hardly rise and dominate those very laws of time, space, and causality in the physical world by which alone it can have being. To argue that it does, requires

the assumption that the whole universe is essentially moral. Again we are moving in a circle, and begging the question. The social nature of the idea of good, as well as the two former aspects, can yield no encouragement in an attempt to prove power over physical nature.

In the fourth place, morality is a finite idea. On the purely formal side, the good is not that which exists, but that which ought to exist. If placed in the world of time, it must lie in the future. Future finite existence depends for man on his will and purpose. Even the absolute good, then, to exist finitely, must depend on the creative will, and this, as we have seen, does not help the argument to prove power in the physical realm, and the existence of God. But of course, we are answered, it is eternal and infinite existence that the self-existent good possesses, and this is outside the world of time. Undoubtedly the fact that man seeks, requires that in the eternal world there shall exist the goal sought, whether attained or not. But here our objectors, if they wish their distinction to bear on our problem, miss the meaning of "exist in the world of eternity." Anything, we grant, which is necessarily implied in any existent thing, exists in the infinite timeless realm. But it exists there only because, logically, it first has also its foot in the world of our experience. Our dreams are facts of that larger universe, but only because they are somebody's dreams. In the same way the final goal of our endeavors has being, and being in itself,-it exists for nothing but itself, but it has that kind of existence only because as such it is the goal of an existent finite will. Its timeless existence depending on its finiteness, it cannot cut loose and claim independence. There is, then, no help here toward any necessary infinite existence.

In the fifth place, moral good does not necessarily involve physical nature. It is perfectly possible to conceive that the good for man is not the good for the rest of the universe. This is really the underlying idea of a good deal of popular religion in all ages. Man must subdue the hostile world; man must endure a pilgrimage in the world with such help as God gives, in order to be finally taken from the world,—these ideas by no means assume that the physical universe is moral. They imply the opposite,