that the current academic philosophy has been grafted.  I do not mean exactly the Calvinism of Calvin, or even of Jonathan Edwards; for in their systems there was much that was not pure philosophy, but rather faith in the externals and history of revelation.  Jewish and Christian revelation was interpreted by these men, however, in the spirit of a particular philosophy, which might have arisen under any sky, and been associated with any other religion as well as with Protestant Christianity.  In fact, the philosophical principle of Calvinism appears also in the Koran, in Spinoza, and in Cardinal Newman; and persons with no very distinctive Christian belief, like Carlyle or like Professor Royce, may be nevertheless, philosophically, perfect Calvinists.  Calvinism, taken in this sense, is an expression of the agonised conscience.  It is a view of the world which an agonised conscience readily embraces, if it takes itself seriously, as, being agonised, of course it must.  Calvinism, essentially, asserts three things:  that sin exists, that sin is punished, and that it is beautiful that sin should exist to be punished.  The heart of the Calvinist is therefore divided between tragic concern at his own miserable condition, and tragic exultation about the universe at large.  He oscillates between a profound abasement and a paradoxical elation of the spirit.  To be a Calvinist philosophically is to feel a fierce pleasure in the existence of misery, especially of one’s own, in that this misery seems to manifest the fact that the Absolute is irresponsible or infinite or holy.  Human nature, it feels, is totally depraved:  to have the instincts and motives that we necessarily have is a great scandal, and we must suffer for it; but that scandal is requisite, since otherwise the serious importance of being as we ought to be would not have been vindicated.

To those of us who have not an agonised conscience this system may seem fantastic and even unintelligible; yet it is logically and intently thought out from its emotional premises.  It can take permanent possession of a deep mind here and there, and under certain conditions it can become epidemic.  Imagine, for instance, a small nation with an intense vitality, but on the verge of ruin, ecstatic and distressful, having a strict and minute code of laws, that paints life in sharp and violent chiaroscuro, all pure righteousness and black abominations, and exaggerating the consequences of both perhaps to infinity.  Such a people were the Jews after the exile, and again the early Protestants.  If such a people is philosophical at all, it will not improbably be Calvinistic.  Even in the early American communities many of these conditions were fulfilled.  The nation was small and isolated; it lived under pressure and constant trial; it was acquainted with but a small range of goods and evils.  Vigilance over conduct and an absolute demand for personal integrity were not merely traditional things, but things that practical sages, like Franklin and