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The Tension Between Direct Experience and

Argument in Religion
John E. Smith
Religious Studies / Volume 17 / Issue 04 / December 1981, pp 487 - 497
DOI: 10.1017/S0034412500013251, Published online: 24 October 2008

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0034412500013251

How to cite this article:
John E. Smith (1981). The Tension Between Direct Experience and Argument in
Religion. Religious Studies, 17, pp 487-497 doi:10.1017/S0034412500013251
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Rel. Stud. 17, pp. 487-497

487

JOHN E. SMITH
Clark Professor of Philosophy, Tale University

THE TENSION BETWEEN

DIRECT EXPERIENCE AND ARGUMENT
IN RELIGION
There is an undercurrent to be detected in Anselm's record of the meditative
experience that issued in the Ontological Argument and, although it points
to a profound and perennial problem in the interpretation of religion, this
undercurrent has been largely ignored. The Argument, as is well known,
moves entirely within the medium of reflective meaning focused on the idea
of God and, unlike the cosmological arguments of later theologians, it makes
no appeal whatever to a principle of causality or to the discovery of a
sufficient reason for finite existence.1 Anselm seems to have had his own sense
of what one may call the unadulterated rationalism of the Argument when,
in his own words, he wondered, 'if perhaps it might be possible tofindone
single argument that for its proof required no other save itself, and that by
itself would suffice to prove that God really exists'.2 Here we are entirely
within that inner chamber of the mind so dear to the Augustinian tradition,
a mind from which one is to exclude all thought save that of God. The task
of the one who reflects is to penetrate the inner meaning of this thought in
order to discover what it implies beyond what is evident on the surface.3 With
such an eminently rational or logical aim occupying the centre of attention,
it is quite understandable that the presence of another, and quite opposed,
concern should have been overlooked Anselm's concern, namely, to transcend, as it were, the medium of thought itself, and enter into the presence
of God. The reason that this concern introduces a tension in the search for
a proof is that the realization of presence would seem to render proof
superfluous, while the inference in an argument especially one moving
towards existence - inevitably suggests, in some sense and to some degree,
the absence of what is sought for.
Presence or direct experience would seem to be self-supporting in the sense
that what is encountered by someone does not need the additional support
1
Descartes gave a new and somewhat confusing turn to the discussion by starting with the idea of God
and then asking for its cause (something Anselm had never done), thus creating a type of cosmological
argument from the Ontological starting point.
2
St Anselm's Proslogion, trans. M.J. Charlesworth (Oxford, 1965), p. 103.
3
It is important to notice that Aquinas somewhat obscured the rational development involved when
he characterized the Argument as being 'self-evident'.

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JOHN E. SMITH

of an argument to the effect that he or she 'must be' encountering what is

present. And, on the other hand, the resort to argument or inference suggests
that whatever is to be inferred is not yet present. There is here a far greater
problem for reflective thought about God than has ever been fully recognized.
The problem, moreover, transcends, while not excluding, questions of the
logical validity of Anselm's or any other argument, since it reaches down to
the role and the appropriateness of argument itself in the continuum of
religious experience.
The incongruity, even the paradox, implicit in this situation was not lost
on Anselm even if it has been ignored by his interpreters largely because the
renowned Argument has invariably been abstracted, expressed in logical
symbolism and thus removed from the meditative setting behind its
formulation.1 Anselm expresses his problem quite explicitly at two significant
points in later chapters of the Proslogion. In chapter xiv,2 he asks this question:
'But if you have found [Him], why is it that you do not experience (non sends)
what you have found?' And shortly thereafter Anselm exclaims, 'You are
within me and around me and I do not have any experience of you.'3 The
incongruity of the situation is clear enough; the necessarily existent God of
the Argument appears as omnipresent' You are wholly present everywhere'
but there is no realization of that presence or encounter hie et nunc' and I
do not see you'. The contrast here is not between the visible and the invisible,
but between omnipresence and presence, or some form of individualized
experience.
The problem brought to our attention by Anselm's experience concerns
the relation between what may be called the 'is' of presence or meeting and
the ' must be' of argument and inference, and while this problem assumes
a peculiar and difficult form in the sphere of religion it is by no means
confined to thought about God. We have no intelligible relation to reality
in any of its dimensions which is not two-fold in the sense of embracing both
some form of encounter with what there is, and a rational comprehension
of that content through conceptualization, interpretation, and inference.
Stated in other terms, we have no knowledge or comprehension of actuality
that is composed solely of ideas on the one hand, or of brute data of
observation or encounter on the other. Consequently, as Kant saw so well,
we are faced with an ongoing task of relating these two elements to each other
so that neither is subordinated to or allowed to supplant the other. The reason
that the general problem makes itself felt in the sphere of religion and thought
about God in an exceptionally acute form is that we are not there dealing
1
It is not without significance that Anselm was concerned to emphasize the 'silent reasoning within
himseir that gave rise to the Argument, as if it were quite essential that every individual should actually
participate in the tracing out of this reasoning in his own mind, rather than merely reading it in its
objectified written form.
2
Charlesworth, p. 135.
3
Ch. xvi, Charlesworth, p. 137 'HOB te sentio'.

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DIRECT EXPERIENCE AND ARGUMENT

489

with objects and hence cannot avail ourselves of the distinction between
presence and absence taken for granted in ordinary experience. The
distinction, nevertheless, between idea and the objective referent remains in
discourse about God although the point is frequently lost on those who insist
on saying that the Ontological Argument is fallacious because we all know
that you cannot obtain existence from 'mere' ideas. I shall not pursue this
point beyond the observation that whether there are any ' mere' ideas, and
particularly whether the idea of God is one of them, is precisely the point
at issue.
It is not my intention to continue discussion of the central problem in terms
of Anselm's particular experience and Argument. It is, however, of the
highest significance that the problem should have arisen within the experience
of a thinker who invested so much in a single and self-sufficient argument
for the existence of God. The demand for the experience of presence would
certainly be expected from avowed mystics who seek to transcend rational
articulation, or from those whose sole appeal is to 'encounter' because they
regard the way of argument inappropriate or misguided. That a thinker like
Anselm, however, should make this demand is evidence that rational
demonstration, even when accepted as logically valid, leaves something out
of account.
The problem of resolving the tension between direct experience and
argument in discourse about God has persisted over centuries and continues
to present itself in ever new forms. The scepticism concerning the viability
of the classical theistic arguments stemming from the criticism of Hume and
Kant was often accompanied by forms of pietism stressing an immediate
relation to God not dependent on any sort of rational demonstration.
Kierkegaard's claim that we can never argue to existence and his consequent
rejection of proof in favour of meeting God in the leap of faith represents a
more recent instance of this same reaction. In a similar vein, the theologians
of 'encounter' sought to interpret the relation of the individual to God
exclusively on the ' I-Thou' model of personal relationships that have a
self-authenticating character and are not to be confused with 'knowledge
about' the persons involved nor with argument of any sort.
Critics of this way of approach, on the other hand, have insisted on the
difficulties posed by the supposition of wholly 'immediate' experience and
on the inescapability of inference and interpretation for articulating any
experience whatever. The curious fact about this confrontation between those
who reject argument in their insistence on encounter, and those who criticize
encounter as not self-supporting apart from argument and interpretation, is
that each side assumes that there is no other alternative but the dyadic one
of either direct experience (immediacy) or argument. This assumption, like
the belief that knowledge means that we have certainty or if we do not that
we know nothing at all, is profoundly mistaken, the result of polarized

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JOHN E. SMITH

thinking determined by the belief that the truth resides in the total negation
of whatever stands directly opposed to what one is trying to maintain. It is
not difficult to show that there is no dimension of our meaningful relations to
reality in which we are able to proceed on the basis of either immediate
perception or rational construction alone.1 Howsoever they are related, the
two are always present together, nor do the admittedly special circumstances
that attend discourse about God radically alter that togetherness. Immediacy
and encounter are not self-supporting apart from various modes of rational
articulation - description, interpretation, comparison, and inference - and
the striking fact about the mystics whom Royce correctly described as the
'pure empiricists' of the religious spirit is that even they have felt the need
for, at times, voluminous measures of expression. The sacred silence of
immediacy has, to be sure, its own central place in the world of the mystics,
but that silence has often proved eloquent enough. The truth is, as Hegel
saw, that if there is to be any immediacy at all, it can come only as the upshot
of mediation and not at the 'beginning'.
On the other hand, the Pascals, Jameses, Kierkegaards, and Edwardses
have been correct in their insistence that formal, rational demonstrations of
divine existence quite out of touch with any experiences from which even the
idea of God itself might arise can never have the religious significance that
should be the central concern. For, among other reasons, the existence of God
is an abstract feature with no more concreteness than that possessed by the
' I ' of Descartes when he expressed the certainty that it exists without yet
knowing what it is. No process of reasoning about God's existence, moreover,
set out with tolerably clear premises and controlled by explicit principles of
inference can by itselfhr'mg the reasoner into the relation of love, of reverence,
of faith standing at the heart of religion. And if this is what is meant by those
who say that God is not to be found in the conclusion of a syllogism, anyone
acquainted with the religious dimension of life must agree. Such agreement,
however, does not settle the matter any more than it would be resolved merely
by insisting on the necessity of some form of mediation. It should be clear
that neither immediacy nor inference is sufficient when taken alone; no
progress is to be found in perpetuating the polar opposition in which the
proponents of each side go to extreme lengths and involve themselves in
untenable exaggerations in order to possess the field exclusively.
The one solution enabling us to transcend the futile dyad is to be found
in experience interpreted in a reflective process whereby its implicit meaning is
made rationally explicit and in such a way that the resultant interpretation
is neither set over against the experience as a contrast between 'reality' and
'mere thought', nor allowed to supplant the original experience as if it were
unimportant and could be dispensed with. Both these aberrations must be
1
It is interesting to note that the whole point of Kant's intuitionism in mathematics was to show that
even in that discipline something in addition to 'pure reason' is at work.

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guarded against. The rational development of experience is not a lifeless

conceptual suspension in logical space, but an expression of the meaning of
that experience and is thus inseparable from it. The conceptual development
in the form of argument, moreover, cannot be made to function as a surrogate for experience thus rendering it unnecessary. Unfortunately, many
philosophers and theologians alike have failed to guard against these errors.
William James, for example, held a dim view of the force of rational argument
about God, largely because he regarded conceptual elaboration as secondary,
a mere translation of feeling-the deeper element-into another tongue. At
the other end of the spectrum are those who have recast the Ontological
Argument, for example, in a formal mode that separates it entirely from its
meditative context and the tradition of experience necessary for understanding what must be meant by the one who says the word 'God'. The proper
formula for overcoming the impasse of either direct experience or argument
is now clear; the dyadic alternative is an error because each is required and
the task is to see that they are related in a way that does full justice to both.
I know of no better way of making clear precisely what is needed in order
to resolve the basic problem than to appeal to a remarkable piece of thinking
about God to be found in an essay by Charles S. Peirce, entitled,' A Neglected
Argument for the Reality of God'. 1 As I shall show, Peirce's discussion
admirably fulfils the conditions outlined above and he succeeds, as few have
done, in providing a model in which both direct experience and argument
are related in an intelligible and convincing way. I shall not attempt to
reproduce every turn in his quite original and perceptive discussion or to
consider a number of the issues it poses; my aim instead is to show how his
approach contributes to the overcoming of the tension cited as the main topic
of this paper. In attempting to accomplish this aim in a limited space, I shall
have to foreshorten his argument and summarize much of it in my own
terms.2
Before proceeding to the Neglected Argument itself, several of Peirce's basic
notions must be made clear. To begin with, he was reluctant to use the term
'existence' in relation to God because he understood existence as the domain
of the actions and reactions among finite things in a system, and God is not
an object among others in this domain. Instead, relying on medieval
terminology, he spoke of God's Reality as something having characteristics
not dependent for their tenure on anyone's actually thinking them; reality
is thus wider than the actual or existence and embraces both the possible and
1
Thisessay first appeared in the Hibbert Journal in 1908, and is reprinted in The Collected Papers of Charles
Sanders Peirce, ed. Hartshorne and Weiss, (Cambridge, Mass., 1935), vol. 11, paras 452-493. Since the
editors of these volumes present Peirce's writing in numbered paragraphs, it has become standard practice
to refer to them in this way; hence the citation '6. 454' refers, not to pages, but to that numbered
paragraph in volume vi.
2
For purposes of consistency, I shall follow Peirce's practice of using capital letters for technical
terms - Universes, Neglected Argument, Musement, etc. - which in his discussion are distinguished from
vernacular words.

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JOHN E. SMITH

the necessary as well. When Peirce refers, as he does throughout the paper,
to God as the creator and coordinator of the three Universes of Experience,
it must be understood that he means the three dimensions of his conception
of what there is. There is, first, the Universe of Ideas or possibilities consisting
in their capability of being thought; secondly, there is the Universe of the
brute actuality of things and facts manifest in action and reaction; and,
thirdly, there is the Universe of signs or active powers establishing connections
between things in one Universe and especially between the items in different
Universes. It is of the utmost importance to notice that in this triadic
conception Peirce was rejecting the paradigm of so much modern empiricism
and nominalism. According to that view there is, on the one hand, a domain
of'given' facts, and, on the other, a set of concepts and logical forms, so that
from some mysterious conjunction or correlation between the two there must
result experience, knowledge and meaning. Peirce saw that such a dyadic
model is not only inadequate to explain the occurrence of either experience
or knowledge, but that it entirely omits his third Universe or the reality of
the signs expressing the intelligible relations between our thought and the
world which are already manifest in the experience and knowledge we actually
possess. Peirce was correct in affirming the reality of this third Universe and,
as will become clear, it is intimately related to his argument for God as creator
and coordinator of the three Universes.
Peirce's discussion is divided into three stages and, although he sometimes
regarded the second stage as constituting the 'Neglected Argument' as such
(5. 487), it is clear that all three must be taken together to form what he
called a 'nest' and to which he gave the name of'the N.A.'. The first stage
consists of a free play of thought and meditation which he called' Musement'
an opening up of the mind and heart of the person to some wonder in one
of the Universes or to meditation on the cause of some relation between any
two Universes-leading ultimately to the idea of God as creator of the
universes. Musement is free and receptive to what is before us and is guided
by the purpose of setting aside all serious or specific purpose so as to be given
over to wonder and speculation 'on the whole'. Musement, says Peirce, is
not to be controlled at the outset by logical analysis, although such analysis
can be of use within the framework of musement.1 The reason for the
restriction is clear; musement is direct experiencing or perception, as Peirce
sometimes called it, suffused with the impressions and observations that occur
1
Peirce distinguished between an ' Argument' and an ' Argumentation'; the former means any process
of thought 'reasonably tending to produce a definite belief and the latter is an Argument 'proceeding
on definitely formulated premises' (6. 456). In a fuller discussion, more attention would have to be paid
to this distinction, but for present purposes we need only to point out that, for Peirce, the work of reason
is not confined to Argumentation or formal demonstration, but is manifest as well in the reflective
development of a person's experience and in man's instinctive capacity to propose relevant explanatory
hypotheses. And, indeed, Peirce was convinced that theologians have overlooked the line of thought he
was pursuing because they ' share those current notions of logic which recognize no other Arguments than
Argumentations' (6. 457).

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in ' a give and take of communion betwen self and self (6. 459). Musement
is meditation engendered by becoming 'awake to what is about or within
you' (6. 461), and when directed to the Universes and their relations, it
gradually flowers into a pattern of speculation that leads to the hypothesis
of God's reality.
The second stage - the 'neglected' factor-is a reflection on the first stage
resulting in the discovery that the Humble Argument, a fruit of free
meditation, is a manifestation of universal human nature, or a general
tendency toward belief in God springing from wonder at the origin of the
Universes. As we shall see, this stage is of vital importance, first, because it
shows how the hypothesis of God's reality arises out of meditation upon direct
experience, and, secondly, it calls attention to the role of man's capacity to
frame hypotheses in the process. The third stage in the argument takes the
form of an analysis of the actual procedure of scientific thought for the
purpose of comparing what happens there with the processes of thought
manifested in the Muser's meditation on the origin of the Universes. Before
considering each of the stages in more detail, it well be helpful to summarize
the entire cycle of the argument so as to relate Peirce's analysis to the problem
previously posed as the tension between direct experience or presence and
argument in the religious context. The problem, it will be recalled, was how
to retain both direct experience and argument and so relate them that the
former is not surpassed or rendered superfluous, while the latter bestows upon
experience a rationality that delivers it from the charge of fancy, wish or
caprice.
To begin with, the first stage, involving direct experience of ourselves and
the Universes and participation in Musement or meditation upon that
experience, is absolutely essential. Without that foundation in the experience
of the Muser, the other two parts of the argument are of no avail. The direct
experience born of Musement, in short, is and remains indispensable. In this
Peirce was entirely correct; abstract reasoning divorced from any encounter
with reality can engender no conviction in the religious realm. And Peirce
was so insistent on the point that he declared, without the Humble
Argument, 'theological argumentation' (the arguments of the other two
stages) would be no more than 'an apology a vindicatory description of
the mental operations which the Humble Argument actually and actively lives
out' (6. 487). Does this then mean that argument makes no contribution and
is, as James thought, nothing more than a conceptual superstructure, a
second-hand accretion to the religious feeling in the depths of the soul? Not
in the least; what Peirce means is that the experientially rooted Humble
Argument remains primary, but that it can be given indirect rational support
through two other lines of argument which in no way take the place of or
supplant the experience and musement from which the total argument takes
its rise. The crucial point here, and I believe it represents one of the most

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JOHN E. SMITH

perceptive insights in the long history of reflection on religion, is that the

Humble Argument, sincere and unpremeditated, 1 and possessed of its own
beauty, force and religious vitality, can be shown as well to be a trustworthy
apprehension of Reality precisely because it is itself an instance of the same
sort of reflective activity to be found in a crucial stage of scientific inquiry.
We have here, in my view, a clear and plausible synthesis of the experiential
and the argumentative ingredients in religious insight. The original experience
in musement retains the force of conviction which it alone can deliver, while
the arguments lend indirect support to that experience by making manifest
the intelligible character it possesses. Neither ingredient is expendable. The
first stage of the Argument leading to the hypothesis of God's reality remains
basic, but it is not entirely self-supporting; without it, the second two
Arguments would not be necessary nor would they be sufficient for religious
conviction. They provide, nevertheless, a form of indirect justification and
they do so without supplanting the original experience itself.
Having anticipated the conclusions, we may now return to the three stages
of the Neglected Argument in slightly greater detail. As I indicated earlier
on, my main purpose is not to give a full scale presentation and defence of
Peirce's Argument I regard it in any case as a most compelling course of
reasoning but rather to show how it overcomes the tension between direct
experience and argument. It is nevertheless important, even for this more
limited purpose, to indicate more fully the turns of thought in each stage and
how they work together to form a continuous whole.
There is an undeniable similarity between the meditative setting of
Anselm's argument and Peirce's stage of Musement; they diverge sharply,
however, in the focus of attention. Anselm's meditation is riveted on the
thought of God, while Peirce's Musement fastens on the origins of the
Universes and the connection between them. His Argument consequently
belongs to the cosmological type in which, unlike the approach of Anselm,
definite appeal is made to the concept of causality. It needs to be kept in mind,
however, that by the Universes Peirce did not mean only the physical cosmos
or 'world' that constituted the starting point of the traditional cosmological
proofs. The Muser will take in the beauty of nature, the breadth, depth and
'the unspeakable variety of each Universe' (6. 464), the homogeneities and
connections within each and between the three Universes, and will come to
see the presence of growth as a universal feature which means that there is
a preparation for later stages in those that precede them. The idea of adaptive
growth, moreover, leads on to the idea of purpose and of intelligible
connections throughout the whole of reality. 'This,' says Peirce, 'is a
specimen of certain lines of reflection which will inevitably suggest the
1
The central feature of Musement is, as Peirce says, that it is not an exercise in which we set out to
convince ourselves of a belief we already hold, but is rather an opening out of the mind to the Universes
so that there wells up within us, ineluctably, the idea of God as the creator of these Universes.

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495

hypothesis of God's Reality' (6. 465). One should not be misled by the use
of the term 'hypothesis' as if this meant an affair of purely theoretical
explanation, because the movement of thought is in the context of musement
and is thus guided by what later turns out to be the play of instinct in the
person expressing itself in free meditation. The relation between the hypothesis
about God and the being of the person is regarded by Peirce as internal. 'The
more he ponders it [the idea of God's Reality]', says Peirce, 'the more it will
find response in every part of his mind, for its beauty, for its supplying an
ideal of life, and for its thoroughly satisfactory explanation of his whole
threefold environment' (6. 465).* We may say that this response is an effect
of the Musement itself on the individual; he is not involved in a dialectic
of ideas merely to be considered or entertained. It is for this reason that the
meditative exercise must actually be carried through by the individual; its
impact cannot come from any secondary account or description.2 Consequently, Peirce writes,
from what I know about the effects of Musement on myself and others...any
normal man who considers the three Universes in the light of the hypothesis of God's
Reality, and pursues that line of reflection in scientific singleness of heart, will come
to be stirred to the depths of his nature by the beauty of the idea and by its august
practicality... (6. 467)
The two succeeding stages of the Argument represent analysis and
reflection upon the Humble Argument and are intended to develop the
rationality implicit in it. Briefly stated, the Second Argument, or 'neglected'
one, purports to show that the Humble Argument is itself a manifestation
of what Peirce called 'the intuitive conjectures of instinctive reason'. To
establish this conclusion, Peirce set forth a three-stage analysis of the structure
to be found in scientific inquiry. One feature of this argument is of special
importance: Peirce was among the first to notice that the traditionally
recognized types of reasoning, deduction and induction or sampling, while
essential for scientific procedure, are, nevertheless, limited to the testing of
hypotheses and are of themselves insufficient for the generation of any one of
them. For the setting forth of any hypothesis a third type of reasoning is
required which Peirce described as arguing from consequent to antecedent
and called 'retroduction' or 'abduction'. Peirce thus directed attention to
the creative element in scientific discovery, the element of ingenuity, if you
like, and he was concerned to find some explanation for this human capacity
1
Those familiar with the full range of Peirce's thought will recognize here the presence of the three
'normative' sciences esthetics, ethics and logic and in that order.
2
In a full treatment of the Neglected Argument account would have to be taken of the theory of
experience held by Peirce and, in a similar vein, by James and Dewey as well. Central to that theory
is the idea of experiencing as ' actually trying out' o r ' actually undergoing' as opposed to merely thinking
or conceptually entertaining a thought content. It is clear from Peirce's entire discussion that actually
engaging in Musement is essential, for it is obvious that it would be idle for him to speak of the effect
Musement has on an individual were no Musement to take place.

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JOHN E. SMITH

so necessary for the progress of science. 'Observe', he says, 'that neither

Deduction nor Induction contributes the smallest positive item to the final
conclusion of the inquiry' (6.475). Every real advance in scientific knowledge
depends on the insight represented by Retroduction, that is, on 'the
spontaneous conjectures of instinctive reason' (6. 475). Peirce's explanation,
based on his extensive knowledge of the history of science, of man's ability
to arrive at relevant and testable hypotheses in a finite time-he did not
believe that such results could come about fortuitously as the Darwinians
assumed-is that there is an affinity between the truth of things and the
structure of human reason. 'There is a reason', he writes, 'an interpretation,
a logic, in the course of scientific advance, and this indisputably proves to
him who has perceptions of rational or significant relations, that man's mind
must have been attuned to the truth of things in order to discover what he
has discovered' (6. 476). Peirce found implicit in this attunement-the
'natural light' to which Galileo had appealed an adaptation between two
of the Universes which must lead to the belief that they have a Creator
independent of them.
The third stage consolidates the argument of the previous stage and has,
so to speak, its own retroactive effect on the Humble Argument arising in
musement. The third argument is constituted by an account of the three
stages of scientific inquiry-Retroduction or the proposing of an hypothesis,
Deduction or the derivation of conditional, experiential consequences, and
Induction or the testing of those consequences. The linch-pin of Peirce's
argument here is that the Humble Argument for God is seen to be an instance
of the first stage of scientific inquiry and thus has its counterpart in the
creative aspect of science. 'The student', says Peirce, 'compares the process
of thought of the muser upon the three Universes with certain parts of the
work of scientific discovery, and finds that the "Humble Argument" is
nothing but an instance of the first stage of all such work'... (6.488). The
hypothesis of God's Reality is therefore, in Peirce's words, 'not so isolated
a conclusion as it may seem' (6. 491) since it is intimately connected with
a theory of human thought that itself is required for making the progress of
science intelligible. This connection affords not proof, but reasonable support
to the deliverance of musement from which the entire Neglected Argument
set out.
As I have pointed out previously, there is much omitted from this account
of Peirce's theory. Enough, however, has been presented to support the
contention that his whole approach to the problem of relating direct
experience and argument in religion fulfils the essential conditions outlined
in the first part of this paper. Both elements are required; without the
experiential ingredient realized in the Musement of the individual, the
subsequent argumentation would not take place. The experiential element
is therefore indispensable and is never replaced or rendered superfluous by

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any argument. On the other hand, that element is not left standing alone
in its immediate or pristine form as the Humble Argument but is made
subject to a process of reflection developing its immanent rationality and
finally issuing in the support derived from the discovery that the entire
process of Musement and argument has an intelligible structure. It would,
therefore, be quite correct to conclude that Peirce succeeded in relating direct
experience and argument in religion and that he did so in a way not so
different in the end from that first suggested by the ancient tradition of
'faith seeking understanding'. What is novel in his view is the finding of a
point of contact between the movement of the mind in religious meditation
and the creative ingenuity of human thought in the domain of science.

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