Orthodox Rationalism [pp. 294-312]

THE PRINCE TON RE VIEW.
right of theology to exist in the spiritual life of man, and discover the reality of things unseen and spiritual-the reality of
God-not merely in the ideas which we possess of them, but in
the very origin of those ideas; in the manner in which they are
born in human consciousness, and grow with our growth, and
become life of our life. In one word, theology is at a disadvan
tage before agnostic science so long as it is willing to defend
itself with an analytic and rationalistic mental science; it needs
to work out in the interest of faith an organic and dynamic
mental philosophy-a science of thespiritual growth of mind.
The need of a revision of the inherited psychology, as well as
the singular deficiency of the traditional mental science, is
apparent when we consider the place and significance usually
given in our text-books of mental philosophy to the feelings
So helplessly has our psychology fallen into the traditional
treatment of that most interesting and divine side of human
consciousness that the very activities and receptivities through
which, if at all, we are brought into contact with, and under
the power of, outward and divine realities, have come to signify in common philosophical language only subjective states,
emotions, or appetencies, of the soul. They are said to be called
forth by ideas. An idea must first strike the mind before it can
glow with emotion. Consequently the feelings, in this rationalistic philosophy of them, can have no objective or real significance. They are simply states of mental temperature-exponents
of the mind's own activity, not indications of any pressure from
without of reality upon the mind.
But what warrant is there in the living processes of consciousness for this summary treatment of the feelings? Is all feeling
emotive? What warrant is there for the assumption that all
mental and moral sensibility is subjectively excited, is a play of
feeling called forth merely by ideas? Is it consistent for a philosopher to be a realist in his theory of sensation and perception, and
then to be an idealist in his theory of mental and moral feeling?
If the mind is affected from without in sensation, we cannot
tacitly assume that it is affected only from within in its higher
feeling of dependent existence and moral obligation. If, on the
contrary, we may suppose that man is a living unity, born into
a universe of powers and realities which are partly sensible and
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