WE  have  treatises  professing  to  deal  with  the
"  Philosophy  of  Keligion."  The  title  is  an  aspir-
ing one.  Under  the  heading  "  Philosophy  of  Ke-
ligion "  should  be  found,  in  the  first  place,  a  broad-
minded  effort  to  grasp  the  religious  facts  in  their
integrity  and  totality,  as  the  religious  conscious-
ness and  its  history  present  them.  Instead  of  this
we  have  usually  placed  in  the  fore-front  of  the
investigation,  or  to  be  found  running  through  the
discussion,  a  certain  philosophical  theory,  which
is  used  as  the  standard  by  which  to  try  the  facts ;
and  simply  because  these  facts  do  not  suit  the
theory — that  is,  it  may  be,  because  the  theory  is
too  narrow  for  the  facts — these  are  either  rejected,
or  so  eviscerated  of  meaning  as  to  cease  to  be
what  they  were  formerly  regarded.  And  it  may
possibly  be  found  that  the  pretensions  of  the
theory  put  forward  are  such  as  cannot  be  ad-
mitted in  any  science  or  system  of  knowledge
that  deals  with  the  facts  of  experience.  It  may


302  KNOWING  AND  BEING.
be  found  that  these  pretensions  are  applicable  only
to  the  line  of  mathematical  reasoning,  that  they
are  such  as  must  fail  in  regard  to  matter  of  fact —
real,  moral,  or  spiritual, — that  even  if  they  could
be  applied  to  the  abstract  categories  of  thought,
they  would  still  leave  out  all  actual  reality  of
time  and  space  and  experience  in  general.
