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SYMBOLISM AND BELIEF by EDWYN BEVAN London GEORGE ALLEN UNWIN LTD
Museum Street TO MY FRIEND ALFRED EDWARD TAYLOR without whose prompting
and encouragement these lectures would never have been written PREFACE
JL HE lectures contained in this volume were given for the University of
Edinburgh on Lord Giffords founda tion In the years 1933 and 1934. I
have delayed their publication in the hope that with process of time I
might, by further reading and thought, be able to expand and modify
them, so as to make them more worthy of presen tation to the public in
the form of a book. This hope has been so meagrely realized that it now
seems best to let them go forth, with all their imperfections on their
head, hardly at all altered from the form in which they were delivered.
Some changes in arrangement have been made in the order of lectures the
two on Time now follow immediately the two on the spatial symbol of
Height. Four lectures have been omitted altogether from the present
volume, those on image-worship and doctrines ondemning the manufacture
of images in antiquity and in the Christian Church. Since in the rest of
the lectures ihe symbolism of material objects in worship was not the
kind of symbolism under consideration, these four lectures seemed
somewhat of a digression from the main ine of argument. I hope later on
to issue them as a small book by themselves. As is generally known, Lord
Giffords Will prescribes hat lecturers on his foundation are not to ask
their iudience to believe any statement on the ground of any special
revelation, whether contained in Scripture or the iogma of a Church, but
to rest what they affirm solely upon grounds of reason. That is to say,
their basis must be the facts of the world so far as they are accessible
to the reason common to mankind. I hope that I have nowhere transgressed
this restriction imposed t by the munificent benefactor to whom these
lectures owe their existence. Of course beliefs entertained by the
Christian Church, or by Theists, are, as psychological facts, among the
indisputable facts of the world, and a Gifford lecturer is, I take it,
permitted to point to them, as such, though he may not ask his hearers
to accept them on the authority of Church or Scripture. Since my two
lectures on Time were written, a note worthy contribution to the
subject, from a Christian standpoint, has been made by Mr. F. H. Brabant
in his Bampton Lectures, Time and Eternity in Christian Thought
delivered in 1936, published in 1937. It was unfortunate for me that I
had not Mr. Brabants book before me, when I wrote my two lectures. Of
one thing I am sure that the questions I have raised regarding the
element of symbolism in our religious conceptions take us to the very
heart of the religious problem. How inadequate my attempts to answer
them have been no one can be more conscious than I am. But if I have
succeeded in putting the questions themselves in a somewhat clearer
light, so that the thought of others may be directed upon them with
richer result, that at any rate is something which I trust the
University which honoured me by appointing me to this lectureship will
accept as something worth doing. January 1938 Contents LECTURE PAGE
Preface 7 I. Introductory 1 1 II. Height 28 III. Height continued 58 IV.
Tiihe 82 V. Time continued 102 VI. Light 125 VII. Spirit 151 VIII.
Spirit continued 177 IX. The Wrath of God 206 X. The Wrath of God
continued 23 1 XI. Distinction of Literal and Symbolical 252 XII.
Symbols Without Conceptual Meaning 275 XIII. Pragmatism and Analogy 297
XIV. Mansel and Pragmatism 318 XV. Rationalism and Mysticism 341 S XVI.
The Justification of Belief 364 Index 387 A 9 LECTURE ONE INTRODUCTORY
SYMBOLISM and Belief is the subject chosen for these lectures. In his
little book on Symbolism Professor Whitehead gives a definition of that
term with which we may start...
