Part 4 (1/2)

[58:3] Cf. Leuba: _Ibid._

[59:4] Cf. - 29.

[59:5] P. 322.

[64:6] Rousseau: _Confessions_, Book IV, p. 125.

[65:7] William James: _The Varieties of Religious Experience_, p. 35.

The italics are mine. I am in the present chapter under constant obligation to this wonderfully sympathetic and stimulating book.

[67:8] Chadwick: _Theodore Parker_, p. 18.

[67:9] Stevenson: _Letters_, Vol. I, p. 229.

[68:10] Thomas a Kempis: _Imitation of Christ_, Chap. XIX. Translation by Stanhope, p. 44.

[69:11] St. Augustine: _Confessions_, Book I, Chap. I. Translation in Schaff: _Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers_, Vol. I, p. 129.

[71:12] James: _Varieties of Religious Experience_, p. 203.

[74:13] Fielding: _op. cit._, p. 152.

[78:14] Warren: _Buddhism in Translations_, p. 14.

[78:15] _Ibid._, p. 83.

CHAPTER IV

THE PHILOSOPHICAL IMPLICATIONS OF RELIGION

[Sidenote: Resume of Psychology of Religion.]

- 28. It has been maintained that religion is closely a.n.a.logous to one's belief in the disposition toward one's self of men or communities. In the case of religion this disposition is attributed to the more or less vaguely conceived residual environment that is recognized as lying outside of the more familiar natural and social relations. After the rise of science this residual environment tends to be conceived as a unity which is ultimate or fundamental, but for the religious consciousness it is more commonly regarded as a general source of influence practically worthy of consideration. Such a belief, like all belief, is vitally manifested, with such emphasis upon action, feeling, or intellection as temperament and mood may determine.

[Sidenote: Religion Means to be True.]

- 29. But if the psychology of belief is the proper starting-point for a description of the religious experience, it is none the less suggestive of the fact that religion, just because it _is_ belief, is not wholly a matter for psychology. For religion _means to be true_, and thus submits itself to valuation as a case of knowledge. The psychological study of religion is misleading when accepted as a subst.i.tute for philosophical criticism. The religious man takes his religion not as a narcotic, but as an enlightenment. Its subjective worth is due at any rate in part to the supposition of its objective worth. As in any case of insight, that which warms the heart must have satisfied the mind. The religious experience purports to be the part of wisdom, and to afford only such happiness as increasing wisdom would confirm. And the charm of truth cannot survive its truthfulness. Hence, though religion may be described, it cannot be justified, from the stand-point of therapeutics.

Were such the case it would be the real problem of religious leaders to find a drug capable of giving a constantly pleasant tone to their patient's experience.[83:1] There would be no difference between priests and physicians who make a specialty of nervous diseases, except that the former would aim at a more fundamental and perpetual suggestion of serenity. Now no man wants to be even a blessed fool. He does not want to dwell constantly in a fict.i.tious world, even if it be after his own heart. He may from the cynical point of view actually do so, but if he be religious he thinks it is reality, and is satisfied only in so far as he thinks so. He regards the man who has said in his heart that there is no G.o.d as the fool, and not because he may have to suffer for it, but because he is cognitively blind to the real nature of things. Piety, on the other hand, he regards as the standard experience, the most veracious life. Hence, it is not an accident that religion has had its creeds and its controversies, its wars with science and its appeals to philosophy. The history of these affairs shows that religion commonly fails to understand the scope of its own demand for truth; but they have issued from the deep conviction that one's religion is, implicitly, at least, in the field of truth; that there are theoretical judgments whose truth would justify or contradict it.

This general fact being admitted, there remains the task to which the present discussion addresses itself, that of defining the kind of _theoretical judgment_ implied in religion, and the relation to this central cognitive stem of its efflorescences of myth, theology, and ritual. It is impossible to separate the stem and the efflorescence, or to determine the precise spot at which destruction of the tissue would prove fatal to the plant, but it is possible to obtain some idea of the relative vitality of the parts.

[Sidenote: Religion Means to be Practically True. G.o.d is a Disposition from which Consequences May Rationally be Expected.]

- 30. The difficulty of reaching a definite statement in this matter is due to the fact that the truth in which any religious experience centres is a practical and not a scientific truth. A practical truth does not commit itself to any single scientific statement, and can often survive the overthrow of that scientific statement in which at any given time it has found expression. In other words, an indefinite number of scientific truths are compatible with a single practical truth. An instance of this is the consistency with my expectation of the alternation of day and night, of either the Ptolemaic or Copernican formulation of the solar system. Now expectation that the sun will rise to-morrow is an excellent a.n.a.logue of my religious belief. Celestial mechanics is as relevant to the one as metaphysics to the other. Neither is overthrown until a central practical judgment is discredited, and either could remain true through a very considerable alteration of logical definition; but neither is on this account exempt from theoretical responsibility. In so far as religion deliberately enters the field of science, and defines its formularies with the historical or metaphysical method, this difficulty does not, of course, exist. Grant that the years of Methuselah's life, or the precise place and manner of the temptation of Jesus, or the definition of Christ in the terms of the Athanasian Creed, are const.i.tutive of Christianity, and the survival of that religion will be determined by the solution of ordinary problems of historical or metaphysical research. But the Christian will very properly claim that his religion is only externally and accidentally related to such propositions, since they are never or very rarely intended in his experience. As religious he is occupied with Christ as his saviour or with G.o.d as his protector and judge. The history of Jesus or the metaphysics of G.o.d essentially concern him only in so far as they may or may not invalidate this relations.h.i.+p. He cares only for the power and disposition of the divine, and these are affected by history and metaphysics only in so far as he has definitely put them to such proof.

For my religion is my sense of a practical situation, and only when that has been proved to be folly has my religion become untrue. My G.o.d is my practical faith, my plan of salvation. My religion is overthrown if I am convinced that I have misconceived the situation and mistaken what I should do to be saved. The conception of G.o.d is very simple practically, and very complex theoretically, a fact that confirms its practical genesis. My conception of G.o.d contains _an idea of my own interests_, _an idea of the disposition of the universe toward my interests_, and _some working plan for the reconciliation of these two terms_. These three elements form a practical unity, but each is capable of emphasis, and a religion may be transformed through the modification of any one of them. It appears, then, as has always been somewhat vaguely recognized, that the truth of religion is ethical as well as metaphysical or scientific. My religion will be altered by a change in my conception of what const.i.tutes my real interest, a change in my conception of the fundamental causes of reality, or a change in my conception of the manner in which my will may or may not affect these causes. G.o.d is neither an ent.i.ty nor an ideal, but always a relation of ent.i.ty to ideal: _reality regarded from the stand-point of its favorableness or unfavorableness to human life, and prescribing for the latter the propriety of a certain att.i.tude_.

[Sidenote: Historical Examples of Religious Truth and Error. The Religion of Baal.]