401 religious encyclopedia nationalism

B,elig3on and Literature

THE NEW SCHAFF HERZOG

458

BmLIOaaAPH7: Consult, besides the literature named in the text: C. R. E. von Hartmann, Dae rdigi6se Bewuest­aein der Menachheit, Berlin, 1882; P. de Broglie, Prob­ldmee et conclusions de rhistoire des religions, Paris, 1885; E. Burnout La Science des religions, Paris, 1885; Eng. tranel., Science of Religions, London, 1888; H. Deren­bourg, La Science des religions, Paris, 1885; J. E. Car­penter, Place of the History of Religion in Theological Study, London, 1890; Henry R. Marshall, Instinct and Reason, New York, 1899; A. J. Balfour, The Foundations of Belief, ib. 1901; H. Fielding Hall, The Hearts of Men, ib. 1901; J. Buchan, The First Things: Studies in the Em­bryology of Religion, Edinburgh, 1902; G. Trespioli, Sap­pio per uno studio sulla consciensa eociale a piuridica nei codici relipiosi, Parma, 1902•,' V. Staley, The Natural Re­ligion, Oxford, 1903; J. A. Picton, The Religion of the Universe, London, 1904; R. Eueken, Der Wahrheitepe­halt der Religion, Leipsic, 1905; L. R. Famell, Evolution of Religion. An Anthropological Study, London, 1905; J. B. Kinnear, Foundations of Religion, ib. 1905; J. L. de Lanessau, La Morale des religions, Paris, 1905; J. Martineau, The Set of Authority in Religion, London, 1905; A. Drews, Die Religion ale Selbat Bewusataein Gottes. Bins philoeophischa Unterauchunp fiber das Wesen der Re­ligion, Jena, 1908; F. B. Jevons, Religion in Evolution, London, 1908; O. Pfleiderer, Religion and Historic Faith, New York, 1907; E. Grim , Thooris der Religion, Leip­sie, 1908; Religion and the Modern Mind. Lectures de­livered before the Glasgow University Society of St. Ninian. By Various Authors, London, 1908; M. Sehins, Die Wahr heit der Religion nach den neuesten Vertretern der Relipiona­philosophie, Zurich, 1908; W. Schmidt, Die Verachiedenen Typen relipioeer Erfahrunp and die Prychologie, Gatersloh, 1908; M. 8ero1, Le Beeoin ef le devodr religievx, Paris, 1908; C. G. Shaw, The Precinct of Religion in the Culture of Human­ity, London, 1908; J. Watson, The Philosophical Basis of Religion. Glasgow, 1908; H. Rsshdall, Philosophy and Religion, London, 1909; H. E. Sampson, Progressive Crea­tion. A Reconciliation of Religion with Science, 2 vols., ib. 1909; E. M. Chapman, English Literature in Account with Religion, 1800 1900, Boston, 1910; W. A. Hinekle, The Evolution of Religion, Peoria, Ill., 1910; J. H. Leckie, Authority in Religion, New York, 1910; H. Vrooman, Re­ligion Rationalized, Philadelphia, 1910; B. P. Bowne, The Essence of Religion, Boston, 1910.

RELIGION AND LITERATURE.

Common Origin of Religion and Literature (§ 1). Their Common Appeal to Life (§ 2). Similarity in Methods (§ 3). Literature's Indebtedness to Religion (§ 4). Illustrations; Pope, Goethe (¢ 5). Wordsworth (¢ 8). Browning (¢ 7). Tennyson ($ 8).

Religion and literature spring from the same

fundamental sources. Religion is the relation which

man bears to ultimate Being. It is concerned with

the substance which lies behind phenomena, and

also with the duty which man owes to

:. Common this Being, universal and eternal. It is

Origin of concerned, too, with the questions

Religion what, whence, whither. Literature, in

and its final analysis, represents the same

Literature. fundamental relationship: it seeks to

explain, to justify, to reconcile, to in­

terpret, and even to comfort and to console. The

Homeric poems are pervaded with the religious at­

mosphere of wonder, of obedience to the eternal,

and of the recognition of the interest of the gods in

human affairs. A significant place is held by relig­

ion in Greek tragedy. A Divine Providence, the

eternity, universality, and immutability of law, the

inevitableness of penalty, and the assurance of re­

ward represent great forces in the three chief Greek

tragedians. Less impressively, yet with significance,

the poems of 'dergil are bathed in the air of religious

mystery and submission. The great work of Lucre­tius, De rerum natura, is, of course, an expression of the human mind in its attempt to penetrate the mysteries of being. The mythology, too, of the non Christian nations of the north, as well as the literature of the medieval peoples, is concerned with the existence and the work of the gods. In Scandinavian mythology, literature and religion are in no small degree united.

Not only do religion and literature spring from the same fundamental sources, they also are formed by the same forces. They both make a constant appeal to life. They assume the pres 

s. Their ence and orderly use of the reason; they

Common accept the strength of the human emo 

Appeal to tions of love, fear, curiosity, reverence,

Life.  and they both presume and accept

the categorical imperative of the con­

science and the freedom and force of the will of man.

Both gain in dominance, prestige, and usefulness as

they are the more intimately related to life. The

great themes of religion and literature are similar

and are vital: sin, its origin, penalties, and deliver­

ance therefrom; love the passion, and the will its

place and its limitations; righteousness, and the re­

lation of men to each other. In illustration of the

identities of the themes of religion and literature,

one may refer to Dante's " Divine Comedy," which

is concerned with the passing from and through Hell,

where live those who knew not Christ in the earthly

life, or, if they knew him, refused to obey, through

Purgatory, where dwell those whose sins are not

mortal, and into the Paradise where dwell the right­

eous in an eternity of light and of love. The great

poem of the Middle Ages is at once great literature

and a certain type of religion. French literature is

also pervaded by the religious atmosphere. The

religious element in the system of Descartes both

philosophy in literature and literature in philoso­

phy and of his followers is marked, and from

them later French literature drew religion and in­

spiration. This inspiration, be it said, was both

emotional and intellectual. The whole field of

modern fiction abounds in examples of the con­

nection between literature and religion; fiaw­

thorne significantly represents the more modern

unity in America of the two forces, and among all

his works The Scarlet Letter and The Marble Faun

are in this respect most notable. In English fic­

tion George Eliot exemplifies this unity, and of

her works Adam Bode is an impressive illustration.

Religion and literature, moreover, adopt meth­ods not dissimilar. They stand for the value of the imagination; they represent the artistic, rather than the scientific, methods of inter 

3  Simi  preting life and phenomena. If theol 

laritY in ogy, which is the science of religion,

Methods. lends itself to definition and to ra­

tional processes largely, religion be­

longs to the realm of the sentiments and sensi­

bilities the heart, the conscience, and the will.

Literature, too, likewise declines to enter the realm

of the formal definition; it is the product of the im­

agination, and to the imagination it makes its pri­

mary appeal, especially in poetry and, to some ex­

tent, in noble prose composition. Neither argues or

489 RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA R68UVOU

RU and Literwtnrs

dogmatizes; both intimate, suggest, and seek to interpret; neither holds definite and precise intel­lectual judgments regarding things eternal, univer­sal, or divine, but each possesses general beliefs and assurances respecting the divine and the eternal. Neither has a systeW, a scheme, but each has an in­tellectual interpretativeness and emotional sym­pathy with the personal in life and in being.

Religion gives to literature, moreover, vast and rich materials. Its sacred books themselves con­stitute great literatures and also furnish materials for

great literature. The translation of 4. Liters  the Bible into Gothic by Ulphilas hot

ture's la  only preserved the Bible, but also helped

debtedness to create and to perpetuate literature. to Religion. Luther's translation of the Bible and

the King James' Version are not only themselves great literatures, but also have helped to form great literatures in modern life. German and English speech, as well as letters, have been made more pure, more intellectual, and more inspiring by these great translations. It may be also added that the sermons of Robert South and of Isaac Bar­row (qq.v.) are themselves worthy pieces of litera­ture and might be compared with Burke's Orations. It is also to be remembered that the institutions of religion, as the monasteries and cathedral chapter­houses, were, for a thousand years, the custodians of the most precious treasures of literature. The medieval period was dark and damaging to human­ity's highest interests. In times of war not only are laws silent, but also literature. It was the monks who preserved the manuscripts of ancient Greece and of Rome, copying and re copying and commenting from the year 500 till the invention of printing. As the priests were astronomers, not only in Europe, but also in India, in order to fix and to preserve the feast and other holy days, so the monks of the Middle Ages in Europe, if not literary men themselves, were the guardians of the holy lamp of letters.

The religion which has made the strongest ap­peal to English and German literature in the last two centuries has been of two types: first, the uni­versal or natural, and, second, the distinctively

Christian; and.the poetry to which g. Illustra  the appeal has been chiefly addressed tions; Pope, has given back a noble response. In

Goethe. illustration of the universal type, the

religion which relates itself to litera­ture, one selects three poets, Pope, Goethe, and Wordsworth. The " Universal Prayer " of Pope, a famous passage in " Faust," and the " Ode to Im­mortality " are the most representative of all pas­sages of the three. Pope's " Universal Prayer," dedicated to Deo OPtimo Maximo, declares in its first two verses:

' Thou Great First Cause. least understood! Who all my sense confined To know but this, that thou art good, And that myself am blind;
Yet gave me in this dark estate, To see the good from ill: And binding nature fast in fate Left free the human will."

And closes with the lines:

To Thee, whose temple is all space,

Whose altar, earth, sea, skies,

One chorus let all being raise;

All nature's incense rise 1 "

Between these two sets of verses are found petitions of a distinctive Christian character, a&  

Teach me to feel another's wo, To hide the fault I see; That mercy I to others show, That mercy show to me." *

The same type in essence, although still more gen­eral, is found in Faust. In a passage which is supposed, by some, to represent Goethe's own ideas of religion, Faust says:

The All enfolding,

The All upholding,

Folds and upholds he not

Thee, me, Himself?

Arches not there the sky above us?

Lies not beneath us, firm, the earth?

And rise not, on us shining,

Friendly, the everlasting stars?

Look I not, eye to eye, on thee,

And feel' at not, thtonging

To head and heart, the force,

Still weaving its eternal secret,

Ihvisible. visible, round thy life?

Vast as it is, fill with that force thy heart,

And when thou in the feeling wholly blessed art,

Call it, then, what thou wilt,­

Call it Blissl Heard Lovel Godl

I have no name to give itl

Feeling is all in all:

The Name is sound and smoke,

Obscuring Heaven's clear glow." t
With greater eloquence and definiteness, a similar lesson is taught by Wordsworth. The

6. Words  teaching has reference to the immar worth. nence of divinity and also to the pr existence of the soul.

" Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that riseth with us, our lffe's at , Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But training clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison house begin to close Upon the growing Boy, But He beholds the light, and whence it flows He sees it in his joy; The Youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is Nature's Priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended; At length the Man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day.
Those first affections,

Those shadowy recollections,

Which, be they what they may,

Are yet the fountain light of all our day,

Are yet a master light of all our seeing;

Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make

Our noisy years seem moments in the being

'Of the eternal silence: truths that wake,

To perish never;

Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor,

Nor Man nor Boy,

Nor all that is at enmity with joy,

* Pope's Works, ii. 463 484. t Taylor's translation of Goetbe'a "Faust," vol. i., scene XVI., pp. 221 222.

Religion and Literature 8eliglon, philosophy of

THE NEW SCHAFF HERZOG

Can utterly abolish or destroyl

Hence in a season of calm weather

Though inland far we be.

Our souls have eight of that immortal ssa

Which brought us hither.

Can in a moment travel thither.

And see the Children sport upon the shore,

And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore." r

The teaching of the greatest poets of the last fifty years gives forth lessons even more religious,

and also more impressively Christian. y. Brown  The poems of Browning embody a re 

ing. ligion more Christian .than is found in

either Wordsworth or Pope. That

God is a Divine Father, almighty and loving, and

that Jesus Christ, his Son, is our Lord, are doctrines

which embody both the statement and the atmos­

phere of Robert Browning. The Pontiff says in

" The Pope " in an address made to God:
" 0 Thou, as represented here to me

In such conception as my soul sllows.­

Under Thy measureless, my atom widthl

Our known unknown, our God revealed to man.

Existent somewhere, somehow, as a whole;

Here, as a whole proportioned to our sense.­

There (which is nowhere, speech must babble thuel),

In the absolute immensity, the whole

Appreciable solely by Thyself.­

Here, by the little mind of man, reduced

To littleliess that suite his faculty,

In the degree appreciable too." 2

In other passages Browning speaks of " a need, a trust, a yearning after God." The sir is called " the clear, pure breath of God that loveth us." (Crowell's ed., vii. 203.)

The divinity of Christ is also a doctrine taught by Browning. In " Christmas Eve " Christ stands forth as 

" He who trod,

Very man and very God.

This earth in weakness, shame, and pain;" s

In the coordinate poem of " Easter " Christ is like­wise spoken of as " Thou Love of God." In other passages, too, is found a similar teaching.

" Believe in Me, Who lived and died, yet essentially Am Lord of Life."'

" The very God l think, Abib; dost thou think"

$o, the All Great, were the All Loving, too." 2

" And thou must love Me, who have died for thee." 4

" Call Christ, then, the illimitable God."

" He, the Truth, is, too, the Word." 6

" The Great Word which makes all things new."

" The Star which chose to stoop and stay for us."

" That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows,

Or decomposes but to recompose.

Become my universe that feels and knows." e
r Wordsworth "Ode to Immortality.'.

I The Ring and the Book, Crowell s ed. "The Pope," z. 1303 18.

8 Christmas &ce ib., iv. 288 327. The whole poem is full of the divinity of Christ.

An Epistle of Karahish ib., v. 10 22. 305,307, 311.

A Death in the Desert. lb., v. 888.

e The Ring and the Book; ' The Pope," z. 375 376, ib.,

vii. 175.

r Dramatic l~rsca; " By the Fireedd iii, rb., iv. 131.

e Drarnato ~ereona; Epiogue, Speaker," rii.,

ib., v. 280.

460

These quotations might be continued, but they are sufficient to prove the distinctive Christian message of one of the greatest of poets. Tennyson is not so definite in his teaching of

& Tenny  Christianity as Browning' But Tenny 

son. son's greatest poems contain many

passages which embody most direct

Christian lessons, expressing as well, with an im­

pressiveness which no other poet has ever attained,

the lesson of the soul's immortality. Tennyson is;

above all, the apostle of the immortal life. The

argument for the life immortal, if an argument it

can be called, arises from the infinity and the eter­

nity of love, and also from the fact that even on

the evolutionary hypothesis man is made by God.

The essence of the creation is personal. God is im­

manent, not only in man, but in the universe. The

union of all men in God creates brotherhood, and

this union, also, evolves into righteousness and love.

God is immortal love; God is also immortal life,

and immortal life and immortal love belong to those

who are in God. The evolutionary hypothesis was

declared, and had come to be generally accepted in

Tennyson's life time. The last poems indicate his

acceptance of evolution. His belief was that evolu­

tion would carry man, through God, unto perfec­

tion. He declares " Hallelujah to the Maker. It is

finished. Man is made." Near his death he wrote,

in " God and the Universe," " The face of death is

toward the Sun of Life his truer name is ` On­

ward."' '

In these illustrations of the relation of religion and literature, no reference has been made to either Shakespeare or Milton. The reason is that in the older and greater poet, almost no mention is made of religion. That Shakespeare was, to a certain degree, impressed by the fundamental truths which con­stitute religion, there can be no doubt, but also it is clear that his great inspiration he drew from human, and not from divine, relationships. At the opposite extreme stands John Milton, who was far more a theologian than a religious poet. If Shakespeare represents the inspiration arising from human rela­tionships, John Milton represents inspiration drawn from those dogmatic formulas which represent the skeleton, but not the life, of the Christian system.

It is apparently singular that the larger share of the illustrations used to present the relgtions exist. ing between religion and literature are drawn from poetry. The singularity is, however, only super­ficial. For poetry is the highest and richest form and expression of literature; it represents the high­est notes of the scale of thought, feeling, and imag­ination. Religion is the highest type of being, for it represents the relation of man to God and of God to man. Each, therefore, rises the highest in its own scale of being; each, therefore, becomes more clearly and closely akin to the other than are the other higher forces of humanity. They are related to each other far more intimately and constantly than can any type of prose literature be related to religion, either Christian or natural.

CHARLES F. THWING.

r E. Berdoe. Browning and the Christian Faith, pp. 42, 43, 45 (London, 1898).

I 8. A. Brooke, Tennyeon: his Art and Relation to Modem Life, p. 30 (New York, 1894).

481 RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA

BIBLIOGRAPHY: W. S. Tyler, Theology of as Greek Poets, An­dover, 1887; S. A. Brooke, Theology in the EnpliA Pods. Cooper, Coleridge. Wordsworth, and Borne, New York.1875, new ed., 1910; idem, Development o) Theology . . in Enp­Eiah Poetry, 1780 1830, ib. 1893; idem, Religion in Litera­ture and Religion in Life, ib. 1901; G. McCrie, Religion of Our Literature, London, 1875; J. C. Shairp, Culture and Religion, Edinburgh, 1878; C. J. Abbey, Religious Thought in Old Buplish Verse, London and New York, 1892; T. W. Hunt, Ethical Teachings in Old English Literature, New

1. History. 1. Ancient. Early Greeks (§ 1). Plato and Aristotle (¢ 2). Neoplatonism (§3). Stoicism (§ 4). Eclecticism (§ 5). The Church Fathers (§ 8).

2. Medieval. Anselm and Successors ($ 1).

York, 1892; L. Campbell. Religion in Greek Literature, London and New York, 1898; S. L. Wilson. Theology o) Modern Literature. Now York, 1899; W. S. Lilly. Studies in Religion and Literature, St. Louis, 1905; C. G. Shaw, Precinct of Religion in the Culture of Humanity. New York, 1908; E. G. Sihler, Testimonium anima;, New York, 1908; $. S. Guthrie, Spiritual Message of Literature. Chicago, 1909: E. M. Chapman, Bnplis4 Literature and Religion, 1810 1900, London, 1910.

RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY OF.

3. Modern. Descartes; Spinoza Q 1). Leibnitz G 2).

Herbert and Lotse (§ 9). Von Hartmann; Ritschl (¢ 10). Contemporary Thought (§ 11).

The Enlightenment; EBglieh and II. Analysis of Religion.

French Deists (5 3). Method ($ 1).

Sent and Criticism ($ 4).

Fichte; Sahelling ($ 5).

Schleiermacher (§ 8).

Hegel (§ 7).

Past Hegelian ($ 8).

The philosophy of religion is that aspect of phi­losophy which employs itself with the fact of re­ligion in view of its intellectual formulation. The conception of the philosophy of religion differs not only according as religion is defined, but also as the relation of philosophy to it is formulated. Religion may constitute the content of philosophy, so that the latter may absorb the former and become itself religious. Philosophy may easily become theeso­phy, or may even approximate mysticism, while satisfying all rftous requirements. To such an extreme a religious philosophy would be superflu­ous. Again, as soon as a system of thought deals with the idea of God, and regards this as essential to its completion, or perhaps to the understanding of the entire world of experience, a religious philo­sophical side can not be denied to the same. Re­ligion would always be touched upon, although such a thought system would be unsatisfactory to a deeply susceptible religious disposition. If in these two related varieties a philosophical explana­tion is to be secured, this does not obtain for the later view of the philosophy of religion, the object of which is to recognize and explain religious phe­nomena or religion in general, both subjective and objective, by means of thought. This must take place on the basis of psychological investigation sad the collection and use of historical materials. The first is to determine religion as such; the second is to present the evolution of religion and at least throw some light on its primal forma. This differs from the old view according to which religion was more or less philosophy, and the philosopher was assumed to be religious himself; or he at least pro­fessed the truth of the views about God sad divine things set forth by him. Here the object of inves­tigation is religion itself, and the investigator is not necessarily an adherent of such religion, or even re­ligiously minded. An approximation to the first would occur where the investigator would preclude the impartiality of the result by bringing his own convictions into the teat. The two forms are occa­sionally combined sad first demand a historical review.

L History. i. Ancient: Strictly considered every philosophical system of the universe involves

Representation (§ 2). Feeling (§ 3). Will (§ 4). Generalisation (§ 5). Relative Estimation (§ 8).

a religious tincture, even if no religious feelings are brought to light. Here only those are to be selected

1. Early in which a philosophy of religion comes

Greeks, into prominence, and of such only the

principal ones. The statement of

Xenophanes that the heaven or the world was God,

appease as a religious affirmation, especially when

compared with his vigorous attacks on anthropo­

morplysm. Anaxagoras in his distinction between

matter and spirit, in which he assigned the construc­

tion of order from chaos to the latter, did not call

spirit by the name of the deity; yet he introduced

the principle of dualism and furnished the basis

for the development of the later deism. Socrates

was a man of pious mind as shown in his teaching

of the " daemon " sad in his conviction that the dis­

tinction between the rightness and wrongness of

certain actions was to be referred directly to the

deity, with which he believed himself to be in con­

nection. For theology and the philosophy of relig­

ion he struck the keynote for the future in founding

teleology as a world theory and relating all things

in the interest of human welfare to the ordaining

benevolence of the first cause from whose reason

the human understanding is descended.

Plato's view of the world was not only ethical but religious. God is conceived as the absolute good; the phenomenal world is the sphere of evil and wickedness. The object of mss is to flee to the world of ideas and so become like God,

8. Plato although this world is a copy of the and higher one and can not be therefor

Aristotle. contemned. The kinship of the soul to ideas, that is, the aupramundaae, constitutes its immortality. A considerably developed philosophy of religion appears in the metaphysics of Aristotle (q.v.) though the inner religious element as found in Plato is retired; yet Aristotle's system exerted a deep and manifold influence upon the philosophy of religion. He excludes from his ethics the inquiry of Plato into the metaphysical good or idea as the impulse of acquiring and practising good qualities. In his " First Philosophy," which he named also theologike, he presents his idea of God more definitely and clearly in strict deduction from his metaphys­ical principles. He distinguishes between the posai 

Religion, Philosophy of THE NEW SCHAFF HERZOG 482

ble or potential and the actual. Every change into actuality requires an actual as agent. God must be the first agent, and must be pure energy, which is absolute form or immaterial spirit, and therefore unchangeable and one. As Spirit he thinks and the object of his thought is himself, and this is his activity, in which he enjoys the supreme felicity. In relation with the world he moves all, but neither creates nor transacts, he is the good or end toward which all things strive, just as one beloved, though unmoved and at rest, always exercises an influence upon the lover. The world, uncreated, always existed and will never cease to be; and, ever gain­ing in form and losing in matter, it strives after perfection, toward a similarity with God, the high­est form of all. The idea of deification as it occurs in the later mystics indeed did not materialize in Aristotle, but the efficacious forms in nature may be taken as the representative content of God. God is in the world with his ideas, and while elsewhere Aristotle holds firmly to the transcendence of God, here there appears an immanence. It would follow, that, alongside of an expressed theism, there exists a pantheism Aristotle sought to illustrate the re­lation by that of a general who is outside of the army yet prevails within with his authoritative plans. He became the esteemed authority for scholasticism, by his doctrine of God as well as by his logic, physics, and ethics.

Neoplatonism (q.v.), starting from the idealistic tendencies of these two prototypes, far exceeded them in subtle speculation and emphasis upon the

8. Neo  religious. Not stopping at knowledge

Platonism. or mental activity as the highest aim of man with Aristotle, it pursued the example of Philo (q.v.) in the supreme union with the highest principle by means of ecstatic trans­port, indeed, only transiently, since the corporate soul can not wholly release itself from the earthly. In this unity which ultimately becomes continuous and eternal, man becomes deified, and a duality of the seeing and seen ceases in a complete unity called by Photinus, aploais. Where the limit of in­telligible thought is thus transgressed, it is doubt­ful if philosophy of religion can cover the ground. Certainly such doctrine issues not from speculation but inner experience; and those offshoots (,i super­stition, such as the theurgy and magic of jamblicus, must be excluded. But the theodicy is the most developed of all antiquity, and the prototype of that of the present. In Plotinus' argument for the divine justification, the individual must be viewed in the harmonious unity of the whole, and the worst fits into the harmony to set off the excellence of the good. He shrinks from defining the deity or unity, following Philo and the eclectic Platonists in re­garding it as transcending all thought and being, of which there was to be predicated merely that it for­bade all difference, multiplicity, or similarity. Here Pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite (see DIONYSIU6), Scotus Erigena (q.v.), and other German mystics fixed their points of contact. The last of this school, Proclus, presents the world development from unity.

Stoicism (q.v.) was preeminently entitled to the name of religious philosophy. Although it was materialistic, both in principle and results, and

pantheistic, yet it not only presented the deity

theoretically, but was richly tinged with religion, a

4. Stoicism. fact which serves to account for its wide­

spread popularity in the Roman world.

The most distinguished save one of this school, the

poet Cleanthes, proves his piety in his hymn to

Zeus by praising the omnipresent, eternal reason of

deity, which rules all and restores what human folly

has subverted. The last representatives of the Stoic

school, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius (qq.v.), dis­

play deep piety in connection with their philosophic

thoughts. On the physical side, the Stoics follow

the Heraclitean principle that the primal matter

was fire. The active power in the whole cosmic

process is deity, giving all things form and support,

permeating the world as a warm breath, as reason

ordering all things, and containing within itself the

separate rational germ forms from which individual

appearances develop. The beauty and adaptabil­

ity of the whole world and its parts point to the

existence of a thinking, foreseeing, creating Spirit.

The universe or God is to be regarded as having a

consciousness, and from this follows the conclusion

that the world has conscious parts; and as the

whole is more complete than any part., it must have

consciousness in a real measure. If deity is abso­

lute reason it must reign everywhere, and all that

is must be logical or rational. Thus on the phys­

ical basis there was optimism; on the ethical other­

wise. Chrysippos compared men to maniacs. Hu­

man life was full of errors and m"J faults, and it

was the most woful of all dramas. Like the later

Neoplatonists, whom they anticipated in some

essential elements, the Stoics had to develop a the­

odicy, in order to save their logical deistic principle.

However, to win ordinary acceptance for their doc­

trine, they were wont to make application to the

individual and carry it to the absurd. Moral evil,

on the other hand, was a burden, imposed upon

guilty man. The Stoics were fond of the antithesis

that on the physical side ruled the law of necessity

by the inevitable connection of cause and effect; on

the ethical side, if it was a question of will and act,

man should be capable of free choice. The efforts

to demonstrate the transition from the possession

of the Logos to the bad as well as the relation of

necessity and freedom were unsuccessful. An inter­

esting side to Stoicism is its explanation of myths,

in which it is the successor of cynicism. Anxious

to make a connection with the popular mind and

unable to adopt polytheism and its myths, it re­

sorted to the allegorical method. Myths were ex­

plained as allegories of natural or moral life, and

the gods as personifications of powers. This method

was taken over by Jewish writers, particularly

Philo, and became popular in patristic Christian

Scripture interpretation. As the supernatural or

supramundane did not come within the horizon of

the Stoics, their physical theory was theocentric in

the nature of their hylosoic heritage, and their

ethics was in close adjustment with nature as a

whole, as shown by their sharp ethical interest in

necessity and freedom. To live in harmony with

nature and reason was not infrequently a religious

enthusiasm. Religious philosophy touches upon

Epicureanism (q.v.) so far as this undertook to ex 

488 RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA Religion, Philosophy of

plain religious ideas by ignorance and fear and looked upon them as causes of the worst evils.

Though Stoicism. permeated Christian thought with its influence, it was not transplanted like Neo­platonic idealism or mysticism. Pseu