'The captain then abandoned his intention of creeping out of range of the enemy before being hopelessly crippled and decided to go in again and make use of the remaining torpedoes.'

When dawn broke, all that remained of the gallant leader of the 4th Destroyer Flotilla was a little knot of men on a life-saving raft, already a foot under water, bravely singing a requiem to their lost ship, 'It's a long way to Tipperary.' Of many another there was naught save 'Great smears of oil and wreckage.' The night fighting was desperate in the extreme.

'Smoke was reported right ahead. I attacked at once,' writes the commanding officer of the destroyer 'Ardent.' 'The enemy switched on searchlights and found us at once. I then became aware that the "Ardent" was taking on a division of German battleships. However, we opened fire and ran on at full speed. . . . Our guns were useless against such big adversaries; our torpedoes are fired . . . we could but wait for the shells that could not fail to hit us soon at such close range. ... There was perfect silence on the bridge, not a word was spoken. At last it came, and as the first salvo hit, I heard a seaman ejaculate, almost under his breath, "Oo-ooh," as one does to a bursting rocket.'

The end was not far off. The 'Ardent' having received a tornado of fire,

...

'Gave a big lurch, . . . heeled right over . . . the stern kept afloat for a few moments, then she slowly sank from view. As the smoke and steam cleared off I could see many heads in the water. . I saw most of them die one by one. Not a man of them showed any fear of death, there was not a murmur, complaint, or cry for help . . . their joy was, and they talked about it to the end, that they and the Ardent " had done their bit.'

66

The writer adds an epitaph which may stand for all who made the supreme sacrifice in the day of victory:

'All hands fought the ship with the utmost gallantry, and in a tenacious and determined manner, till she sank beneath them, and then met their death in that composed and happy spirit that I am convinced comes to all those who do their duty to the end.'

INTELLECTUAL

STATUS OF THEO

Art. 9.-THE
LOGICAL BELIEF.

1. A Treatise on Probability. By J. M. Keynes. Macmillan, 1921.

2. The

Relation between Induction and Probability. By C. D. Broad (Articles in Mind, October 1918 and January 1920).

It is not intended in this article to discuss the grounds, in common knowledge, on which any particular theological belief is based, or to present, beyond a passing hint, an argument for the theistic view of the world. Questions of more general nature are to be considered, such as whether theology can claim to be knowledge characterised by logical certainty, as Locke thought, or belief possessing only probability: and, in the latter case, how religious faith is related to the beliefs on which inductive physical science rests. Can theological belief be distinguished from mere superstition, and be reasonably entertained, as well as reasonably doubted? To deal with these issues will involve raising further questions: what are we to understand by 'rational' when we describe science as the search for a rational explanation of phenomena, and by reasonable' when we decide that religious belief is reasonable or unreasonable, as the case may be?

Theology has made, at different times, very diverse claims as to its own intellectual status. Some theologians have professed that their science is grounded on immediately apprehended truths, axiomatic or self-evident, and that its subsidiary doctrines are deducible from such truths with strict logical demonstrability. When the natural and normal faculty of reason, which being human is apt to err, has been suspected of inadequacy to mediate infallibly such knowledge, a divinely implanted lumen naturale, a kind of intellective instinct, has been invoked, as in some of the older rationalistic philosophies; and appeal has sometimes been made to a special, if not a more or less abnormal, mystical vision, as revealing doctrines rich in concreteness. At the other extreme, there have been theologians who have rejoiced to call theology matter of faith and to sit loose to scientific

grounds and logical processes. This faith has taken the form of reliance on external authority-in all degrees of reasonableness down to acceptance, as Dr South recommended, of what would have to be banished as absurdity were it not to be adored as mystery: that of subjective certitude, 'feeling,' or inner light, justified by works—that is, by its spiritual efficacy: and other forms which there is no need to specify. More continuously, and in recent times more generally, theology has assigned to itself the intermediate status of grounded but indemonstrable belief. It has then not disdained association, in this respect, with the good company of the presumptive knowledge which enjoys the prestige of the name of science, and the common-sense knowledge on which rational beings are prepared at any hour to act: in short, with the knowledge (so-called) of the actual world that is worth having, although no more than probability, of one sort or another, is its guarantee. Theology of this type is usually modest enough to recognise some difference between the provability (relatively to the body of presumptive knowledge) of its tenets, as compared with the inductions of physical science, though the knowledge relatively to which theism is probable is much wider than that embraced by such science. But it is bold enough to contend that, in the sole and abstract respect of being only belief, it belongs to the same logical class, or enjoys the same intellectual status, as much of what commonly passes for knowledge. It claims, in so far as its purely intellectual rank is concerned, to be neither more-nor less-than a theory which gives the most reasonable interpretation of human experience as a whole, but which does not admit of coercive proof or disproof.

Something more shall presently be said on behalf of this claim; but in the meantime we may observe that theology has sometimes been shown the cold shoulder precisely for the abstract reason that it is belief and not scientific knowledge: that is to say, without concomitant criticism of specific grounds on which the probability of its particular beliefs should be estimated. Perhaps the commonest mode of dismissing theology from further consideration adopted by those who do not find place for it in their intellectual and practical life, is that which Vol. 241.-No. 478.

I

consists in alleging and pointing a contrast between theological belief and scientific knowledge. It was a common thing in the last century, when representatives of science were more given than now to proclaim their attitude towards religion, and when their acquaintance with theory of knowledge would seem to be derived almost exclusively from study of Mill's logic, to point this contrast without any qualm. One may cite as a typical instance a statement characteristic of Huxley,* in one of his moods-he was one of the morally courageous people who are not ashamed to perform mental vacillations in public-'It is of no use to talk to me of analogies and probabilities. I know what I mean when I say I believe in the law of inverse squares, and I will not rest my life and my hopes upon weaker convictions.' There is implicit in this and similar utterances of Huxley, what often was expressed explicitly by the scientific agnostic, that in science we do know, not believe; and the further insinuation that to believe where we do not know is immoral which, by the way, would tally well with the ancient theological assertion 'there is none righteous, no not one.' From Huxley's dictum it is but a step to the very downright terminological inexactitude of the adage 'seeing is believing'; and that adage again expresses another, if vulgar, ground on which theological tenets have been rejected, from the day of doubting Thomas until now.

Along with the contrast between knowledge and belief, on the strength of which theology has sometimes been rejected, one may set the cognate but somewhat different distinction between faith and reason. The adjustment of the relations between faith and reason has been one of the main concerns of philosophical theology throughout its history; and the question as to whether reason and faith are antithetical is more vital to theology than that as to the supposed contrast between belief and knowledge. It is also more obscure because of the ambiguity and diversity with which the words 'reason' and 'rational' have been used in both theological and philosophical literature; and it is more difficult, because the concept of reasonableness is one

Life and Letters,' 1903, 1, 314.

which seems to call for clarification at the hands of philosophers. Reasonable' is a word which we all use glibly; but perhaps reflexion will compel us to discover that we have but a vague notion as to what is ultimately meant by it.

To come now to a closer grip with our subject, it is first necessary to establish the thesis that theology, whether of the kind distinguished as revealed, or of the kind called rational or natural, is matter of belief-not of knowledge characterised by certainty; and that, apart from examination of the actual grounds on which its fundamental tenets rest, and from the possibility that it might conceivably receive an inductive condemnation by simple enumeration, theology is not sharply to be distinguished from an inductive physical science at its theoretical level.

Two points in this connexion may perhaps be taken to have been settled finally in the 18th century. As to the first of these, the Deists seem to have made good their contention that the reasoned acceptance of revealed religion, purporting to be mediated by incarnation or immanence of God in human personality, or by inspiration thereof, presupposes acceptance of natural or rational theology. In other words, in order to be a rationally convinced Christian, one must first be a theist. To credit an ambassador from God, one must first believe that God is; to read divinity in the messenger's spiritual dignity, one must have the prior belief that God is good. And it might be added to-day, that for a Christian to be able to regard his religious experience as communion with God, he must have reasons for entertaining the idea of God at all, and for his assurance that this idea, unlike some other of his ideas, has a real counterpart external to his mind.

The other question as to which the 18th century pronounced the last word is that of the knowledgestatus of the natural theology which revealed religion presupposes. That there is, or can be, any communicable knowledge of God possessing the certainty or demonstrability of a mathematical theorem, any such truth derivable from reason independently of sensory experience, is a view which Hume and Kant made untenable. From their day to ours, theistic arguments