The Cosmic God: A Fundamental Philosophy in …

1 Cosmic God. A Fundamental Philosophy IN popular LECTURES BY ISAAC M. WISE, Rabbi of the Benai Yeshurun Congregation. President of the Hebrew Union College. CINCINNATI: OFFICE AMERICAN ISRAELITE AND DEBORAH. 1876. THE Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1876, by ISAAC M. WISE, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of Ohio. Dedication. This volume is dedicated to the memory of a sainted Mother in Israel, a peerless woman of sub-lime virtues, a spouse of matchless affection, a parent of angelic benignity: THERESE WISE, nee BLOCH. V She died December 10th, 1874, fifty-one years old. To her, my beloved wife, who in life possessed my heart with its best affections, I" dedicate in eternity my best thoughts.

2 THE AUTHOR. PREFACE This book, conceived in sorrow, composed in grief, and constructed at the brink of despair, contains my mind's-best thoughts, and my soul's triumph over the powers of darkness. My wife, my dearly beloved companion in this eventful life, the mother of my childdren, the faithful, partner of my joys and my sufferings, was prostrated with an incurable disease. For nearly two years she lived the life of a shadow, without affection or clear consciousness,, no more herself than the ruin is the castle. I prayed, I wept, I mourned, I despaired; and yet my cup of woe was. not full. A feeling which I can not describe, in clashing: conflict with the above, against which my sense of duty rebelled, and my better nature continually and forcibly re-monstrated, overwhelmed me so irresistably, with such in-expressible violence, that I was drifting and whirling about in a roaring current of lacerating contradictions, tormen-ting self-accusations bordering on self contempt.

3 Ruthless attacks upon my character, of restless assail-ants, from the camp of implacable foes, embittered my joyless days. My energies failed. Insanity or suicide ap-peared inevitable. In- this state of mind, the Satan of Doubt persecuted me with all his furious demons. My con-victions were uprooted, and my faith was shaken; I was. myself no longer. Once, at the midnight hour, in a state-of indifference and stupor, I opened the Bible, and per-chance I read: " Unless thy law had been my delights, I should long since have been lost in my affliction." (Psalms 119, 92.) It struck me forcibly: "There is the proper remedy for all afflictions." When those ancient Hebrews spoke of the law of God, they meant the whole of it revealed in God's, words and works. Research, science,-philosopy, deep and perplexing, problems most intricate and propositions most: complicated, I thought, like the rabbis of the talmud, tnust be the proper remedy for all maladies of the heart and reason.

4 I plunged headlong into the whirlpool of philos-ophy, and, I believe, to have found many a gem in the fathomless deep. But the costliest of all gems I found is a calm and composed mind, a self-relying conviction. I found myself once more. My sainted wife having been the first cause of this turn in my life's history, and this vol-ume containing the first fruits of my independent research-es in science and Philosophy , I have dedicated it to her memory. I had lectured every Friday evening for two successive winters on the History of Philosophy , with special refer-ence to the Jewish philosophers down to Baruch Spinoza and Moses Mendelssohn, and published sketches thereof in The Israelite. Meanwhile I read the modern books on Philosophy and science, especially by German authors. In the summer of the year 1874, under the most distressing-circumstances, I sketched the course of lectures now laid before the public, and delivered them in the fall and win-ter of 1874-5, in the Temple of the Benai Yeshurun Con-gregation of Cincinnati, and published extensive abstracts thereof in The American Israelite.

5 The Cincinnati daily papers, especially the Enquirer, and my audience encour-aged me so kindly, that I revised those lectures to give them to the public in the present form, as a genuinely American production of the philosophizing mind. No metaphysics ! No transcendant and no transcendent-al Philosophy ! No formal speculations ! the good na-tured, sweet tempered and self-complacent pastor exclaims, blessed either with a superabundance of uninquired faith, or with the consciousness of his inability to confront the spirit of the age with its new problems, forced upon the thinking mind by the successes and discoveries of science, and advertised in a variety of forms by a class of so called free thinkers, whose voice reaches all classes of society, down to the village school-room. The days of touching simplicity are gone, This is an age of sober reflection, deep and irresistable.

6 Either you are able of defending your dogmas before the judgment seat of reason, or you must see them antiquated and impotent. The conflict of science and religion is before your doors, however senti-mentally and devotionally you may whitewash the crumb-ling walls, or galvanize defunct forms, or close your in fervent prayer, to see not how the platform shakes under your feet. You must defend yourselves or surrender. What are your arms of defence, if you philosophize not ? Again, the scientist, and the specialist in particular, who attempts to coustruct the universe in compliance to the laws governing one science, is no less opposed to philoso-phy than the sentimental pastor. It is natural that the sci-entist, engaged in investigating empirically isolated phe-nomena, classifying formally the analogous facts, and seek-ing by experience and experiment the law which governs them respectively, should be so engulfed in empiricism, and one-sided particularism that the universe appear to him submerged in his particular science, beyond which there is nothing.

7 But Philosophy is not a merely systematical cognition of a class of things or even all things ; it is the-: Cognition of the principles, the summation and harmoniza-tion of the deepest relations, of all physical and spiritual es-sence; it is the first and also the last of all sciences, froma which all of them emerged, and in which all of them finally submerge. The sciences are the building stones of phil-osophy, from which it construes the system of the uni-verse, in which all is in its proper place, and all parts are united to a harmonious totality. Philosophy extends be-yond each science and all sciences, as far as Intelligence reaches beyond phenomenal nature. The systems of phil-osophy must be different on account of the different phil-osophizing subjects, the various starting points, and the: scientific means at the command of each; but the object of Philosophy is invariably the same, and each of the systems; has contributed its share to the solution of the gigantic, problem, What is this universe?

8 In the volume before you, I have made the attempt to respond to this question. Reviewing the sciences in con-nection with the main points of the problem, adhering strictly to the law of causality and the method of induc-tion, I believe to have reached a; definite conception of the universe, and the God of the universe. Therefore I con-sider this a Fundamental Philosophy , from which the vari-ous philosophical disciplines can be derived. The uni-verse, with the exception of matter, which is a very small fraction thereof, appearing to me synonymous with Deity so that the present volume is in the main a new evidence of the existence of Deity, I nave called it The Cosmic . God, in whom and by whom there is the one grand har-monious system of things, in whom and by whom nature; is a cosmos and no chaos. I know well that this is not the God of vulgar theology nor is it the God of Spinoza or Locke.

9 I could not dis-cover either of them in my researches into the phenome-nal sciences and history. Theologians can give us no defi-nition of Deity; their ideas are indefinite and vague, and consequently the cause of atheism. The. God of Spinoza and Locke is submerged in nature, so that nature is God, and God is nature, beyond which there is nothing. The infinite has become finite in nature, and all is necessity. This excludes all principles of freedom and ethics. pantheism, falsely called so, because the universe is infi-nitely more than all objects of nature, in the minds of de-pendent thinkers, changed into fatalism and materialism, lasts heavily upon the present generation. I did not arrive at either of those conclusions concerning Deity, simply because as free as possible from all prejudices, and from the present state of the sciences, I could reach THE Cosmic GOD only.

10 If it is not the God of modern theol-ogy, He is God after all, the Eternal Jehovah, who will be worshiped by future generations. THE AUTHOR. CONTENTS. lecture .. Page. I. Truth and its Criterion, - - 9 II: The Mind's Receptivity and Spontaneity, - 16 IIII. Mind or Brain, - - - 23 IV. Human Mind actualized in its Monuments, 32 V. Second lecture on same subject, - - 39 VI. Homo-Brutalism Reviewed, - - - 47 VII. Homo-Brutalism Reviewed Anatomically, 55 VIII. Homo-Brutalism-Reviewed Psychologically, 62 IX. Elementary Ontology, - - - - 7 X.