FOOTNOTES:

"Drink for you know not whence you come, nor why;Drink for you know not why you go, nor where."

Wordsworth.

§12. But the poet in his world-view ordinarily sees other than darkness. The same innate spiritual enterprise that sustains religious faith leads the poet more often to find the universe positively congenial to his ideals, and to ideals in general. He interprets human experience in the light of the spirituality of all the world. It is to Wordsworth that we of the present age are chiefly indebted for such imagery, and it will profit us to consider somewhat carefully the philosophical quality of his poetry.

Walter Pater, in introducing his appreciation of Wordsworth, writes that "an intimateconsciousness of the expression of natural things, which weighs, listens, penetrates, where the earlier mind passed roughly by, is a large element in the complexion of modern poetry." We recognize at once the truth of this characterization as applied to Wordsworth. But there is something more distinguished about this poet's sensibility even than its extreme fineness and delicacy; a quality that is suggested, though not made explicit, by Shelley's allusion to Wordsworth's experience as "a sort of thought in sense." Nature possessed for him not merely enjoyable and describable characters of great variety and minuteness, but an immediately apprehended unity and meaning. It would be a great mistake to construe this meaning in sense as analogous to the crude symbolism of the educator Froebel, to whom, as he said, "the world of crystals proclaimed, in distinct and univocal terms, the laws of human life." Wordsworth did not attach ideas to sense, but regarded sense itself as a communication of truth. We readily call to mind his unique capacity for apprehending the characteristic flavor of a certain place in a certain moment of time, the individuality of a situation. Now in such moments he felt that he was receiving intelligences, none the less direct and significantfor their inarticulate form. Like the boy on Windermere, whom he himself describes,

"while he hungLoitering, a gentle shock of mild surpriseHas carried far into his heart the voiceOf mountain torrents; or the visible sceneWould enter unawares into his mind,With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,Its woods, and that uncertain heaven receivedInto the bosom of the steady lake."

For our purpose it is essential that we should recognize in this appreciation of nature, expressed in almost every poem that Wordsworth wrote, a consciousness respecting the fundamental nature of the world. Conversation, as we know, denotes an interchange of commensurable meanings. Whatever the code may be, whether words or the most subtle form of suggestion, communication is impossible without community of nature. Hence, in believing himself to be holding converse with the so-called physical world, Wordsworth conceives that world as fundamentally like himself. He finds the most profound thing in all the world to be the universal spiritual life. In nature this life manifests itself most directly, clothed in its own proper dignity and peace. But it may be discovered in the humanity that is most close to nature, in the avocations of plain and simple people, andthe unsophisticated delights of children; and, with the perspective of contemplation, even "among the multitudes of that huge city."

So Wordsworth is rendering a true account of his own experience of reality when, as in "The Prelude," he says unequivocally:

"A gracious spirit o'er this earth presides,And in the heart of man; invisiblyIt comes to works of unreproved delight,And tendency benign; directing thoseWho care not, know not, think not, what they do."

Wordsworth is not a philosopher-poet because by searching his pages we can find an explicit philosophical creed such as this, but because all the joys of which his poet-soul compels him to sing have their peculiar note, and compose their peculiar harmony, by virtue of such an indwelling consciousness. Here is one who is a philosopher in and through his poetry. He is a philosopher in so far as the detail of his appreciation finds fundamental justification in a world-view. From the immanence of "the universal heart" there follows, not through any mediate reasoning, but by the immediate experience of its propriety, a conception of that which is of supreme worth in life. The highest and best of which life is capable is contemplation, or the consciousness of the universal indwelling of God.Of those who fail to live thus fittingly in the midst of the divine life, Walter Pater speaks for Wordsworth as follows:

"To higher or lower ends they move too often with something of a sad countenance, with hurried and ignoble gait, becoming, unconsciously, something like thorns, in their anxiety to bear grapes; it being possible for people, in the pursuit of even great ends, to become themselves thin and impoverished in spirit and temper, thus diminishing the sum of perfection in the world at its very sources."[42:3]

The quiet and worshipful spirit, won by the cultivation of the emotions appropriate to the presence of nature and society, is the mark of the completest life and the most acceptable service. Thus for Wordsworth the meaning of life is inseparable from the meaning of the universe. In apprehending that which is good and beautiful in human experience, he was attended by a vision of the totality of things. Herein he has had to do, if not with the form, at any rate with the very substance of philosophy.

Dante.

§13. Unquestionably the supreme philosopher-poet is Dante. He is not only philosophical in the temper of his mind, but his greatest poem is the incarnation of a definite system ofphilosophy, the most definite that the world has seen. That conception of the world which in the thirteenth century found argumentative and orderly expression in the "Summa Theologiæ" of Thomas of Aquino, and constituted the faith of the church, is visualized by Dante, and made the basis of an interpretation of life.

The "Divina Commedia" deals with all the heavens to the Empyrean itself, and with all spiritual life to the very presence of God. It derives its imagery from the cosmology of the day, its dramatic motive from the Christian and Greek conceptions of God and his dealings with the world. Sin is punished because of the justice of God; knowledge, virtue, and faith lead, through God's grace and mercy manifested in Christ, to a perpetual union with Him. Hell, purgatory, and paradise give place and setting to the events of the drama. But the deeper meaning of the poem is allegorical. In a letter quoted by Lowell, Dante writes:

"The literal subject of the whole work is the state of the soul after death, simply considered. But if the work be taken allegorically the subject is man, as by merit or demerit, through freedom of the will, he renders himself liable to the reward or punishment of justice."[43:4]

In other words, the inner and essential meaning of the poem has to do not with external retribution, but with character, and the laws which determine its own proper ruin or perfection. The punishments described in the "Inferno" are accounts of the state of guilt itself, implications of the will that has chosen the part of brutishness. Sin itself is damnable and deadening, but the knowledge that the soul that sinneth shall die is the first way of emancipation from sin. The guidance of Virgil through hell and purgatory signifies the knowledge of good and evil, or moral insight, as the guide of man through this life of struggle and progress. The earthly paradise, at the close of the "Purgatorio," represents the highest state to which human character can attain when choice is determined by ordinary experience, intelligence, and understanding. Here man stands alone, endowed with an enlightened conscience. Here are uttered the last words of Virgil to Dante, the explorer of the spiritual country:

"Expect no more or word or sign from me. Free, upright, and sane is thine own free will, and it would be wrong not to act according to its pleasure; wherefore thee over thyself I crown and mitre."[44:5]

But moral self-reliance is not the last word. As Beatrice, the image of tenderness and holiness, comes to Dante in the earthly paradise, and leads him from the summit of purgatory into the heaven of heavens, and even to the eternal light; so there is added to the mere human, intellectual, and moral resources of the soul, the sustaining power of the divine grace, the illuminating power of divine truth, and the transforming power of divine love. Through the aid of this higher wisdom, the journey of life becomes the way to God. Thus the allegorical truth of the "Divina Commedia" is not merely an analysis of the moral nature of man, but the revelation of a universal spiritual order, manifesting itself in the moral evolution of the individual, and above all in his ultimate community with the eternal goodness.

"Thou shouldst not, if I deem aright, wonder more at thy ascent, than at a stream if from a high mountain it descends to the base. A marvel it would be in thee, if, deprived of hindrance, thou hadst sat below, even as quiet by living fire in earth would be."[45:6]

Such, in brief, is Dante's world-view, so suggestive of the freer idealistic conceptions of later thought as to justify a recent characterization of him as one who, "accepting without a shadow of a doubtor hesitation all the constitutive ideas of mediæval thought and life, grasped them so firmly and gave them such luminous expression that the spirit in them broke away from the form."[46:7]

But it must be added, as in the case of Wordsworth, that Dante is a philosopher-poet not because St. Thomas Aquinas appears and speaks with authority in the Thirteenth Canto of the "Paradiso," nor even because a philosophical doctrine can be consistently formulated from his writings, but because his consciousness of life is informed with a sense of its universal bearings. There is a famous passage in the Twenty-second Canto of the "Paradiso," in which Dante describes himself as looking down upon the earth from the starry heaven.

"'Thou art so near the ultimate salvation,' began Beatrice, 'that thou oughtest to have thine eyes clear and sharp. And therefore ere thou further enterest it, look back downward, and see how great a world I have already set beneath thy feet, in order that thy heart, so far as it is able, may present itself joyous to the triumphant crowd which comes glad through this round ether.' With my sight I returned through each and all the seven spheres, and saw this globe such that I smiled at its mean semblance; and that counsel I approve as the best which holds it of least account; and he who thinks of other things maybe called truly worthy."

Dante's scale of values is that which appears from the starry heaven. His austere piety, his invincible courage, and his uncompromising hatred of wrong, are neither accidents of temperament nor blind reactions, but compose the proper character of one who has both seen the world from God, and returned to see God from the world. He was, as Lowell has said, "a man of genius who could hold heartbreak at bay for twenty years, and would not let himself die till he had done his task"; and his power was not obstinacy, but a vision of the ways of God. He knew a truth that justified him in his sacrifices, and made a great glory of his defeat and exile. Even so his poetry or appreciation of life is the expression of an inward contemplation of the world in its unity or essence. It is but an elaboration of the piety which he attributes to the lesser saints of paradise, when he has them say:

"Nay, it is essential to this blessed existence to hold ourselves within the divine will, whereby our very wills are made one. So that as we are from stage to stage throughout this realm, to all the realm is pleasing, as to the King who inwills us with His will. And His will is our peace; it is that sea whereunto is moving all that which It creates and which nature makes."[47:8]

The Difference between Poetry and Philosophy.

§14. There now remains the brief task of distinguishing the philosopher-poet from the philosopher himself. The philosopher-poet is one who, having made the philosophical point of view his own, expresses himself in the form of poetry. The philosophical point of view is that from which the universe is comprehended in its totality. The wisdom of the philosopher is the knowledge of each through the knowledge of all. Wherein, then, does the poet, when possessed of such wisdom, differ from the philosopher proper? To this question one can give readily enough the general answer, that the difference lies in the mode of utterance. Furthermore, we have already given some account of the peculiar manner of the poet. He invites us to experience with him the beautiful and moving in nature and life. That which the poet has to express, and that which he aims to arouse in others, is an appreciative experience. He requires what Wordsworth calls "an atmosphere of sensation in which to move his wings." Therefore if he is to be philosophical in intelligence, and yet essentially a poet, he must find his universal truth in immediate experience. He must be one who, in seeing the many, sees the one. The philosopher-poet is hewho visualizes a fundamental interpretation of the world. "A poem," says one poet, "is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth."

The philosopher proper, on the other hand, has the sterner and less inviting task of rendering such an interpretation articulate to thought. That which the poet sees, the philosopher must define. That which the poet divines, the philosopher must calculate. The philosopher must dig for that which the poet sees shining through. As the poet transcends thought for the sake of experience, the philosopher must transcend experience for the sake of thought. As the poet sees all, and all in each, so the philosopher, knowing each, must think all consistently together, and then know each again. It is the part of philosophy to collect and criticise evidence, to formulate and coördinate conceptions, and finally to define in exact terms. The reanimation of the structure of thought is accomplished primarily in religion, which is a general conception of the world made the basis of daily living.

For religion there is no subjective correlative less than life itself. Poetry is another and more circumscribed means of restoring thought to life. By the poet's imagination, and through the art ofhis expression, thought may be sensuously perceived. "If the time should ever come," says Wordsworth, "when what is now called Science, thus familiarized to men, shall be ready to put on, as it were, a form of flesh, and blood, the Poet will lend his divine spirit to aid the transfiguration, and will welcome the Being thus produced, as a dear and genuine inmate of the household of man."[50:9]As respects truth, philosophy has an indubitable priority. The very sternness of the philosopher's task is due to his supreme dedication to truth. But if validity be the merit of philosophy, it can well be supplemented by immediacy, which is the merit of poetry. Presuppose in the poet conviction of a sound philosophy, and we may say with Shelley, of his handiwork, that "it is the perfect and consummate surface and bloom of all things; it is as the odor and the color of the rose to the texture of the elements which compose it, as the form and splendor of unfaded beauty to the secrets of anatomy and corruption." "Indeed," as he adds, "what were our consolations on this side of the grave—and our aspirations beyond it—if poetry did not ascend to bring light and firefrom those eternal regions where the owl-winged faculty of calculation dare not ever soar?"[51:10]

The unity in outlook, attended by differences of method and form, which may exist between poet and philosopher, is signally illustrated by the relation between Goethe and Spinoza. What Goethe saw and felt, Spinoza proved and defined. The universal and eternal substance was to Spinoza, as philosopher, a theorem, and to Goethe, as poet, a perception and an emotion. Goethe writes to Jacobi that when philosophy "lays itself out for division," he cannot get on with it, but when it "confirms our original feeling as though we were one with nature," it is welcome to him. In the same letter Goethe expresses his appreciation of Spinoza as the complement of his own nature:

"His all-reconciling peace contrasted with my all-agitating endeavor; his intellectual method was the opposite counterpart of my poetic way of feeling and expressing myself; and even the inflexible regularity of his logical procedure, which might be considered ill-adapted to moral subjects, made me his most passionate scholar and his devoted adherent. Mind and heart, understanding and sense, were drawn together with an inevitable elective affinity, and this at the same time produced an intimate union between individuals of the most different types."[51:11]

It appears, then, that some poets share with all philosophers that point of view from which the horizon line is the boundary of all the world. Poetry is not always or essentially philosophical, but may be so; and when the poetic imagination restores philosophy to immediacy, human experience reaches its most exalted state, excepting only religion itself, wherein God is both seen and also served. Nor is the part of philosophy in poetry and religion either ignoble or presumptuous, for, humanly speaking, "the owl-winged faculty of calculation" is the only safe and sure means of access to that place on high,

"Where the nightingale doth singNot a senseless, trancèd thing,But a divine melodious truth;Philosophic numbers smooth;Tales and golden historiesOf heaven and its mysteries."

[28:1]George Santayana, in hisPoetry and Religion, p. 176.

[30:2]Santayana:op. cit., p. 180.

[42:3]Appreciations, p. 59.

[43:4]Letter to Can Grande. See Lowell'sEssay on Dante, p. 34.

[44:5]Purgatorio, Canto XXVII. Translation by Norton.

[45:6]Paradiso, Canto I.

[46:7]Edward Caird, in hisLiterature and Philosophy, Vol. I, p. 24.

[47:8]Paradiso, Canto III.

[50:9]Observations prefixed to the second edition ofLyrical Ballads.

[51:10]A Defence of Poetry.

[51:11]Quoted by Caird in hisLiterature and Philosophy, Vol. I, p. 60.

The Possibility of Defining Religion.

§15. The least religious experience is so mysterious and so complex that a moderate degree of reflection upon it tends to a sense of intellectual impotence. "If I speak," says Emerson, "I define and confine, and am less." One would gladly set down religion among the unspeakable things and avoid the imputation of degrading it. It is certain that the enterprise of defining religion is at present in disrepute. It has been undertaken so often and so unsuccessfully that contemporary students for the most part prefer to supply a list of historical definitions of religion, and let their variety demonstrate their futility. Metaphysicians and psychologists agree that in view of the differences of creed, ritual, organization, conduct, and temperament that have been true of different religions in different times and places, one may as well abandon the idea that there is a constant element.

But on the other hand we have the testimony afforded by the name religion; and the ordinary judgments of men to the effect that it signifies something to be religious, and to be more or less religious. There is an elementary logical principle to the effect that a group name implies certain common group characters. Impatience with abstract or euphemistic definitions should not blind us to the truth. Even the psychologist tends in his description of religious phenomena to single out and emphasize what he calls atypicalreligious experience. And the same applies to the idealist's treatment of the matter.[54:1]Religion, he reasons, is essentially a development of which the true meaning can be seen only in the higher stages. The primitive religion is therefore only implicit religion. But lower stages cannot be regarded as belonging to a single development with higher stages, if there be not some actual promise of the later in the earlier, or some element which endures throughout. It is unavoidable, then, to assume that in dealing with religion we are dealing with a specific and definable experience.

The Profitableness of Defining Religion.

§16. The profitableness of undertaking such a definition is another matter. It may well be thatin so human and practical an affair as religion, definition is peculiarly inappropriate. But is there not a human and practical value in the very defining of religion? Is there not a demand for it in the peculiar relation that exists between religion and the progress of enlightenment? Religion associates itself with the habits of society. The progress of enlightenment means that more or less all the time, and very profoundly at certain critical times, society must change its habits. The consequence is that religion is likely to be abandoned with the old habits. The need of a new religion is therefore a chronic one. The reformer in religion, or the man who wishes to be both enlightened and religious, is chiefly occupied with the problem of disentangling religion pure and undefiled from definite discredited practices and opinions. And the solution of the problem turns upon some apprehension of the essence of religion. There is a large amount of necessary and unnecessary tragedy due to the extrinsic connection between ideas and certain modes of their expression. There can be no more serious and urgent duty than that of expressing as directly, and so as truly as possible, the great permanent human concerns. The men to whom educationalreform has been largely due have been the men who have remembered for their fellows what this whole business of education is after all for. Comenius and Pestalozzi served society by stripping educational activity of its historical and institutional accessories, and laying bare the genuine human need that these are designed to satisfy. There is a similar virtue in the insistent attempt to distinguish between the essential and the accessory in religion.

The True Method of Defining Religion.

§17. Although declining to be discouraged by the conspicuousness of past failures in this connection, one may well profit by them. The amazing complexity of religious phenomena must somehow be seen to be consistent with their common nature. The religious experience must not only be found, but must also be reconciled with "the varieties of religious experience." The inadequacy of the well-known definitions of religion may be attributed to several causes. The commonest fallacy is to define religion in terms of a religion. My definition of religion must include my brother's religion, even though he live on the other side of the globe, and my ancestor's religion, in spite of his prehistoric remoteness. Error may easily arise through theattempt to define religion in terms of my own religion, or what I conceive to be the true religion. Whatever the relation between ideal religion and actual religion, the field of religion contains by common consent cults that must on their own grounds condemn one another; religions that are bad religions, and yet religions.

A more enlightened fallacy, and a more dangerous one, is due to the supposition that religion can be defined exclusively in terms of some department of human nature. There have been descriptions of religion in terms of feeling, intellect, and conduct respectively. But it is always easy to overthrow such a description, by raising the question of its application to evidently religious experiences that belong to some other aspect of life. Religion is not feeling, because there are many phlegmatic, God-fearing men whose religion consists in good works. Religion is not conduct, for there are many mystics whose very religion is withdrawal from the field of action. Religion is not intellection, for no one has ever been able to formulate a creed that is common to all religions. Yet without a doubt one must look for the essence of religion in human nature. The present psychological interest in religion has emphasized this truth.How, then, may we describe it in terms of certain constant conditions of human life, and yet escape the abstractness of the facultative method? Modern psychology suggests an answer in demonstrating the interdependence of knowledge, feeling, and volition.[58:2]The perfect case of this unity isbelief. The believing experience is cognitive in intent, but practical and emotional as well in content. I believe what I take for granted; and the object of my belief is not merely known, but also felt and acted upon.What I believe expresses itself in my total experience.

There is some hope, then, of an adequate definition of the religious experience, if it be regarded as belonging to the psychological type of belief.[58:3]Belief, however, is a broader category than religion. There must be somereligious typeof believing. An account of religion in terms of believing, and the particular type of it here in question, would, then, constitute the central stem of a psychology of religion, and affords the proper conceptions for a description of the religious experience. Even here the reservation must be made that belief is always more than the believingstate, in that itmeans to betrue.[59:4]Hence to complete an account of religion one should consider its object, or its cognitive implications. But this direct treatment of the relation between religion and philosophy must be deferred until in the present chapter we shall have come to appreciate the inwardness of the religious consciousness. To this end we must permit ourselves to be enlightened by the experience of religious people as viewed from within. It is not our opinion of a man's religion that is here in question, but the content and meaning which it has for him.

"I would have you," says Fielding, in his "Hearts of Men," "go and kneel beside the Mahommedan as he prays at the sunset hour, and put your heart to his and wait for the echo that will surely come. . . . I would have you go to the hillman smearing the stone with butter that his god may be pleased, to the woman crying to the forest god for her sick child, to the boy before his monks learning to be good. No matter where you go, no matter what the faith is called, if you have the hearing ear, if your heart is in unison with the heart of the world, you will hear always the same song."[59:5]

Religion as Belief.

§18. The general identification of religion with belief is made without serious difficulty. The essential factor in belief, is, as we have seen, the reaction of the whole personalityto a fixed object or accepted situation. A similar principle underlies common judgments about a man's religion. He is accounted most religious whose religion penetrates his life most intimately. In the man whose religion consists in the outer exercise of attendance upon church, we recognize the sham. Heappearsto be religious. He does one of the things which a religious man would do; but an object of religious faith is not the constant environment of his life. He may or may not feel sure of God from his pew, but God is not among the things that count in his daily life. God does not enter into his calculations or determine his scale of values. Again, discursive thinking is regarded as an interruption of religion. When I am at pains to justify my religion, I am already doubting; and for common opinion doubt is identical with irreligion. In so far as I am religious, my religion stands in no need of justification, even though I regard it as justifiable. In my religious experience I am taking something for granted; in other words I act about it and feel about it in a manner that is going to be determined by the special conditions of my mood and temperament. The mechanical and prosaic man acknowledges God in his mechanical and prosaicway. He believes in divine retribution as he believes in commercial or social retribution. He is as careful to prepare for the next world as he is to be respectable in this. The poet, on the other hand, believes in God after the manner of his genius. Though he worship God in spirit he may conduct his life in an irregular manner peculiar to himself. Difference of mood in the same individual may be judged by the same measure. When God is most real to him, brought home to him most vividly, or consciously obeyed, in these moments he is most religious. When, on the other hand, God is merely a name to him, and church a routine, or when both are forgotten in the daily occupations, he is least religious. His life on the whole is said to be religious in so far as periods of the second type are subordinated to periods of the first type. Further well-known elements of belief, corollaries of the above, are evidently present in religion. A certainimagery remains constantthroughout an individual's experience. He comes back to it as to a physical object in space. And although religion is sporadically an exclusive and isolated affair, it tends strongly to be social. The religious object, or God, is a social object, common to me and to my neighbor, and presupposedin our collective undertakings. This reduction of religion to the type of the believing state should thus provide us with an answer to that old and fundamental question concerning the relative priority of faith and works. The test of the faith is in the works, and the works are religious in so far as they are the expression of the faith. Religion is not the doing of anything nor the feeling of anything nor the thinking of anything, but the reacting as a whole, in terms of all possible activities of human life, to some accepted situation.

Religion as Belief in a Disposition or Attitude.

§19. We may now face the more interesting but difficult question of the special character of religious belief. In spite of the fact that in these days the personality of God is often regarded as a transient feature of religion, that type of belief which throws most light upon the religious experience is thebelief in persons. Our belief in persons consists in the practical recognition of a more or less persistent disposition toward ourselves. The outward behavior of our fellow-men is construed in terms of the practical bearing of the attitude which it implies. The extraordinary feature of such belief is the disproportion between its vividness and thedirect evidence for it. Of this we are most aware in connection with those personalities which we regard as distinctly friendly or hostile to ourselves. We are always more or less clearly in the presence of our friends and enemies. Their well-wishing or their ill-wishing haunts the scene of our living. There is no more important constituent of what the psychologists call our "general feeling tone." There are times when we are entirely possessed by a state that is either exuberance in the presence of those who love us, or awkwardness and stupidity in the presence of those whom we believe to suspect and dislike us. The latter state may easily become chronic. Many men live permanently in the presence of an accusing audience. The inner life which expresses itself in the words, "Everybody hates me!" is perhaps the most common form of morbid self-consciousness. On the other hand, buoyancy of spirits springs largely from a constant faith in the good-will of one's fellows. In this case one is filled with a sense of security, and is conscious of a sympathetic reinforcement that adds to private joys and compensates for private sorrows. And this sense of attitude is wonderfully discriminating. We can feel the presence of a "great man," a "formidable person," a superioror inferior, one who is interested or indifferent to our talk, and all the subtlest degrees of approval and disapproval.

A similar sensibility may quicken us even in situations where no direct individual attitude to ourselves is implied. We regard places and communities as congenial when we are in sympathy with the prevailing purposes or standards of value. We may feel ill at ease or thoroughly at home in cities where we know no single human soul. Indeed, in a misanthrope like Rousseau (and who has not his Rousseau moods!) the mere absence of social repression arouses a most intoxicating sense of tunefulness and security. Nature plays the part of an indulgent parent who permits all sorts of personal liberties.

"The view of a fine country, a succession of agreeable prospects, a free air, a good appetite, and the health I gain by walking; the freedom of inns, and the distance from everything that can make me recollect the dependence of my situation, conspire to free my soul, and give boldness to my thoughts, throwing me, in a manner, into the immensity of things, where I combine, choose, and appropriate them to my fancy, without restraint or fear. I dispose of all nature as I please."[64:6]

Religion as Belief in the Disposition of the Residual Environment, or Universe.

§20. In such confidence or distrust, inspiredoriginally by the social environment, and similarly suggested by other surroundings of life, we have the key to the religious consciousness. But it is now time to add that in the case of religion these attitudes are concerned with the universal or supernatural rather than with present and normal human relationships. Religious reactions are "total reactions."

"To get at them," says William James, "you must go behind the foreground of existence and reach down to that curioussense of the whole residual cosmos as an everlasting presence, intimate or alien, terrible or amusing, lovable or odious, which in some degree everyone possesses. Thissense of the world's presence, appealing as it does to our peculiar individual temperament, makes us either strenuous or careless, devout or blasphemous, gloomy or exultant about life at large; and our reaction, involuntary and inarticulate and often half unconscious as it is, is the completest of all our answers to the question, 'What is the character of this universe in which we dwell?'"[65:7]

Thisresidual environment, or profounder realm of tradition and nature, may have any degree of unity from chaos to cosmos. For religion itssignificance lies in the idea of original and far-reaching power rather than in the idea of totality. But that which is at first only "beyond," ispracticallythe same object as that which comes in the development of thought to be conceived as the "world" or the "universe." We may therefore use these latter terms to indicate the object of religion, until the treatment of special instances shall define it more precisely. Religion is, then,man's sense of the disposition of the universe to himself. We shall expect to find, as in the social phenomena with which we have just dealt, that the manifestation of this sense consists in a general reaction appropriate to the disposition so attributed. He will be fundamentally ill at ease, profoundly confident, or will habitually take precautions to be safe. The ultimate nature of the world is here no speculative problem. The savage who could feel some joy at living in the universe would be more religious than the sublimest dialectician. It is in the vividness of the sense of this presence that the acuteness of religion consists. I am religious in so far as the whole tone and temper of my living reflects a belief as to what the universe thinks of such as me.

Examples of Religious Belief.

§21. The examples that follow are selectedbecause their differences in personal flavor serve to throw into relief their common religious character. Theodore Parker, in describing his own boyhood, writes as follows:

"I can hardly think without a shudder of the terrible effect the doctrine of eternal damnation had on me. How many, many hours have I wept with terror as I lay on my bed, till, between praying and weeping, sleep gave me repose. But before I was nine years old this fear went away, and I saw clearer light in the goodness of God. But for years, say from seven till ten, I said my prayers with much devotion, I think, and then continued to repeat, 'Lord, forgive my sins,' till sleep came on me."[67:8]

Compare with this Stevenson's Christmas letter to his mother, in which he says:

"The whole necessary morality is kindness; and it should spring, of itself, from the one fundamental doctrine, Faith. If you are sure that God, in the long run, means kindness by you, you should be happy; and if happy, surely you should be kind."[67:9]

Here is destiny frowning and destiny smiling, but in each case so real, so present, as to be immediately responded to with helpless terror and with grateful warm-heartedness.

The author of the "Imitatio Christi" speaks thus of the daily living of the Christian:

Back to Index Next