meaning of facts. If the facts are differently appreciated, different premises will be laid down. It will be found in all large differences-say in politics-that the facts are not the same or that their values and meanings are differently weighed.

I. The data for reasoning are the same; but some minds do not know the data at all, or very inadequately. To ascertain the data one must take facts apart, see how they are made up, and construct data. As a rule a datum in any large concernment-as in politics or religion-is composite, a number of facts are grouped in it. And the facts constitute the field where the dispute ought to be waged; but as a rule men try to settle their differences by logic, though logic has nothing to do with the case. From time to time for centuries philosophers have taken up the case of a poor citizen of Athens, who believed that he owned all the ships in the harbor. He counted his ships, estimated their cargoes, the length of their voyages, the amounts gained by each ship, and his own profits. It was observed that his figures were remarkably accurate, so much so that he was seldom wrong in his estimates of his own income. He was wrong on only one point. He did not own the ships, and he thought that he owned them, and built his fortune on that false basis. The little fact that he made a mistake about destroyed all bis calculations. No matter how perfectly he appreciated all the other facts, his one error overthrew the conclusion that he had a right to a large income; and they called him a lunatic. The mistake of fact was fundamental; on the fact of ownership all the rest depended. The world is full of men not in mental hospitals who are just like this poor Athenian. The facts at the bottom of their edifice of logic are all wrong; the logic is good, perfect; the error is down below the logic.

The differences, then, in our opinions start in knowledge of facts. The man who is wrong does not know his facts. It is possible that there may be ten or more wrong conclusions-that none of us may be right because no one knows the facts as they actually are. It is a familiar experience that two disputants may be both wrong; both are ignorant of the facts. On some questions no one in a thousand men may be right. Ignorance vitiates all logic. We have a familiar device for narrowing the field of possible error-the excluded middle. The planet Mars is inhabited by living beings or it is not so inhabited. No third supposition is possible. But it does not furnish any facts in proof of number one or number two merely to exclude number three. Many persons write and talk as though this device added some data to 41-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. XIII.

their side. The question of fact remains open; we must ascertain the things essential to life, and ascertain their existence in Mars. But these facts prove only that Mars may be inhabited ; that it is inhabited remains to be proved by other facts. If our telescopes show us the works of living beings on Mars the case is made out. We may err at each of the three stages: what we call essentials of life may be an imperfect list; these essentials may not exist in Mars, though we think they exist there; and what we call the works of living beings may be wrought by the elements.

II. In political and religious discussion-the two large matters of dispute among men-it is always the fact which is the real matter of difference. The fact is not a bit of reality; it is a piece of mentality; the mind in perceiving it gives it form, color, relations; and the coloring and relating of the fact differ in different minds through the affections, prepossessions, and interests of the different disputants. This is the second great cause of conflicting opinions.

The affections, including all the bias they produce, may exclude the fact from knowledge. "Ye will not come unto me that ye might have light." The case is typical of all rejections of light. "I am not reading anything on the other side," said a politician, when offered a document. The affection for an opinion hedges it round and excludes the fact; if it enters the field of vision it is modified to suit the needs of affection. Reasoning from consequences would seem to be fatal to whatever works evil or injury; but affection finds another cause for the evil. To go straight to a consequence is difficult when the thing to be found is unwelcome. The affection struggles to change route, and it is apt to succeed. Buckle had for thesis that faith-he called it credulity-retards or arrests civilization. He easily made all the facts say so; though most skeptics admit that some forms of faith are a force helpful to civilization.

What passes for argument in all fields is open to suspicion in regard to the facts under the premises. The mind makes history to please its affections; two minds make each a different history out of the same facts. There is no safety for the reason except in pure and disinterested purpose; and opinions may be dearer than lands or gold. We instinctively distrust the man who has an interest of a money sort in his opinion; but the man who has no such interest is often more dangerous through his love for his opinion.

III. We are apt to put too high a value on our reasoning

powers. They are, in fact, so simple and easy for all men to exercise that culture of them is hardly needed. What we do need is a love of truth which will cast out the love of our own opinions. Then we shall reason to common conclusions if we all know the actual, inevitable fact. All culture of the mind ought to be concentrated upon finding facts, their relations and their weight. We shall find ourselves weighing them by logic, finding them by logic, fixing their relations by logic; and we shall differ in our opinions because each of us has a different fact when we have finished the process, because we began with a different fact. There will be " many men of many minds" just as long as appreciations of facts differ. We shall see eye to eye when the facts we see are absolutely the same for us all.

The value of our study, if it has any, lies in locating the source of our differences. We are too apt to say that the other man reasons badly. Men never reason badly except from sheer purpose. The reasoning is correct when one is sincere, often when one is not sincere. The error is not one of logic; it is one of fact. An analysis of the premises of two debaters will show that they are not talking about the same things-that they are building on different foundations. Common facts will make common premises and conclusions.

IV. Are we hopelessly shut up to ignorance of the facts? Must we go on differing because we know different facts which our debates assume to be the same facts? It is very common to say that no man can escape bias-that, therefore, affection in each of us must create our facts for us. It is equivalent to declaring that the truth cannot be known. It happens, however, that many facts and groups of facts are understood by all men alike ; that in a civilized society the number of such facts increases with civilization. Differences are relics of barbarism, survivals from more ignorant ages; or they are engendered in perverse wills. Ignorance and sin cause most of them. Of course no reference is made here to those choices which satisfy our lawful affections and aptitudes, through which we choose our affections and our pursuits in diverse ways.

The reasoning man is in all of us the same; the judge is one in his decisions. But ignorance and perversity make the same case a different case on which the judge renders diverse judg. ments with perfect accuracy. It is incorrect to say of any man that he cannot reason; the proper statement is that the truth of fact is not in him.

THE ARENA.

"KNOWLEDGE AND FEELING IN SPIRITUALITY."

THE contributor of an article on this subject, the Rev. F. W. Crowder, Ph.D., claims that he is "fundamentally " misapprehended in our critique found in the November-December Review for 1896. Let us see. Our contention is not on the value or importance of intellectuality or of knowing the Scriptures; these cannot be urged too strongly. No more is it about the necessity of religion; but the question is one of location-of residence. The point at issue is as to whether religion is mostly within that realm of psychology called the intellect or of the sensibilities.

To show that this is fairly stated, and that the contributor holds knowledge to be chiefly the seat of spirituality, we quote his own words: "What is the seat of spirituality? . . . Let it for the moment be supposed that spirituality is mainly a state of the feelings-a position widely held among Christian people." He urges, then, that knowledge precedes and determines feeling, "and consequently that spirituality is primarily a matter of knowledge. This is one of the positions to establish which is the aim of his article." Again he says, "If spirituality is mainly a matter of the feelings, then it is apt to be concluded, as many thinkers in this day have concluded, that theories and doctrines have small place in it." And still again he writes, "Thus it is seen to what extremes of thought he is in danger of drifting who holds to the view that religion is primarily or mainly a thing of the feelings." His position, fairly stated in his own words, is that religion is not "primarily or mainly a thing of the feelings," but that it is "primarily or mainly" a thing of knowledge. Such teaching is incorrect and proportionately harmful.

In his reply the contributor admits our position, that the conscious self is a unit and always acts as such, yet he tries to hold that the knowledge in the unity always antedates the feeling, and if this is reversed the soul lapses into childhood or infantile heathenism. Yet we know that profound thinkers come to believe in immortality and other things because of feeling. In most noble souls love is the strongest argument for future life. One has well said that "no man who loves his mother can consign her to eternal sleep." This is not prejudice, but experience.

Our statement that "what satisfies the soul is, not thought, but the real, life-giving Christ himself," the contributor declares is a "dark mystery, into which no human mind can enter." It may be a great mystery, but not a dark one, as it is illuminated by the personal Holy Spirit, whose symbol is a tongue of flame. It is not true that "no human mind can enter " into this conscious communion and fellowship. It has become the most real thing in human consciousness, and that, too, by the laws of science and philosophy. It is not apprehended by the intellect, but in that department of the mind called the affections or feelings. Our

brother must admit that knowledge is not religion-at least, not the Christian religion. That is the same old Socratic idea that knowledge is virtue, the fallacy of which was shown in Christ's new philosophy of the heart. He buttresses his argument by a quotation: "Within the sphere of feeling the rapture of the sensualist and the devout elevation of the saint are precisely on a level; the one has as much justification as the other." This shows his estimate of a religion of the heart or affections. They are no more on "a level" than virtue and vice, the witness of the Holy Spirit and remorse, or Satan and God.

No man can think very far into this subject without seeing that the principal part of religion lies within man's pathematic nature-the affections, the feelings, the heart. We plead for the broadest, truest, and profoundest thought, for scholarship the most erudite and philosophical, both in Scripture and out. At the same time he must recognize the facts as to the proper adjustment of our holy religion to the human soul. The mind has three powers-intellect, sensibility, and will. These three are one, and act as a unit. Yet each has its office, and fills it. (1) The intellect is the faculty of perception, or thought. (2) Sensibility, or sensitivity, is the capacity of feeling; it includes "sensation, both external and internal, whether derived from contemplating outward and natural objects or relations and ideas, desires, affections, passions; it also includes the sentiments of the sublime and beautiful, the moral sentiment and the religious sentiment. (3) Will is the faculty by which the rational mind makes choice of its ends of action. Psychologists place the propensities within the pathematic sensibilities. Even curiosity, or the desire for knowledge, is a feeling. If seniority were the question, surely feeling must be regarded as senior and knowledge the junior. However, our discussion is not one of age or dates, but of location, as to where religion dwells. Veracity, or the propensity to utter the truth, is a feeling. So is the propensity of self-love or desire for happiness. Feeling is the home of all the benevolent affections; it includes the parental, filial, and fraternal. Within this realm is found philanthropy, or love of the race. Patriotism is a matter of feeling. The deepest consecration of the human mind is loyalty, which is not of the intellect, but of the affections. Take two men of equal knowledge, and one may be a Benedict Arnold and the other a George Washington. When the feeling changes one plunges from the heights of loyalty into the abyss of treason. Gratitude is an affection, and all the knowledge of an archangel will not make a soul religious if this be lacking. Out of the heart "are the issues of life." The highest of all authority makes it clear: "Love is the fulfilling of the law." Religion is love, and not a matter of knowledge, but of feeling. Knowledge goes with all these, but it is not religion.

Principal Caird, in his Philosophy of Religion, chap. vi, says: "That the essence of religion lies in feeling is held to be proved, either (1) simply by an appeal to ordinary popular convictions, or (2) by certain considerations of a more scientific character." He also writes: 66 The logical or scientific faculty, we instinctively feel, is not the organ of