Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VII. THE MOMENTA OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. The records of the past can be studied variously. Events can be arranged in the order of their occurrence : this is chronology or annals ; in addition to this, their connections and mutual relations as cause and effect may be shown: this is historical science ; or, thirdly, from a general view of trains of related events some abstract aim as their final cause may be theoretically deduced and confirmed by experience : this is the philosophy of history. The doctrine of final causes, in its old form as the argumentum de appe- titu, has been superseded. Function is not purpose ; desire comes from the experience of pleasure, and realizes its dreams, if at all, by the slow development of capacity. The wish carries no warrant of gratification with it. No " argument from design " can be adduced from the region where the laws of physical necessity prevail. Those laws are not designed for an end. When, however, in the unfolding of mind we reach the stage of notions, we observe a growing power to accomplish desire, not only by alteringthe individual or race organism, but also by bringing external objects into unison with the desire, reversing the process common in the life of sensation. This spectacle, however, is confined to man alone, and man as guided by prospective volition, that is, by an object ahead. When some such object is common to a nation or race, it exercises a wide influence on its destiny, and is the key to much that otherwise would be inexplicable in its actions. What we call national hopes, ambitions and ideals are such objects. Sometimes they are distinctly recognized by the nation, sometimes they are pursued almost unconsciously. They do not correspond to things as they are, but as they are wished to be. Hence ther...