CHAPTER II.
THE GENERAL ETHICAL PROBLEM.
“Certain spirits, by permission, ascended from hell, and said to me,
‘You have written a great deal from the Lord, write something also
from us.’ I replied, ‘What shall I write?’ They said, ‘Write that
every spirit, whether he be good or evil, is in his own delight, — the
good in the delight of his good, and the evil in the delight of his evil.’
I asked them, ‘What may your delight be?’ They said that it was the
delight of committing adultery, stealing, defrauding, and lying. . . .
I said, ‘Then you are like the unclean beasts.’ . . . They answered,
‘If we are, we are.’” — Swedenborg, Divine Providence.
“There’s nothing, either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” — Hamlet.
With which of the two considerations mentioned
in our introduction shall a religious philosophy
begin? Of its two chief considerations, the moral code,
and the relation of this code to reality, which is the
one that properly stands first in order? We have
already indicated our opinion. The philosophy of
religion is distinguished from theoretic philosophy
precisely by its relation to an ideal. If possible,
therefore, it should early be clear as to what ideal
it has. The ideal ought, if possible, to be studied
first, since it is this ideal that is to give character to
our whole quest among the realities. And so the
first part of religious philosophy is properly the
discussion of ethical problems.
