Chapter IV

THE PHILOSOPHICAL IMPLICATIONS OF RELIGION

[Sidenote: Résumé of Psychology of Religion.]

§ 28. It has been maintained that religion is closely analogous 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 substitute 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 fictitious 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 God 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. God 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 analogue 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 constitutive 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 God as his protector and judge. The history of Jesus or the metaphysics of God essentially concern him only in so far as they may or may not invalidate this relationship. 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 God 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 God is very simple practically, and very complex theoretically, a fact that confirms its practical genesis. My conception of God 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 constitutes 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. God is neither an entity nor an ideal, but always a relation of entity 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 attitude.

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

§ 31. The range of historical examples is limitless, but certain of these are especially calculated to emphasize the application of a criterion to religion. Such is the case with Elijah's encounter with the prophets of Baal, as narrated in the Old Testament.

"And Elijah came near unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? If Yahweh be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. . . . And call ye on the name of your god, and I will call on the name of Yahweh: and the God that answereth by fire, let him be God. . . . And Elijah said unto the prophets of Baal, Choose you one bullock for yourselves, and dress it first; for ye are many; and call on the name of your god, but put no fire under. And they took the bullock which was given them, and they dressed it, and called on the name of Baal from morning even until noon, saying, O Baal, hear us. But there was no voice, nor any that answered. . . . And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is musing, or he is gone aside, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked. And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lances, till the blood gushed out upon them. . . . But there was neither voice, nor any to answer, nor any that regarded."[88:2]

The religion of the followers of Baal here consists in a belief in the practical virtue of a mode of address and form of ritual associated with the traditions and customs of a certain social group. The prophets of this cult agree to regard the experiment proposed by Elijah as a crucial test, and that which is disproved from its failure is a plan of action. These prophets relied upon the presence of a certain motivity, from which a definite response could be evoked by an appeal which they were peculiarly able to make; but though "they prophesied until the time of the offering of the evening oblation," there was none that regarded.

[Sidenote: Greek Religion.]

§ 32. An equally familiar and more instructive example is the refutation of the Greek national religion by Lucretius. The conception of life which Lucretius finds unwarranted is best depicted in Homer. There we hear of a society composed of gods and men. Though the gods, on the one hand, have their own history, their affairs are never sharply sundered from those of men, who, on the other hand, must constantly reckon with them, gauge their attitude, and seek their favor by paying tribute to their individual humors and preferences. In the Ninth Book of the "Iliad," Phoenix addresses himself to the recalcitrant Achilles as follows:

"It fits not one that moves The hearts of all, to live unmov'd, and succor hates for loves. The Gods themselves are flexible; whose virtues, honors, pow'rs, Are more than thine, yet they will bend their breasts as we bend ours. Perfumes, benign devotions, savors of offerings burn'd, And holy rites, the engines are with which their hearts are turn'd, By men that pray to them."[90:3]

Here is a general recognition of that which makes sacrifice rational. It is because he conceives this presupposition to be mistaken, that Lucretius declares the practices and fears which are founded upon it to be folly. It is the same with all that is practically based upon the expectation of a life beyond the grave. The correction of the popular religion is due in his opinion to that true view of the world taught by Epicurus, whose memory Lucretius thus invokes at the opening of the