spaces beyond spaces, stars beyond stars, worlds beyond worlds, that is a true expression of the infinite (5th Meditation).

Contemporary Attempts at a Philosophy of Religion.

We do not think it necessary to dwell on the work of contemporary living philosophers. We need merely remark that M. Jules Simon in his work, Religion naturelle (1860), Caro in his Idée de Dieu (1866), Ravaisson in his Rapport sur la philosophie du dix-neuvième siècle (1868), and finally we ourselves in our Causes finales (1876), have all, though with shades of difference, upheld the fundamental idea of Spiritualistic Theism, the idea, that is, of a Perfect Being, who produces the world by an act of love and of freedom.

In a different school, MM. Vacherot and Renan, the former in his Métaphysique et la science, the latter in his various Essais de critique (religious or ethical) maintain that God is nothing but an ideal in the human mind, an ideal which is gradually being realized by the world in its indefinite progress. Hence the formula, which Diderot had already employed: "Perhaps one day God may be." We must add, however, that in his last work, Le nouveau Spiritualisme, M. Vacherot appears to have got beyond this theory, and while upholding the principle of immanence, to come nearer to the theistic doctrine; for he says that “ God is at once the creative and the final cause." Lastly, not to omit any contemporary doctrines, we must mention that of M. Secrétan of Lauzanne, who chooses the doctrine of Descartes for his starting point, and teaches that God is absolute freedom; and that of M. Renouvier, who, following in the footsteps of Kant, repudiates all metaphysical investigation of this matter, and re-establishes the idea of religion on practical grounds.

Conclusion.

Such is the history of modern theodicy. We may now ask, what is the future of this science? Speaking generally, the cause of theodicy is bound up in that of metaphysics. The science of God is part of the science of Being. If we are not to concern ourselves any more with causes and ends, we have no occasion to seek for the ultimate cause or the ultimate end of things. Religion may subsist as a supernatural fact; it will no longer have any place in science.

But such a complete disappearance of metaphysics is extremely improbable. Every time. that metaphysics has been attacked and apparently demolished, it has been found to rise up once more out of its ashes. Greek scepticism was followed by the school of Alexandria, the scepticism of the sixteenth century by the vast dogmatic system of Descartes, Voltaire's scepticism and the criticism of Kant by the great German school of Idealism of this century. After the restrictions of the positivists, we have seen grow out of that same school the great synthetic system of Herbert Spencer, which has only the outward semblance of positivism, and at bottom differs little from the ambitious systems of Schelling and Spinoza. Those who declare that the need for a metaphysic is no longer felt speak for themselves, and do not perceive that there are still a great many minds which are less resigned than ever to ignorance concerning causes and ends.

As for what concerns theodicy proper, we may say that the progress accomplished in our century consists in that the problem of the nature of God has been more thoroughly sifted than ever before, while the antithesis between theism and pantheism has been for the first time clearly defined. The simplification of the problem, the accurate estimate of the merits and defects in both the personalist and impersonalist theories, has been the task accomplished in our century. The divers individual conceptions which have been brought forward, the theories of the Ideal, of Evolution, of Absolute Freedom, are particular phases of the great problem. A science cannot be said to have made no progress when it has succeeded in formulating more consciously than hitherto its fundamental problem.

Is it permissible to say that these two supreme forms of the religious idea, pantheism and theism, may ultimately be reconciled? We would not venture to make such an assertion; and yet it seems to us that the most eminent upholders of either doctrine in its highest form, are inclined to employ a common language. Are not the divine omnipresence which is accepted by all theists, the Cartesian and even the Scholastic doctrine of a continuous creation, the concursus divinus of the theologians, the physical premotion of St. Thomas Aquinas and Bossuet, Malebranche's vision in God-are not, I say, all these theories great concessions in the direction of a certain

divine immanence? And does not St. Paul say: in Deo vivimus, movemur et sumus? and St. John πάντα ἀπ' αὐτοῦ, διὰ αὐτον καὶ ἐξ αὐτοῦ ? What more could be desired by such pantheists as are not atheists ? And the pantheists themselves, do they in their turn identify absolutely and without reservation the two principles, God and the world? Does not Spinoza make a distinction between a natura naturans and a natura naturata? Does not Schelling's theory of a fall place between the finite and the infinite a chasm even greater than that made by the theory of creation ? Is not pantheism brought even nearer to spiritualism when Hegel mentions his own saying that God is spirit as the chief progress made by Philosophy, and as the feature which distinguishes him from Spinoza; and does not Herbert Spencer also say that the power which manifests itself outside consciousness is the same as the power which manifests itself in

consciousness?

It is then not impossible to conceive that, leaving aside the question of the mode of manifestation, that is to say the origin of the world, there might be brought about between the two doctrines a harmony which would consist in that, on the one hand, it would be acknowledged that the highest conceivable form of the supreme principle is the spiritual form, while, on the other hand, the whole of nature is animated and penetrated by this principle, and that without it and beyond it nothing exists. When examined closely and more accurately defined, these doctrines would still be found to be at variance; but the limits of the field of discussion would be marked out and drawn closer, which is the only progress (and it is a real progress) that can be expected in Philosophy as well as in the other sciences; for not one of them has ever yet said the last word on any of the problems with which it is concerned.

CHAPTER III

THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE

ON the subject of a future life, the beliefs of the ancient. Greeks were extremely vague. It is true that Homer depicts a kingdom of shades wherein dwell the souls of men after death. But he describes this kingdom as dark and gloomy: "I should rather," says Achilles, "till the ground under a master than rule over the dead."

Pindar's conception of immortality was more definite and more spiritual: "In the kingdom below the earth there is a judge who pronounces an irrevocable sentence on the guilty. For the just, on the other hand, a pleasant life is brightened by the light of the sun, and those who have faithfully kept their vows spend a peaceful existence, free from fear" (Jules Girard, Le Sentiment religieux chez les Grecs, p. 528).

The first among sages or philosophers to whom this doctrine is ascribed is Pherecydes, who is supposed to have been the master of Pythagoras, "Pherecydes Syrius primus dixit animas hominum esse sempiternas" (Cic. Tusc. I, 16); and the Pythagorean school followed his teaching in this. In the other early schools of Greece, the confusion between the individual and the universal soul, between mind and matter, was too great for the question to arise whether the soul had not a separate destiny. In Heraclitus, however, we find some vague and obscure utterances which touch on this problem : "The gods," he said, are immortal men; men are mortal gods; our life is the death of the gods; our death is their life" (Frag. 60). Elsewhere he says: "Death reserves for souls that which they neither hope for nor believe in" (Frag. 69).

He promises to those who die a glorious death that they will be rewarded (Frag. 120). Thus he appears to have held that those souls which have deserved it return as spirits to a purer life.

It is, however, beyond doubt that the Pythagoreans expressly taught the doctrine of a future life, and in particular that of the transmigration of souls, or metempsychosis. The soul is shrouded in the body for its faults in the past, διὰ τινὰς τιμωρίας ἡ ψυχὴ τῷ σώματι συνεζευκται (Boeck, Frag.). The soul, when separated from the body, lives an incorporeal life if it has been found worthy, otherwise the punishment of Tartarus awaits it (Philol. apud Claudien, De Statu animae, II, 7).

The Pythagoreans taught, besides, that the soul is destined to make divers peregrinations through the bodies of men and animals. This they call Taλyevería (Servius, Eneid, III, 68). They place the dwelling of the dead under the earth. For the rest, this metempsychosis appears to have been, not a philosophical doctrine, but one of the traditions of the Orphic mysteries (see J. Girard, Le Sentiment religieux chez les Grecs).

Socrates.

We find no text that would positively authorize us to attribute to Socrates a philosophical doctrine of the immortality of the soul. There is not a word on the subject in Xenophon's Memorabilia; still, there are many evidences which seem to justify, at least indirectly, the hypothesis that Socrates believed in a future life, a belief, moreover, which would be most naturally implied in his ethical and religious doctrines. There is the speech of the dying Cyrus in the Cyropaedia (VIII, vii), and again the Phaedo. Where could Xenophon have learnt the doctrine which he puts in the mouth of Cyrus if not in the school of Socrates ?

"For my part," says the prince, “I have never been persuaded that the soul lives only as long as it is in a mortal body, and dies when it is separated from this body; for I see that it is the soul which keeps mortal bodies alive as long as it remains in them." . . . "Reflect, too," he continues, "that nothing more closely resembles the death of man than sleep; but it is in sleep that the soul of man appears most divine. ... If