If,  namely,  we  apply  the  principle  of  pragmatism  to
God's  metaphysical  attributes,  strictly  so  called,  as  dis-
tinguished from  his  moral  attributes,  I  think  that,  even
were  we  forced  by  a  coercive  logic  to  believe  them,  we
still  should  have  to  confess  them  to  be  destitute  of  all
intelligible  significance.  Take  God's  aseity,  for  example ;
or  his  necessariness  ;  his  immateriality ;  his  ^  simplicity '
or  superiority  to  the'kind  of  inner  variety  and  succession
which  we  find  in  finite  beings,  his  indivisibiUty,  and  lack
of  the  inner  distinctions  of  being  and  activity,  substance
and  accident,  potentiality  and  actuality,  and  the  rest;
his  repudiation  of  inclusion  in  a  genus  ;  his  actualized
infinity ;  his  ^  personality,'  apart  horn  the  moral  quali-
ties which  it  may  comfort;  his  relations  to  evil  being
permissive  and  not  positive ;  his  self-suf&ciency,  self-
love,  and  absolute  felicity  in  himself :  —  candidly  speak-
ing, how  do  such  qualities  as  these  make  any  definite
connection  with  our  life  ?  And  if  they  severally  call  for
no  distinctive  adaptations  of  our  conduct,  what  vital  dif-
ference can  it  possibly  make  to  a  man's  religion  whether
they  be  true  or  false  ?

For  my  own  part,  although  I  dislike  to  say  aught  that


446        THE  VARIETIES  OF  RELIGIOUS  EXPERIENCE

may  grate  upon  tender  associations,  I  must  frankly  eon*
fess  that  even  though  these  attributes  were  faultlessly
deduced,  I  cannot  conceive  of  its  being  of  the  smallest
consequence  to  us  religiously  that  any  one  of  them
should  be  true.  Pray,  what  specific  act  can  I  perform  in
order  to  adapt  myself  the  better  to  God's  simplicity  ?  Or
how  does  it  assist  me  to  plan  my  behavior,  to  know  that
his  happiness  is  anyhow  absolutely  complete?  In  the
middle  of  the  century  just  past,  Mayne  Reid  was  the  great
writer  of  books  of  out-of-door  adventure.  He  was  forever
extolling  the  hunters  and  field-observers  of  living  ani-
mals' habits,  and  keeping  up  a  fire  of  invective  against
the  ^  closet-naturalists,'  as  he  called  them,  the  collectors
and  classifiers,  and  handlers  of  skeletons  and  skins.
