CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION; RELIGION AS A MORAL CODE AND AS A THEORY.
Auch bezweifl’ ich, dass du glaubest,
Was so rechter Glaube heisst,
Glaubst wohl nicht an Gott den Vater,
An den Sohn und heil’gen Geist.
Heine.
Intending in the following pages to sketch certain
philosophic opinions that seem to him to have a
religious bearing, the author must begin by stating
what he understands to be the nature of religion,
and how he conceives philosophy to be related to
religion.
We speak commonly of religious feelings and of
religious beliefs; but we find difficulty in agreeing
about what makes either beliefs or feelings religious.
A feeling is not religious merely because it is strong,
nor yet because it is also morally valuable, nor yet
because it is elevated. If the strength and the
moral value of a feeling made it religious, patriotism
would be religion. If elevation of feeling were
enough, all higher artistic emotion would be
religious. But such views would seem to most persons
very inadequate. As for belief, it is not religious
merely because it is a belief in the supernatural.
Not merely is superstition as such very different from religion, but even a belief in God as the highest of
beings need not be a religious belief. If La Place
had needed what he called “that hypothesis,” the
Deity, when introduced into his celestial mechanics,
would have been but a mathematical symbol, or a
formula like Taylor’s theorem, — no true object of
religious veneration. On the other hand, Spinoza’s
impersonal Substance, or the Nirvâna of the
Buddhists, or any one of many like notions, may have,
either as doctrines about the world or as ideals of
human conduct, immense religious value. Very
much that we associate with religion is therefore
non-essential to religion. Yet religion is something
unique in human belief and emotion, and must not
be dissolved into any lower or more commonplace
elements. What then is religion?
I.
So much at all events seems sure about religion.
It has to do with action. It is impossible without
some appearance of moral purpose. A totally
immoral religion may exist; but it is like a totally
unseaworthy ship at sea, or like a rotten bank, or like
a wildcat mine. It deceives its followers. It
pretends to guide them into morality of some sort. If
it is blind or wicked, not its error makes it religious,
but the faith of its followers in its worth. A religion
may teach the men of one tribe to torture and
kill men of another tribe. But even such a religion
would pretend to teach right conduct. Religion,
however, gives us more than a moral code. A moral code alone, with its “Thou shalt,” would be no more
religious than is the civil code. A religion adds
something to the moral code. And what it adds is, first,
enthusiasm. Somehow it makes the faithful regard
the moral law with devotion, reverence, love. By
history, by parable, by myth, by ceremony, by song,
by whatever means you will, the religion gives to the
mere code life and warmth. A religion not only
commands the faithful, but gives them something
that they are glad to live for, and if need be to die
for.
But not yet have we mentioned the element of
religion that makes it especially interesting to a
student of theoretical philosophy. So far as we have
gone, ethical philosophy would criticise the codes of
various religions, while theoretical philosophy would
have no part in the work. But, in fact, religion
always adds another element. Not only does religion
teach devotion to a moral code, but the means that
it uses to this end include a more or less complete
theory of things. Religion says not merely do and
feel but also believe. A religion tells us about the
things that it declares to exist, and most especially it
tells us about their relations to the moral code and
to the religious feeling. There may be a religion
without a supernatural, but there cannot be a
religion without a theoretical element, without a
statement of some supposed matter of fact, as part of
the religious doctrine.
These three elements, then, go to constitute any
religion. A religion must teach some moral code,
must in some way inspire a strong feeling of devotion to that code, and in so doing must show
something in the nature of things that answers to the code
or that serves to reinforce the feeling. A religion
is therefore practical, emotional, and theoretical; it
teaches us to do, to feel, and to believe, and it teaches
the belief as a means to its teaching of the action
and of the feeling.
II.
We may now see how philosophy is related to
religion. Philosophy is not directly concerned with
feeling, but both action and belief are direct objects
of philosophical criticism. And on the other hand,
in so far as philosophy suggests general rules for
conduct, or discusses the theories about the world,
philosophy must have a religious aspect. Religion
invites the scrutiny of philosophy, and philosophy
may not neglect the problems of religion. Kant’s
fundamental problems: What do I know? and
What ought I to do? are of religious interest no
less than of philosophic interest. They ask how
the highest thought of man stands related to his
highest needs, and what in things answers to our
best ideals. Surely no one ought to fear such
questions, nor ought any philosophic student to hesitate
to suggest in answer to them whatever after due
reflection he honestly can suggest, poor and
tentative though it may be. In fact there is no defense
for one as sincere thinker if, undertaking to pay
attention to philosophy as such, he willfully or thoughtlessly
neglects such problems on the ground that he
has no time for them. Surely he has time to be not merely a student of philosophy, but also a man, and
these things are among the essentials of humanity,
which the non-philosophic treat in their way, and
which philosophic students must treat in theirs.
When, however, we say that the thinker must
study and revere these questions, we must not fancy
that because of their importance he may prejudge
them. Assumptions, postulates, a priori demands,
these indeed are in all thinking, and no thinker is
without such. But prejudice, i.e. foregone
conclusions in questionable matters, deliberate
unwillingness to let the light shine upon our beliefs, all this
is foreign to true thought. Thinking is for us just
the clarifying of our minds, and because clearness is
necessary to the unity of thought, necessary to lessen
the strife of sects and the bitterness of doubt,
necessary to save our minds from hopeless, everlasting
wandering, therefore to resist the clarifying process,
even while we undertake it, is to sin against what is
best in us, and is also to sin against humanity.
Deliberately insincere, dishonest thinking is downright
blasphemy. And so, if we take any interest in these
things, our duty is plain. Here are questions of
tremendous importance to us and to the world. We
are sluggards or cowards if, pretending to be
philosophic students and genuine seekers of truth, we do
not attempt to do something with these questions.
We are worse than cowards if, attempting to
consider them, we do so otherwise than reverently,
fearlessly, and honestly.
III.
The religious thought of our time has reached a
position that arouses the anxiety of all serious
thinkers, and the interest of many who are not serious.
We are not content with what we learned from our
fathers; we want to correct their dogmas, to prove
what they held fast without proof, to work out our
own salvation by our own efforts. But we know
not yet what form our coming faith will take. We
are not yet agreed even about the kind of question
that we shall put to ourselves when we begin any
specific religious inquiry. People suggest very
various facts or aspects of facts in the world as having
a religious value. The variety of the suggestions
shows the vagueness of the questions that people have
in mind when they talk of religion. One man wants
to worship Natural Law, or even Nature in
general. Another finds Humanity to be his ideal object
of religious veneration. Yet another gravely insists
that the Unknowable satisfies his religious longings.
Now it is something to be plain in expressing a
question, even if you cannot give an answer. We
shall do something if we only find out what it is that
we ought to seek. And the foregoing considerations
may help us in this way, even if what follows should
be wholly ineffective. For we have tried to give a
definition that shall express, not merely what a
Buddhist or a Catholic or a Comtist or an Hegelian
means by his religion, but what all men everywhere
mean by religion. They all want religion to define for them their duty, to give them the heart to do it,
and to point out to them such things in the real
world as shall help them to be steadfast in their
devotion to duty. When people pray that they may
be made happy, they still desire to learn what they
are to do in order to become happy. When saints
of any creed look up to their God as their only good,
they are seeking for guidance in the right way.
The savages of whom we hear so much nowadays
have indeed low forms of religion, but these religions
of theirs still require them to do something, and
tell them why it is worth while to do this, and make
them more or less enthusiastic in doing it. Among
ourselves, the poor and the lonely, the desolate and
the afflicted, when they demand religious comfort,
want something that shall tell them what to do with
life, and how to take up once more the burdens of
their broken existence. And the religious philosophers
must submit to the same test that humanity
everywhere proposes to its religions. If one tries
to regulate our diet by his theories, he must have
the one object, whatever his theory, since he wants
to tell us what is healthful for us. If he tells us to
eat nothing but snow, that is his fault. The true
object of the theory of diet remains the same. And
so if men have expressed all sorts of one-sided,
disheartening, inadequate views of religion, that does
not make the object of religious theory less catholic,
less comprehensive, less definitely human. A man
who propounds a religious system must have a moral
code, an emotional life, and some theory of things to
offer us. With less we cannot be content. He need not, indeed, know or pretend to know very much
about our wonderful world, but he must know
something, and that something must be of definite value.
To state the whole otherwise. Purely theoretic
philosophy tries to find out what it can about the
real world. When it makes this effort, it has to be
perfectly indifferent to consequences. It may not
shudder or murmur if it comes upon unspeakably
dreadful truths. If it finds nothing in the world but
evil, it must still accept the truth, and must calmly
state it without praise and without condemnation.
Theoretic philosophy knows no passion save the
passion for truth, has no fear save the fear of error,
cherishes no hope save the hope of theoretic success.
But religious philosophy has other objects in addition
to these. Religious philosophy is indeed neither
the foe nor the mistress of theoretic philosophy.
Religious philosophy dare not be in opposition to the
truths that theory may have established. But over
and above these truths it seeks something else. It
seeks to know their value. It comes to the world
with other interests, in addition to the purely
theoretic ones. It wants to know what in the world is
worthy of worship as the good. It seeks not merely
the truth, but the inspiring truth. It defines for
itself goodness, moral worth, and then it asks. What
in this world is worth anything? Its demands in
this regard are boundless. It will be content only
with the best it can find. Having formulated for
itself its ideal of worth, it asks at the outset: Is
there then, anywhere in the universe, any real thing
of Infinite Worth? If this cannot be found, then and then only will religious philosophy be content
with less. Then it will still ask: What in this world
is worth most? It cannot make realities, but it is
determined to judge them. It cannot be content
with blind faith, and demands the actual truth as
much as theoretic philosophy demands it; but
religious philosophy treats this truth only as the material
for its ideal judgments. It seeks the ideal among
the realities.
Upon such a quest as this, we ask the reader to
accompany us in the following pages. We have not
space to be exhaustive, nor in fact to offer much
more than suggestions; but we want the suggestions
to be explicit, and we hope that they may stimulate
some reader, and may perhaps help him in
completing his own trains of thought.
IV.
People come to such questions as these with
certain prejudices about the method and spirit of
inquiry; and all their work may be hampered by these
prejudices. Let us say yet a little more of what we
think as to this matter. There are two extremes to
fear in religious philosophy: indifference that arises
from a dogmatic disposition to deny, and timidity
that arises from an excessive show of reverence for
the objects of religious faith. Both of these extreme
moods have their defective methods in dealing with
religious philosophy. The over-skeptical man looks
with impatience on all lengthy discussions of these
topics. There can be nothing in it all, he says; nothing but what Hume, in an eloquent passage,
called sophistry and delusion. Why spend time to
puzzle over these insoluble mysteries? Hence his
method is: swift work, clear statement of known
difficulties, keen ridicule of hasty assumptions, and
then a burning of the old deserted Moscow of
theology, and a bewildering flight into the inaccessible
wintry wastes, where no army of religious philosophers
shall follow him. Now for our part we want
to be as skeptical as anybody; and we personally
always admire the freedom of motion that pure
skepticism gives. Our trouble with it all, however, is that,
after we have enjoyed the freedom and the frosty air
of pure philosophic skepticism for a while, we find
ourselves unexpectedly in the midst of philosophic
truth that needs closer examination. The short and
easy agnostic method is not enough. You must
supplement skepticism by philosophy; and when you
do so, you find yourself forced to accept, not indeed
the old theology of your childhood, but something
that satisfies, oddly enough, certain religious
longings, that, as skeptic, you had carefully tried to
forget. Then you find yourself with what you may
have to call a religious doctrine; and then you may
have to state it as we are here going to do, not in an
easy or fascinating way, such as the pure skeptic can
so well follow, but at all events with some approach to
a serious and sustained effort to consider hard
questions from many sides. The skeptical method is not
only a good, but also a necessary beginning of
religious philosophy. But we are bound to go deeper
than mere superficial agnosticism. If, however, any reader is already sure that we cannot go deeper, and
that modern popular agnosticism has exhausted all
that can be said on religious questions, then we bid
him an immediate and joyous farewell. If we had
not something to say in this book that seems to us
both foreign to the popular modern agnostic range
of discussion, and deeper than the insight of popular
modern skepticism, we should say nothing. The
undertaking of this book is not to wrangle in the old
way over the well-known ordinary debates of to-day,
but to turn the flank of the common popular thought
on these topics altogether, by going back to a type
of philosophic investigation, that is nowadays
familiar indeed to a certain school of specialists, but
forgotten by the general public. In this type of
investigation, we have furthermore something to offer
that seems to us no mere repetition of the views of
other thinkers, but an effort to make at least one
little step in advance of the thoughts that the great
masters of philosophy have given to us. Yet we
know indeed that the range of any useful independent
thought in philosophy must be, in case of any
one individual, very narrow.
The other mood and its method remain. It is the
mood of excessive reverence. It wastes capital
letters on all the pronouns and adjectives that have to
do with the objects of religious faith; but it fears to
do these objects the honor to get clear ideas about
them. Now we respect this mood when it appears in
men who do well their life-work, who need their
religious faith for their work, and who do not feel any
calling as truth-seekers. No man has any business to set up his vocation as the highest one; and the
man for whom truth is useful in his actual life-work
as an inspiration, revealed to him only in feeling, is
welcome to his feelings, is worthy of all regard from
those whose vocation is philosophy, and shall not be
tormented by our speculations. He is careful and
troubled about many things; the world needs him,
and philosophy does not. We only lay claim to our
own rights, and do not want to interfere with his.
Our right to clear thought, we must insist upon.
For looked at philosophically, and apart from the
necessary limitations of the hard worker, all this dumb
reverence, this vague use of vague names, has its
serious dangers. You are reverent, we may say to the
man who regards philosophic criticism as a dangerous
trifling with stupendous truths; you are reverent,
but what do you reverence? Have a care lest what
you reverence shall turn out to be your own vague
and confused notions, and not the real divine Truth
at all. Take heed lest your object of worship be only
your own little pet infinite, that is sublime to you
mainly because it is yours, and that is in truth about
as divine and infinite as your hat. For this is the
danger that besets these vague and lofty sentiments.
Unreflected upon, uncriticised, dumbly experienced,
dumbly dreaded, these, your religious objects, may
become mere feelings, mere visceral sensations of
yours, that you have on Sunday mornings, or when
you pray. Of course, if you are a worker, you
may actually realize these vague ideas, in so far as
they inspire you to work. If they do, they shall be
judged by their fruits. Otherwise, do not trust too confidently their religious value. You, individually
regarded, are but a mass of thought and feeling.
What is only yours and in you, is not divine at all.
Unless you lift it up into the light of thought and
examine it often, how do you know into what your
cherished religious ideal may not have rotted in the
darkness of your emotions? Once in a while, there
does come to a man some terrible revelation of
himself in a great sorrow. Then in the tumult of
anguish he looks for his religious faith to clothe his
nakedness against the tempest; and he finds perhaps
some moth-eaten old garment that profits him
nothing, so that his soul miserably perishes in the
frost of doubt. Such a man has expected God to
come to his help in every time of need; but the
only god he has actually and consciously had, has
been his own little contemptible, private notion and
dim feeling of a god, which he has never dared fairly
to look at. Any respectable wooden idol would have
done him better service; for then a man could know
where and what his idol is. Such is only too apt
to be the real state of the man who regards it as
profanity to think clearly and sensibly on religious
topics.
We claim, then, the right to criticise as fearlessly,
as thoroughly, and as skeptically as may be, the
foundations of conduct and faith. For what we
criticise are, at the outset, our own notions, which we
want to have conform to the truth, if so be that there
is any truth. As for doubt on religious questions,
that is for a truth-seeker not only a privilege but a
duty; and, as we shall experience all through this study, doubt has a curious and very valuable place
in philosophy. Philosophic truth, as such, comes to
us first under the form of doubt; and we never can
be very near it in our search unless, for a longer or
shorter time, we have come to despair of it
altogether. First, then, the despair of a thorough-going
doubt, and then the discovery that this doubt
contains in its bosom the truth that we are sworn to
discover, however we can, — this is the typical
philosophic experience. May the memory of this
suggestion support the failing patience of the kindly
disposed reader through some of the longer and more
wearisome stretches of dry skeptical analysis over
which we must try to journey together. Whatever
may be the truth, it must lie beyond those deserts.
Uncharted Knowledge
Wisdom From Previous Realities
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