the beauty and the devotional value of worship. Whether on some points we might have something to give in exchange, is not for me to decide. Yet it might perhaps be suggested that, in connexion with the question now being debated in England of giving the lay element its proper place in the organization of the Church, use could be made of the very long experience in these matters which the Swedish Church has gained. In the mission field some kind of settlement between the mother Churches would be of the greatest value, especially as the missions of the Swedish Church are mostly within the British Empire.

When the Lambeth Conference assembles this year, amongst all the weighty matters submitted to its consideration will also be, I trust, the report of the Commission which was appointed in 1909 to investigate the question of relations with the Swedish Church. Is it too much to hope that due attention will be given to it, and that the Bishops of the Anglican communion may be guided to take such steps as may encourage closer relations and a better understanding between the Churches of England and Sweden? The late Bishop of Salisbury, amongst whose legacies to his Church is also this task, concludes his excellent book on the Swedish Church by a few lines, which may also serve as a conclusion to this paper:

'Lastly, an alliance, such as I venture to hope for, would be the natural link between the (estimated) thirty-two millions of Anglicans and the (estimated) seventy millions of Lutherans. The isolation of Lutheranism is, I know, hard to break down, but one of the most hopeful roads, at present, is through Sweden. Conceive what power such an alliance might possess, both in strengthening inward faith and discipline, and in influencing the world outside! Even if it extended at first only to England and Sweden it would be a magnificent instrument in the hand of God. May He who gave His servants the power to see visions also help us to make them realities!'

YNGVE BRILIOTH.1

The writer is indebted to his friend the Rev. G. H. Fendick, M.A., of Pusey House, Oxford, for kindly revising the English of this paper.

ART. II. PERSONALITY IN RECENT PHILOSOPHY.

1. The Philosophy of Plotinus: the Gifford Lectures at St. Andrews, 1917-1918. By WILLIAM RALPH INGE, C.V.O., D.D., Dean of St. Paul's; Hon. Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, and Hertford College, Oxford. Formerly Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. (London: Longmans. 1918.) 2. Outspoken Essays. By WILLIAM RALPH INGE, C.V.O., D.D., Dean of St. Paul's. (London: Longmans. 1919.) 3. Problems of the Self. By JOHN DAVID LAIRD, M.A., Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the Queen's University of Belfast. (London: Macmillan. 1917.) 4. God and Personality: being the Gifford Lectures delivered in the University of Aberdeen in the years 1918 and 1919. First Course. By CLEMENT C. J. WEBB, Fellow of St. Mary Magdalen College, Oxford. (London: Fisher Unwin. 1918.)

5. The Idea of God in the light of recent Philosophy: the Gifford Lectures. By A. SETH PRINGLE-PATTISON, LL.D., D.C.L., Fellow of the British Academy, Professor of Logic and Metaphysic in the University of Edinburgh. (Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1917.)

6. Moral Values and the Idea of God. By W. R. SORLEY, Litt.D., LL.D., Fellow of the British Academy, Knightsbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy, Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. (Cambridge: University Press. 1918.)

A STUDY of these books leaves on the mind a lively impression of the enormous influence exercised, whether by way of attraction or of repulsion, upon recent English Philosophy by the writings of Mr. F. H. Bradley. The orientation of any writer on Metaphysics-the more so, the more directly he deals with the ultimate problems of religion

is very much determined by his attitude towards Mr. Bradley. Even those who know Mr. Bradley's work only by repute will be aware that his idealism is of the kind which, so far as is possible to an idealistic writer, makes little of personality in man, while it altogether denies the attribution of personality to God or rather to the Absolute.' It is impossible here to give the reader who does not already possess it even the most summary account of Mr. Bradley's position. It must suffice to say that, according to Mr. Bradley, the ultimate Reality-the only real Being—is an 'Absolute,' whom or which (for Mr. Bradley prefers to speak of this entity in the neuter) he more definitely than is usual with idealistic philosophers refuses to identify with the 'God' of Religion. Mr. Bradley's view of matter is uncompromisingly idealistic. For him nothing is absolutely real the being of which is dependent upon its relation to anything else. Matter is, for the genuine Idealist, so obviously inseparable from mind—all that we can know about it is so obviously unintelligible except in terms of some mental experience that matter cannot be the Reality for which we are in search. By Mr. Bradley it is pronounced to be mere appearance '-the way in which Reality appears. The self' has much higher claims to reality it is something which exists' for itself,' and not merely for other.' But after all it is impossible (so Mr. Bradley argues) sharply to separate off the individual subject from the object which it knows. It is made what it is by relation to its object, and also to other selves: the isolated self-the self taken apart from its relation to other individual selves and to society at large-is for Mr. Bradley an unreal abstraction. There would seem more hope of discovering the absolute Reality in the concept of God. But the God of Religion (in view of some of the theories which we shall have to examine this admission should be noted) is always thought of as distinguished in some measure not only from the world which is known to Him, but from each and every finite self. For Mr. Bradley relation is a mark of unreality: an absolute Being must transcend' all relations. There would still seem some hope of finding the Reality which

we seek in a God who is thought of as including not only the world which He knows, and which without Him would be nothing at all, but also the finite selves. And this is the conception of the Absolute which has usually been adopted by those modern philosophers who derive their inspiration mainly or largely from Hegel. But that is not enough for Mr. Bradley for him internal relations as well as external relations are a note of unreality. He will not say that the Whole' or 'the All' or 'the Universe' is the Absolute Reality: for the Whole is made what it is by the relation of the parts to one another and to itself. Even the God of philosophers like Green and Caird is reduced after all to an appearance,' though it is an appearance which is much nearer to reality, much more real,' than the finite self. The Absolute is not the whole as a whole but that which appears in the whole thus conceived. If we ask for a further account of the nature of this Whole we can get no answer for if I could know the Absolute, that would imply that I and the Absolute were not one but two and that would imply relation : an Absolute known to me would not be the Absolute. To know the Absolute, I must be the Absolute. And yet the Absolute cannot even know itself for there too the old dualism or relativity would break out again: Reality must transcend the relation between subject and object, between being and knowing, between whole and part. The Absolute thus becomes the Unknowable. And yet Mr. Bradley would disclaim all sympathy with such an Agnosticism as Herbert Spencer's. He seeks to escape such Agnosticism by developing a doctrine of 'degrees of knowledge and of reality.' In the light of that doctrine it would not be difficult to represent Mr. Bradley's view of the Universe as after all equivalent to a Theism which admits that God can only be known imperfectly by minds like ours. But in the later chapters of Appearance and Reality, and still more decidedly in Mr. Bradley's later Essays on Truth and Reality, it becomes apparent that after all the Absolute exists only in its appearances: it has 'no assets except the appearances.' When we remember

that God is one of these appearances, and an appearance which possesses more reality than any finite self, there might still seem to be room for a Theism which was content to claim for the human mind something less than absolute Omniscience but some of Mr. Bradley's later utterances would seem to exclude any such interpretation. For we are told that there are after all no centres of consciousness except finite centres: the absolute experience' does not exist in any one mind at all. And thus a philosophy which, if indisposed to recognize even a relative independence and reality for the individual self, might seem to be in the highest degree spiritualistic, ends in a view of a Universe which does not pretend to be theistic, and which differs from ordinary Materialism or Naturalism only in so far as it does not attempt to reduce that aspect of the Absolute which appears' in finite minds to that aspect which appears' in the 'matter' of the Physicist and the Chemist. Mr. Bradley's view of the Universe is thus at bottom very much the same as that of Spinoza, and Spinoza interpreted (as modern interpreters are pretty well agreed that he must be interpreted) in a very naturalistic sense.

Quite inadequate as is this sketch of Mr. Bradley's position to give the reader any real insight into his system, it will, I hope, help any reader who was not previously acquainted with it, to understand a little better what is the sort of denial of personality to God and to man which the writers of recent philosophical works have before their minds. I propose in the following pages briefly to indicate the attitude of the various writers to this way of looking at things, and to estimate the help which they may give us in arriving at a way of thinking less hopelessly destructive of all that plain men have been in the habit of understanding by Religion and Morality. I say Religion and Morality, for it follows, assuredly and inevitably, from the Bradleyan mode of thought that the Absolute transcends the distinction between right and wrong, good and bad, -as conceived by us-and is 'super-moral' as well as super-personal.'