IV

The aesthetic interest is the good genius of the powers of apprehension, making them fruitful in their own kind. Now the powers of apprehension are engaged during all the waking hours, and if they can be taught to mediate a good of their own, that good will pervade the whole of life. It is through the cultivation of the aesthetic interest that there is most hope of redeeming the waste places, of giving to intervals and accidental juxtapositions some graciousness and profit. With all the world to see and contemplate, and with the eye and mind wherewith to contemplate them, there is a limitless abundance of good things always and everywhere available. Let me quote Arthur Benson's account of this discovery:

The world was full of surprises; trees drooped their leaves over screening walls, houses had backs as well as fronts; music was heard from shuttered windows, lights burned in upper rooms. There were a thousand pretty secrets in the ways of people to each other. Then, too, there were ideas, as thick as sparrows in an ivied wall. One had but to clap one's hands and cry out, and there was a fluttering {195} of innumerable wings; life was as full of bubbles, forming, rising into amber foam, as a glass of sparkling wine.[12]

To this delight which the casual environment affords a sensitive observer, art may add through a decorous furnishing of city and house. Or the instruments of other interests may be made to give pleasure of themselves, so that there may be no long periods of deferred reward. Thus to the hire of manual labor may be added the immediate compensation which comes from a love of the tools, or from the satisfaction taken in the aspect of work done; to physical exercise may be added the love of nature, to scholarship the love of scientific form, and to social intercourse the love of personal beauty or of conversation. In these ways, and in countless ways beside, the aesthetic interest may multiply the richness of life.

Society is, on the whole, protected against the danger of overemphasis on the aesthetic interest, through the habitual subordination of it in public opinion to standards of efficiency. Men commonly believe, and are justified in so believing, that a life delivered wholly to the aesthetic interest is frivolous; amusing itself with "bubbles" and "amber foam," while supported by a community in whose graver and more urgent concerns it takes no part. Probably no one has {196} done more than Pater to persuade men of the present generation that it is worth while to "catch at any exquisite passion, . . . or any stirring of the senses"; and yet he is not a prophet in our day. Is it possibly because in that same famous conclusion to the Renaissance he said, "Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end," [13] and thus exposed himself to misunderstanding, if not to refutation, at the hands of any one of average moral enlightenment? The moral lesson is one that none have escaped, and that only a few are permitted to forget. This lesson has taught with unvarying reiteration that acts are to be judged by their consequences; that all purposes are constructive, and so far as wise fitted into the building of civilization; that experience itself, in Pater's sense, is possible only as a fruit of experience. A life in which the aesthetic interest unduly dominates, in which action is transmuted into pulses of sensation, and the means of efficiency into the ends of contemplation, is an idle life, protected from the consequences of its own impotency only by the constructive labor of others. He who from prolonged gazing at the spoon forgets to carry it to his mouth, must die of hunger and cease from gazing altogether, or be fed by his friends. The instruments of achievement may be adorned, and made delightful in the using, but they must not {197} on that account be mistaken for the achievement; leisure may be made a worthy pastime through the cultivation of the sensibilities, but it must not be substituted for vocation, or allowed to infect a serious purpose with decay.

V

It has always been recognized that there is a peculiar massiveness or depth in aesthetic satisfaction, as though it somehow carried with it the satisfaction of all interests. And this is not due merely to the fact that other interests tend to fall away or remit their claims; it is due besides to the fact that other interests may in a sense actually be fulfilled in the aesthetic interest. In other words, this interest serves a vicarious function, transmuting other interests into its own form, and then affording them a fulfilment which they are incapable of attaining when exercised in their own right.

This occurs when other interests, such as love or personal ambition, are imagined or represented, and thus made objects of agreeable apprehension. There is in this a compensation for failure, without which life would be stripped of one of its main barriers against despair. Those whom circumstance has provided no opportunity for the fulfilment of interests so ingenerate as maternal love or heroic action, may, in a way, make themselves whole {198} through the contemplation of these things; for the contemplation of them engages the same instincts, arouses the same emotions, but without requiring the existence of their objects. The prolongation of arduous and uncertain effort is compensated through the imaginative anticipation of success, or through the apprehension of some symbol of perfect fruition. It is through this happy illumination of struggle with a vision of fulfilment, that mankind is reconciled to such tasks as civilization and spiritual wholeness; tasks in which great efforts produce small results, and of which the end is not seen.

Now it remains true, of course, that such vicarious fulfilment is not real fulfilment; and to suppose it to be, is one of the most serious errors for which the aesthetic interest is responsible. The man who, with clenched hands and quickened pulse, is watching some image of himself as it triumphs over obstacles and arrives at the summit of his ambition, may and doubtless does feel like Alexander, but he nevertheless has not conquered the world; and if he thinks he has, he will probably never conquer any of it. It must be remembered that the vicarious aesthetic fulfilment of interests is the easiest fulfilment of them; and that it may, therefore, become a form of self-indulgence and a source of false complacency. A sanguine imagination is one of the {199} chief causes of worldly failure; an exaggerated interest in representations of virtue is a common cause of irresponsibility and of hypocrisy. William James, in a passage that is frequently quoted, calls attention also to the danger of acquiring a chronic emotionality.

The weeping of a Russian lady over the fictitious personages in the play, while her coachman is freezing to death on his seat outside, is the sort of thing that everywhere happens on a less glaring scale. Even the habit of excessive indulgence in music, for those who are neither performers themselves nor musically gifted enough to take it in a purely intellectual way, has probably a relaxing effect upon the character. One becomes filled with emotions which habitually pass without prompting to any deed, and so the inertly sentimental condition is kept up. The remedy would be, never to suffer one's self to have an emotion at a concert, without expressing it afterwards in some active way. Let the expression be the least thing in the world—speaking genially to one's aunt, or giving up one's seat in a horse-car, if nothing more heroic offers—but let it not fail to take place.[14]

But not only is it possible through the exaggeration of the aesthetic interest to substitute apparent achievement for real achievement; it is possible to extract solace from the contemplation of failure itself. Is there any one who has not met the man who is actually made buoyant by his consistent misfortune? For it is flattering that an evil fate should single one out from the crowd for conspicuous attention, that all the {200} tragedy of existence should centre upon one's devoted head. And a certain interest attaches even to unredeemed misery and abject futility on their own account, if only they can be viewed from the right angle, and with a cultivated sense for such things. Now thus to poetize the tragedy of one's own life is fatuous; it is like enjoying one's dizziness on the brink of a precipice, or the pangs of sickness without seeking a remedy. But to poetize the tragedy of others, to fiddle while Rome is burning, is brutal. Nevertheless, though it is not commonly possible to do things on Nero's scale, precisely the same attitude is the commonest thing in the world, and is fostered by the whole aesthetic bias of the race. The meanness of savage life, the squalid poverty of the slums, suffice in their picturesqueness to make a holiday for those who are more occupied with images than with deeds. And there is actually a philosophy of life in which all things are held to be good because they afford a tragic, sublime, and, therefore, pleasing spectacle. This is the very extreme of moral infidelity, the abandonment of the will to make good for the insidious and relaxing interest in making things seem good as they are.

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VI

That a beautiful object commonly stimulates a motor response is beyond question. Even when it does not appeal to any definite emotion it is generally stimulating, through its affording to the natural powers at some point an unusual harmony with their environment. And when there is a definite emotional appeal, there is a tendency to act. For, as we have seen, originally the fundamental emotions were all co-ordinated reactions to the environment, enlisting the whole organism to cope with some practical emergency. That the emotions should become mere emotions is due to the modification of instinct by habit. Whatever, then, arouses the emotions does in some degree stir to action. So that one of the most important moral uses of art is its alliance with other interests in order to intensify their appeal, in order to make them more instantly moving. Art is a means of enlivening dormant impulses; as music is a means of rekindling the love of country or the love of God, so that men may be brought to take up arms with enthusiasm or endure reverses without complaint.

But this motor excitement which art stimulates may be morally indeterminate; that is, it may be capable of being discharged in any way that accident or bias may select. In other words, {202} art may communicate power without controlling its use, thus merely increasing the disorder and instability of life. Or it may serve to exaggerate the appeal of the present interest, until it becomes ungovernable and obscures ulterior interests. This tendency to promote dissoluteness is the most serious charge which Plato brings against the arts. After referring to the unseemly hilarity to which men are incited by the comic stage, he adds:

And the same may be said of lust and anger and all the other affections, of desire and pain and pleasure which are held to be inseparable from every action—in all of them poetry feeds and waters the passions instead of drying them up; she lets them rule instead of ruling them as they ought to be ruled, with a view to the happiness and virtue of mankind.[15]

In an earlier passage Plato discusses types of music in relation to action, the Lydian which is sorrowful, and the Ionian which is indolent; showing that selection must be made if men are not to be at the mercy of random influences. It is not necessary, as Plato would have it, to banish Lydian and Ionian harmonies from society; but within one's personal economy, within the republic of one's own soul, one must prefer with Plato those stirrings of the emotions which support and re-enforce one's moral purpose:

Of the harmonies I know nothing, but I want to have one warlike, which will sound the word or note {203} which a brave man utters in the hour of danger and stem resolve, or when his cause is failing, and he is going to wounds or death or is overtaken by some other evil, and at every such crisis meets fortune with calmness and endurance; and another to be used by him in times of peace and freedom of action, when there is no pressure of necessity, and he is seeking to persuade God by prayer, or man by instruction and advice. . . . These two harmonies I ask you to leave: the strain of necessity and the strain of freedom, the strain of the unfortunate and the strain of the fortunate, the strain of courage and the strain of temperance; these, I say, leave.[16]

VII

Where art is not employed directly to incite action, it may still be indirectly conducive to action through fixing ideas and inclining the sentiments towards them. This is probably its most important moral function. The ideas which are of the greatest significance for conduct are ideas which receive no adequate embodiment in the objects of nature. Every broad purpose and developed ideal requires the exercise of the constructive imagination. But the immediate images of the imagination are fluctuating and transient, and need to be supported through being embodied in some enduring medium. Thus monuments serve as emblems of nationality; or, as in the thirteenth century, all the arts may unite to represent and suggest the objects of religious {204} faith. Poetry and song have always served as means of incarnating the more delicate shadings of a racial ideal; and every man would be a poet if he could, and trace the outline of that hope which stirs him and which is not the hope of any other man.

But it must be made clear that art does more than make ideas definite and permanent. It inclines the sentiments towards them. The great power of art lies in its function of making ideas alluring. Now whatever is loved or admired is, in the long run, sought out, imitated, and served. Understanding this, the ancient Athenians sought to educate the passions, and employed music to that end. This is Aristotle's justification of such a course:

Since then music is a pleasure, and virtue consists in rejoicing and loving and hating aright, there is clearly nothing which we are so much concerned to acquire and to cultivate as the power of forming right judgments, and of taking delight in good dispositions and noble actions. Rhythm and melody supply imitations of anger and gentleness, and also of courage and temperance and of virtues and vices in general, which hardly fall short of the actual affections, as we know from our own experience, for in listening to such strains our souls undergo a change. The habit of feeling pleasure or pain at mere representations is not far removed from the same feeling about realities.[17]

The simple and incontestable truth of these statements is a standing condemnation of the {205} usual environment of youth. Virtue consists, as much as it ever did, "in rejoicing and loving and hating aright"; but the guidance of these sentiments to their proper objects is left almost wholly to chance. It is by making the good also beautiful, by illuminating the modes of virtue with jewels, and endearing them to the imagination, that the moral reason may be re-enforced from early days by high spirits. It should be a task of education, using this means either in the home or the school or the city at large, to inculcate a right habit of admiration.

If art is to serve a moral end in fixing and embellishing ideas, it must be true. What I mean by this most important qualification I must now endeavor to make plain. Art, in so far as it is a means of representation, deals either with physical nature, as in landscape and figure painting, or with types and incidents of human life, as in dramatic painting and in the greater part of poetry. In either case it may, like thought, either reflect or distort the structure of reality. Now the real structure of human life is moral; consisting only in a variety of instances of the one law that the wages of sin is death. To represent life otherwise is to falsify it, precisely as to represent bodies without solidity and gravity is to falsify physical nature. But in representing physical nature art does not, as science does, {206} formulate merely its geometrical or dynamical skeleton; to do so would be contrary to the intent of art to represent things in their perceptual concreteness. Similarly art does not represent abstract virtues. Nevertheless, if it is not to depart from the truth art must, at the same time that it conveys the color and vividness of life, also conform to its proper laws, and demonstrate the consequences of action as they are. And the same standard of clearness and fidelity, which requires that great art shall reveal nature as it is, not to the superficial or imitative observer but to the thoughtful and penetrating mind, requires also that it shall throw into relief the profounder and more universal forces of life.

Great art, therefore, is of necessity enlightening. But it is possible that untruth should parade in the dress and under the auspices of art, and so work to the confusion of the moral consciousness. If art were only realistic in the full sense, an unequivocal representation of the laws of life, it would invariably justify and support the moral will; it would be idealistic. It is the art of desultory and irresponsible fancy that is a source of danger. There is a species of romantic art that is guarded by its very excess of fantasy; it being impossible to mistake it for a representation of life. But where romantic art is not thus clear in its motive, it becomes what is called "sensational" {207} art, in which the wages of sin are not paid; in which imprudence, infidelity, and a mean ambition are made to yield success, freedom, and glorious achievement. The realities are violated, with the consequence that resolve is weakened and the intelligence bewildered.

Since art may be true or untrue, it may also be universal or particular, profound or superficial, in its apprehension of reality. This difference has operated to define a scale of importance in art, so far as the interest of society is concerned. There is at least a measure of truth in Taine's graduated scale by which he estimates the greatness of art according as it represents the fashion of the day, the type of the generation, the type of the age, the type of the race, or man himself in his immutable nature.[18] That art will be the most effective instrument of moral enlightenment which reflects the experience of mankind in the basal and constant virtues, giving quality and distinction to truths which might otherwise suffer from their very homeliness and familiarity.

There is a kindred consideration to which Tolstoy, undiscerning as he is in most of his criticism of art, has very justly called attention. In the broad sense, art is liable to untruth from reflecting exclusively the bias of a certain temperament. The following description {208} of a class of contemporary dramas is not wholly inapt:

They either represent an architect, who for some reason has not fulfilled his former high resolves and in consequence of this climbs on the roof of a house built by him and from there flies down headlong; or some incomprehensible old woman, who raises rats and for some unknown reason takes a poetic child to the sea and there drowns it; or some blind people, who, sitting at the sea-shore, for some reason all the time repeat one and the same thing; or a bell which flies into a lake and there keeps ringing.[19]

That a tendency to cultivate acquaintance with the curious and rare, and communicate it to a narrow group of initiated persons, is characteristic of modern times, and that on the whole it is a symptom of decadence, Tolstoy has, I believe, proved. At any rate, the effect of such a tendency in art can not fail to be morally injurious, since life is not represented proportionately. Art has much to do with the vogue and prestige of ideas. Thus, for example, though the problem-play may be faithful to life where it deals with life, if the stage be given over wholly to this form of drama, there will almost inevitably result a false conception of the degree to which the incidents selected are representative of social conditions on the whole.

There is one further source of moral error in connection with this function of art. Because art can not only fix ideas but also make them {209} alluring, it may invest them with a fictitious value. I refer to what is only a different aspect of that sentimentalism or chronic emotionalism to which I have already called attention. Not only is it possible that men should be brought through the aesthetic interest to replace action with emotion; they may also persuade themselves that the higher principles of life owe their validity to some quality that is discerned immediately in the apprehension of them. But purpose, justice, and good-will are essentially principles of organization; their virtue is their provident working. To regard them only as images with a value inhering in their bare essence, is to forfeit their benefits. Verbalism, formalism, mysticism, are given a certain false charm and semblance of self-sufficiency by the cultivation and exercise of the aesthetic interest. Hence morality and religion must here resist its enticements, and never cease to remind themselves that theirs is the task of acknowledging all interests according to their real inwardness, and of banishing cruelty and blindness in their behalf.

VIII

Finally, art serves to liberalize life, to make it expansive and generous in spirit. This is possible because, in the first place, art is unworldly. I mean simply that the enjoyment of beauty is not {210} a part of ambition; that it does not call into play those habits of calculation and forms of skill that conduce to success in livelihood or the gaining of any of the proximate ends of organized social life. It frees the mind from its harness and turns it out to pasture. I suppose that every one has had that experience of spiritual refreshment which occasionally comes when one has gone body and soul out of doors, or when one is delivered over to the enchantment of sober and elevating music, and suddenly made aware of the better things that have been long forgotten. Such experiences are a moral inspiration. It is as though, the clamor of the world being for the moment shut out, one hears at last the voices that speak with authority. For an instant the broad sweep of truth flashes upon eyes that have been too intently watchful of affairs near at hand. The good-will can be sustained only by a mind that now and then withdraws itself from its engagements, and expands its view to the full measure of life. For the momentary inhibiting of the narrower practical impulses, and the evoking of this quiet and contemplative mood, the love of nature and the love of art are the most reliable means.

But art promotes liberality of spirit in an even more definitely moral sense. For art, like all forms of culture, and like the service of humanity, {211} provides for the highest type of social intercourse. The aesthetic interest is one of those rare interests which are common to all men without being competitive. All men require bread, but since this interest requires exclusive possession of its objects, its very commonness is a source of suspicion and enmity. Similarly all men require truth and beauty and civilization, but these objects are enhanced by the fact that all may rejoice in them without their being divided or becoming the property of any man. They bring men together without rivalry and intrigue, in a spirit of good-fellowship. "Culture," says Matthew Arnold, "is not satisfied till we all come to a perfect man; it knows that the sweetness and light of the few must be imperfect until the raw and unkindled masses of humanity are touched with sweetness and light."

'This,' he continues, 'is the social idea; and the men of culture are the true apostles of equality. The great men of culture are those who have had a passion for diffusing, for making prevail, for carrying from one end of society to the other, the best knowledge, the best ideas of their time; who have labored to divest knowledge of all that was harsh, uncouth, difficult, abstract, professional, exclusive; to humanize it, to make it efficient outside the clique of the cultivated and learned, yet still remaining the best knowledge and thought of the time, and a true source, therefore, of sweetness and light.'[20]

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Art, both in the creation and in the enjoyment of it, is thus true to the deepest motive of morality. It is a remoulding of nature to the end that all may live, and that they may live abundantly.

IX

I have sought to place before you what art may contribute to life. It will have become plain that while art is the natural and powerful ally of morality, it does not itself provide any guarantee of proper control; in the interests of goodness, on the whole, no man can surrender himself to it utterly. The good-will is not proved until, as Plato said, it is tried with enchantments, and found to be strong and true. Goodness can not be cast upon a man like a spell; it is a work of rational organization, and can not be had without discipline, efficiency, and service. But it is for art to surround life with fit auspices; to create an environment that reflects and forecasts its best achievements, thus both making a home for it and confirming its resolves.

Having modelled this moral criticism of art upon the method of Plato, I shall conclude with his familiar summary of all the wisdom and eloquence that there is in the matter:

Let our artists rather be those who are gifted to discern the true nature of beauty and grace; then will our youth dwell in the land of health, amid fair sights {213} and sounds; and beauty, the effluence of fair works, will visit the eye and ear, like a healthful breeze from a purer region, and insensibly draw the soul even in childhood into harmony with the beauty of reason.[21]



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CHAPTER VI

THE MORAL JUSTIFICATION OF RELIGION[1]

It is generally agreed that religion is either the paramount issue or the most serious obstacle to progress. To its devotees religion is of overwhelming importance; to unbelievers it is, in the phrasing of Burke, "superstitious folly, enthusiastical nonsense, and holy tyranny." The difference between the friends and the enemies of religion may, I think, be resolved as follows:

Religion recognizes some final arbitration of human destiny; it is a lively awareness of the fact that, while man proposes, it is only within certain narrow limits that he can dispose his own plans. His nicest adjustments and most ardent longings are overruled; he knows that until he can discount or conciliate that which commands his fortunes his condition is precarious and miserable. And through his eagerness to save himself he leaps to conclusions that are uncritical and premature. Irreligion, on the other hand, flourishes among those who are more snugly intrenched {215} within the cities of man. It is a product of civilization. Comfortably housed as he is, and enjoying an artificial illumination behind drawn blinds, the irreligious man has the heart to criticise the hasty speculations and abject fear of those who stand without in the presence of the surrounding darkness. In other words, religion is perpetually on the exposed side of civilization, sensitive to the blasts that blow from the surrounding universe; while irreligion is in the lee of civilization, with enough remove from danger to foster a refined concern for logic and personal liberty. There is a sense, then, in which both religion and irreligion are to be justified. If religion is guilty of unreason, irreligion is guilty of apathy. For without doubt the situation of the individual man is broadly such as religion conceives it to be. There is nothing that he can build, nor any precaution that he can take, that weighs appreciably in the balance against the powers which decree good and ill fortune, catastrophe and triumph, life and death. Hence to be without fear is the part of folly. Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom.

Religion is man's recognition of the overruling control of his fortunes. It is neither metaphysical nor mythical, but urgently practical. Primeval chaos, Chronos, the father of Zeus, and the long line of speculative Absolutes have no {216} worshippers because they take no hand in man's affairs. They may be neglected with impunity. But not so the gods who send health and sickness, fertility and death, victory and defeat; or He who sits in judgment on the last day to determine the doom of eternity. Religion is the manifestation of supreme concern for life, an alertness to the remotest threat of danger and promise of hope. A certain momentousness attaches to all the affairs of religion, because everything is at stake. Its dealings are with the last court of appeal, in behalf of the most indispensable good.

In form, religion is a case of belief; that is, of settled conviction. There is no religion until some interpretation of life, some accommodation between man and God, has been so far accepted as to be unhesitatingly practised. The absurdity of doubt in matters of religion has been pointed out in the well-known parody, "O God, if there be a God, save my soul, if I have a soul." The quality of religion lies not in the entertaining of a speculative hypothesis, but in an assurance so confident that its object is not only thought but enacted. God is not God until his unquestioned existence is assimilated to life. Indeed, it is conceivable that an object thus made the basis of action should still remain theoretically doubtful. To Fontenelle is attributed the remark that he "did not believe in ghosts, but was afraid of {217} them." This is a paradox until we distinguish theoretical and practical conviction; then it becomes not only credible but commonplace. If one prays to God, it is not necessary for the purposes of religion that one should, in Fontenelle's sense, believe in him. But I prefer to use the term "belief" more strictly, to connote such assent as expresses itself, not in a deliberate judgment made conformable to one's intellectual conscience, but in fear, love, and purpose, in habitual imagery, in any attitude or activity that spontaneously and freely presupposes the object with which it deals.

By conceiving religion as belief we may understand not only its air of certainty, but also the variety of its forms and agencies. Belief sits at the centre of life and qualifies all its manifestations. Hence the futility of attempting to associate religion exclusively with any single function of man. The guises in which religious belief may appear are as multiform as human nature, and will vary with every shading of mood and temperament. Its central objects may be thought, imagined, or dealt with—in short, responded to in all the divers ways, internal and overt, that the powers and occasions of life define.

This will suffice, I trust, to lay the general topic of religion before us. I shall employ the terms and phrases which I have formulated as a {218} working definition: Religion is belief on the part of individuals or communities concerning the final or overruling control of their interests.[2] I propose from this point to keep in the forefront of the discussion the standards whereby religion is to be estimated, and approved or condemned. On what grounds may a religion be criticised? What would constitute the proof of an absolute religion? History is strewn with discredited religions; men began to quarrel over religion so soon as they had any; and it is customary for every religious devotee to believe jealously and exclusively. There can be no doubt, then, that religion is subject to justification; it remains to distinguish the tests which may with propriety be applied, and in particular to isolate and emphasize the moral test.

II

In the first place, let me mention briefly a test which it is customary to apply, but which is not so much an estimate as it is a measure. I refer to the various respects in which an individual or community may be said to be more or less religious. Thus, for example, certain religious phenomena surpass others in acuteness or intensity. This is peculiarly true of the phenomena manifested in conversion and in revivals. In this respect the mysteries of the ancients exceeded {219} their regular public worship. Individuals and communities vary in the degree to which they are capable of enthusiasm, excitement, or ecstasy.

Or a religion may be measured extensively. He whose religion is constant and uniform is more religious than he whose observance is confined to the Sabbath day, or he whose concern in the matter appears only in time of trouble or at the approach of death. This test may best be summed up in terms of consistency. Religion may vary in the degree to which it pervades the various activities of life. That religion is confined and small which manifests itself only in words or public deeds or emotions exclusively. If it is to be effective it must be systematic, so thoroughly adopted as to be cumulative and progressive. It must engage every activity, qualify all thought and imagination, in short, infuse the whole of life with its saving grace.

It is clear, however, that a measure of religion does not constitute either proof or disproof. If a religion be good or true, or on like grounds accredited, then the more of it the better. But differences of degree appear in all religions. Indeed, the quantitative test has been most adequately met by forms of religion the warrant of which is generally held to be highly questionable. We may, therefore, dismiss this test without further consideration. The application of it must be {220} based upon a prior and more fundamental justification.

There is one test of religion which has been universally applied by believers and critics alike, a test which, I think, will shortly appear to deserve precedence over all others. I refer to the test of truth. Every religion has been justified to its believers and recommended to unbelievers on grounds of evidence. It has been verified in its working, or attested by either observation, reflection, revelation, or authority.

In spite of the general assent which this proposition will doubtless command, it is deserving of special emphasis at the present time. Students of religion have latterly shifted attention from its claims to truth to its utility and subjective form. This pragmatic and psychological study of religion has created no little confusion of mind concerning its real meaning, and obscured that which is after all its essential claim—the claim, namely, to offer an illumination of life. Religious belief, like all belief, is reducible to judgments. These judgments are not, it is true, explicit and theoretically formulated; but they are none the less answerable to evidence from that context of experience to which they refer. It is true that the believer's assurance is not consciously rational, but it is none the less liable before the court of reason. Cardinal Newman {221} fairly expressed the difference between the method of religion and the method of science when he said that "ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt," that "difficulty and doubt are incommensurate." [3] Nevertheless, the difficulties are in each case germane; and the fact that every article of faith has its besetting doubt is proof that the thorough justification of faith requires the settlement of theoretical difficulties.

No religion can survive the demonstration of its untruth; for salvation, whether present or eternal, depends on processes actually operative in the environment. Religion must reveal the undeniable situation and prepare man for it. It must charge the unbeliever with being guilty of folly, with deceiving himself through failing to see and take heed. Every religious propaganda is a cry of warning, putting men on their guard against invisible dangers; or a promise of succor, bringing glad tidings of great joy. And its prophecy is empty and trivial if the danger or the succor can be shown to be unreal. The one unfailing bias in life is the bias for disillusionment, springing from the organic instinct for that real environment to which, whether friendly or hostile, it must adapt itself. Every man knows in his heart that he can not be saved through being deceived. Illusions can not endure, and those who lightly perpetrate them are fortunate {222} if they escape the resentment and swift vengeance which overtook the prophets of Baal.

The grounds of religious truth will require prolonged consideration; but before discussing them further let me first mention a test of religion which belongs to the class of psychological and pragmatic tests to which I have just alluded, but which has latterly assumed special prominence. Though realizing that I use a somewhat disparaging term, I suggest that we call this the "therapeutic test." It has been proved that the state of piety possesses a direct curative value through its capacity to exhilarate or pacify, according to the needs of a disordered mind. As a potent form of suggestion, it lends itself to the uses of psychiatry; it may be medicinally employed as a tonic, stimulant, or sedative.

Now we can afford to remind ourselves that, at least from the point of view of the patient, this use of religion bears a striking resemblance to certain primitive practices in which God was conceived as a glorified medicine-man, and the healing of the body strangely confused with spiritual regeneration. Bishop Gregory of Tours once addressed the following apostrophe to the worshipful St. Martin: "O unspeakable theriac! ineffable pigment! admirable antidote! celestial purgative! superior to all the skill of physicians, more fragrant than aromatic drugs, stronger than {223} all ointments combined! thou cleanest the bowels as well as scammony, and the lungs as well as hyssop; thou cleanest the head as well as camomile!" [4]

It is true that religion is in these days recommended for more subtle disorders; but even religious ecstasy may be virtually equivalent to a mere state of emotional exhilaration, or piety to a condition of mental and moral stupor. What does it profit a man to be content with his lot, or to experience the rapture of the saints, if he has lost his soul? The saving of a soul is a much more serious matter than the cessation of worry or the curing of insomnia, or even than the acquiring of a habit of delirious joy. Tranquillity and happiness are, it is true, the legitimate fruits of religion, but only provided they be infused with goodness and truth. If religion is to be a spiritual tonic, and not merely a physical tonic, it must be based on moral organization and intellectual enlightenment. I do not doubt that religion has in all times recommended itself to men mainly through its contributing to their lives a certain peculiar buoyancy and peace. There is such a generic value in religion, which can not be attributed wholly to any of its component parts. But, like the intensity or extent of religion, this may manifest itself upon all levels of development. Sound piety, a tranquillity and happiness {224} which mark the soul's real salvation, must be founded on truth, on an interpretation of life which expresses the fullest light. Again, then, we are referred to the test of truth for the fundamental justification of religion. There is a generic value which is deserving of the last word, but that word can be said only after a rigorous examination of the more fundamental values from which it is derived.

Religious truth is divisible into two judgments, involved in every religious belief, and answerable respectively to ethical and cosmological evidence. Since religion is a belief concerning the overruling control of human interests, it involves on the one hand a summing up of these interests, a conception of what the believer has at stake, in short, an ethical judgment; and on the other hand, an interpretation of the environment at large, in other words, a cosmological judgment. Religion construes the practical situation in its totality; which means that it generalizes concerning the content of fortune, or the good, and the sources of fortune, or nature. Both factors are invariably present, and no religion can escape criticism on this twofold ground.

The ethical implications of religion are peculiarly far-reaching, since they determine not only its conception of man, but also, in part, its conception of God. This is due to the fact that {225} the term "God" signifies not the environment in its inherent nature, but the environment in its bearing on the worshipper's interests. It follows that whether God be construed as favorable or hostile will depend upon the worshipper's conception of these interests. Thus, for example, if worldly success or long life be regarded as the values most eagerly to be conserved, God must be feared as cruel or capricious; whereas, if the lesson of discipline and humility be conceived as the highest good, it may be reasonable to trust the providence of God without any change in its manifestation.

Furthermore, as we shall shortly have occasion to remark, it is characteristic of religion to insist, so far as possible, upon the favorableness of the environment. But this favorableness must be construed in terms of what are held to be man's highest interests. Consequently, the disposition and motive of God always reflect human purposes. This is the main source of the inevitable anthropomorphism of religion.

Conceptions of nature, on the other hand, define the degree to which the environment is morally determined, and the unity or plurality of its causes. Animism, for example, reflects the general opinion that the causes of natural events are wilful rather than mechanical. Such an opinion obtained at the time when no sharp {226} distinction was made between inorganic and organic phenomena, the action of the environment being conceived as a play of impulses.

Religion is corrected, then, by light obtained from these sources: man's knowledge of his highest interests, and his knowledge of nature. As a rule, one or the other of these two methods of criticism tends to predominate, in accordance with the genius of the race or period. Thus, the evolution of Greek religion is determined mainly by the development of science. Xenophanes attacks the religion of his times on the ground of its crude anthropomorphism. "Mortals," he says, "think that the gods are born as they are, and have perception like theirs, and voice and form." But this naive opinion Xenophanes corrects because it is not consistent with the new enlightenment concerning the arche, or first principle of nature. "And he [God] abideth ever in the same place, moving not at all; nor doth it befit him to go about, now hither, now thither." [5]

In a later age Lucretius criticised the whole system of Greek religion in terms of the atomistic and mechanical cosmology of Epicurus:

For verily not by design did the first-beginnings of things station themselves each in its right place guided by keen intelligence, nor did they bargain sooth to say what motions each should assume; but because many in number and shifting about in many ways throughout the universe they are driven and {227} tormented by blows during infinite time past, after trying motions and unions of every kind at length they fall into arrangements such as those out of which this our sum of things has been formed.[6]

In the light of such principles Lucretius demonstrates the absurdity of hoping or fearing anything from a world beyond or a life to come. In this case, as in the case above, the religion of enlightenment does not differ essentially from the religion of the average man in its conception of the interests at stake, but only in its conception of the methods of worship or forms of imagery which it is reasonable to employ in view of the actual nature of the environment.

If, on the other hand, we turn to the early development of the Hebrew religion, we find that it is corrected to meet the demands not of cosmological but of ethical enlightenment. No question arises as to the existence or power of God, but only as to what he requires of those who serve him. The prophets represent the moral genius of the race, its acute discernment of the causes of social integrity or decay. "And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil: learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve {228} the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow." [7]

But whichever of these two methods of criticism predominates, it is clear that they both draw upon bodies of truth which grow independently of religion. The history of Christianity affords a most remarkable record of the continual adjustment of religious belief to secular rationality. The offices of religion have availed no more to justify cruelty, intolerance, and bigotry than to establish the Ptolemaic astronomy or the Scriptural account of creation. This is more readily admitted in the case of natural science than in the case of ethics, but only because teachers of religion have commonly had a more expert acquaintance with moral matters than with the orbits of the planets or the natural history of the earth.

For the principles of conduct, like the principles of nature, must be derived from a study of the field to which they are applied. They require nothing more for their establishment than the analysis and generalization of the moral situation. If two or more persons conduct themselves with reference to one another and to an external object, their action either possesses or lacks, in some degree, that specific value which we call moral goodness. And by the principles of ethics we mean the principles which truly define and explicate this value. Now neither the truth nor {229} the falsity of any religion affects these fundamental and essential conditions. If the teachings of religion be accepted as true, then certain factors may be added to the concrete practical situation; but if so, these fall within the field of morality and must be submitted to ethical principles. Thus, if there be a God whose personality permits of reciprocal social relations with man, then man ought, in the moral sense, to be prudent with reference to him, and may reasonably demand justice or good-will at his hands.

But the mere existence of a God, whatever be his nature, can neither invalidate nor establish the ethical principles of prudence, justice, and good-will. Were a God whose existence is proved, to recommend injustice, this would not affect in the slightest degree the moral obligation to be just. Moral revelation stands upon precisely the same footing as revelation in the sphere of theoretical truth: its acceptance can be justified only through its being confirmed by experience or reason. In other words, it is the office of revelation to reveal truth, but not to establish it. In consequence of this fact it may even be necessary that a man should redeem the truth in defiance of what he takes to be the disposition of God. Neither individual conscience nor the moral judgment of mankind can be superseded or modified save through a higher insight which these may {230} themselves be brought to confirm. Whatever a man may think of God, if he continues to live in the midst of his fellows, he places himself within the jurisdiction of the laws which obtain there. Morality is the method of reconciling and fulfilling the interests of beings having the capacity to conduct themselves rationally, and ethics is the formulation of the general principles which underlie this method. The attempt to live rationally—and, humanly speaking, there is no alternative save the total abnegation of life—brings one within the jurisdiction of these principles, precisely as thinking brings one within the jurisdiction of the principles of logic, or as the moving of one's body brings one within the jurisdiction of the principles of mechanics.

Religion, then, mediates an enlightenment which it does not of itself originate. In religious belief the truth which is derived from a studious observation of nature and the cumulative experience of life, is heightened and vivified. Like all belief religion is conservative, and rightly so. But in the long run, steadily and inevitably, it responds to every forward step which man is enabled to take through the exercise of his natural cognitive powers. Only so does religion serve its real purpose of benefiting life by expanding its horizon and defining its course.

I have hitherto left out of account a certain {231} stress or insistence that must now be recognized as fundamental in religious development. This I shall call the optimistic bias. This bias is not accidental or arbitrary, but significant of the fact that religion, like morality, springs from the same motive as life itself, and makes towards the same goal of fruition and abundance. Life is essentially interest, and interest is essentially positive or provident; fear is incidental to hope, and hate to love. Man seeks to know the worst only in order that he may avoid or counterwork it in the furtherance of his interests. Religion is the result of man's search for support in the last extremity. This is true, even when men are largely preoccupied with the mere struggle for existence. It appears more and more plainly as life becomes aggressive, and is engaged in the constructive enterprise of civilization. Religion expresses man's highest hope of attainment, whether this be conceived as the efficacy of a fetich or the kingdom of God.

Such, then, are the general facts of religion, and the fundamental critical principles which justify and define its development. Religion is man's belief in salvation, his confident appeal to the overruling control of his ultimate fortunes. The reconstruction of religious belief is made necessary whenever it fails to express the last verified truth, cosmological or ethical. The {232} direction of religious development is thus a resultant of two forces: the optimistic bias, or the saving hope of life; and rational criticism, or the progressive revelation of the principles which define life and its environment.

I shall proceed now to the consideration of types of religion which illustrate this critical reconstruction. The types which I shall select represent certain forms of inadequacy which I think it important to distinguish. They are only roughly historical, as is necessarily the case, since all religions represent different types in the various stages of their development, and in the different interpretations which are put on them in any given time by various classes of believers. I shall consider in turn, using the terms in a manner to be precisely indicated as we proceed, superstition, tutelary religion, and two forms of philosophical religion, the one metaphysical idealism, and the other moral idealism.

III

Superstition is distinguished by a lack of organization both in man and his environment. It is a direct cross-relationship between an elementary interest, passion, or need, and some isolated and capricious natural power. The deity is externally related to the worshipper, having private interests of his own which the worshipper respects {233} only from motives of prudence. Religious observance takes the form of barter or propitiation—do ut des, do ut abeas. The method of superstition is arbitrary, furthermore, in that it is defined only by the liking or aversion of an unprincipled agency.

Let us consider briefly the type of superstition which is associated with the most primitive stage in the development of society.[8] The worshipper has neither raised nor answered the ethical question as to what is his greatest good. Indeed, he is much more concerned to meet the pressing needs of life than he is to co-ordinate them or understand to what they lead. He can not even be said to be actuated by the principle of rational self-interest. Like the brute, whose lot is similar to his own, he feels his wants severally, and is forced to meet them as they arise or be trampled under foot in the struggle for existence. There is little co-ordination of his interests beyond that which is provided for in the organic and social structure with which nature has endowed him. Over and above the instinct of self-preservation he recognizes in custom the principle of tribal or racial solidarity. But this is proof, not so much of a recognition of community of interest, as of the vagueness of his ideas concerning the boundaries of his own self-hood. The very fact that his interests are scattering and loosely knit prevents him from clearly {234} distinguishing his own. He readily identifies himself not only with his body, but with his clothing, his habitation, and various trinkets which have been accidentally associated with his life. It is only natural that he should similarly identify himself with those other beings like himself with whom he is connected by the bonds of blood and of intimate contact. Morally, then, primitive man is an indefinite and incoherent aggregate of interests which have not yet assumed the form even of individual and community purpose.

To turn to the second, or cosmological, component, we find that primitive man's conception of ultimate powers is like his conception of his own interests in being both indefinite and incoherent. In consequence of the daily vicissitudes of his fortune, he is well aware that he is affected for better or for worse by agencies which fall outside the more familiar routine operations of society and nature. So great is the disproportion between the calculable and the incalculable elements of his life that he is like a man crouching in the dark, expecting a blow from any quarter. The agencies whose working can be discounted in advance form his secular world; but this world is narrow and meagre, and is overshadowed by a beyond which is both mysterious and terrible. Of the world beyond he has no single comprehensive idea, but he acknowledges it in his {235} expectation of the injuries and benefits which he may at any time receive from it. It is an abyss whose depths he has never sounded, but which he is forced practically to recognize, since he is at the mercy of forces which emanate from it.

The method of primitive religion is the inevitable sequel. In behalf of the interests which represent him man must here, as ever, make the best terms he can with the powers which beset him. He has no concern with these powers except the desire to propitiate them. He has no knowledge of their working excepting as respects their bearing upon his interests. Obeying a law of human nature which is as valid now as then, he seeks for remedies whose proof is the cure which they effect. Let the association between a certain action on his own part and a favorable turn in the tide of fortune once be established, and the subsequent course of events will seem to confirm it. Coincidences are remembered and exceptions forgotten. Furthermore, his belief in the effectual working of the established plan is always justified by the difficulty of proving any other alternative plan to be better.

But, in order to understand superstition, it is not necessary to reconstruct the earliest period in the history of society, nor even to study contemporary savage life, for the superstitious intelligence and the superstitious method survive {236} in every stage of development. They appear, for example, in mediaeval Christianity; in Clovis's appeal to Christ on the battle-field: "Clotilda says that Thou art the Son of the living God, and that Thou dost give victory to those who put their trust in Thee. I have besought my gods, but they give me no aid. I see well that their strength is naught. I beseech Thee, and I will believe in Thee, only save me from the hands of mine enemies." The same period is represented by the petition attributed to St. Eloi, "Give, Lord, since we have given! Da, Domine, quia dedimus!" [9] In modern life the motive of superstition pervades almost all worship, appearing in sundry expectations of special favor to be gained by service or importunity.

The application of critical enlightenment to this type of religion has already been made with general consent. It is recognized that morally superstition represents the merely prudential level of life. It bespeaks a state of panic or a narrow regard for isolated needs and desires. Furthermore, it tends to emphasize these considerations and at the same time degrade the object of worship through claiming the attention of God in their behalf. The deity is conceived, not under the form of a broad and consecutive purpose, but under the form of a casual and desultory good-nature.

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But superstition has been corrected mainly by the advancement of scientific knowledge. Science has pronounced finally against the belief in localized or isolated natural processes. Whether the mechanical theory be accepted or not, its method is beyond question, in so far as it defines laws and brings all events and phenomena under their control. In the dealings of nature there can be no favoritism, no special dispensations, no bargaining over the counter.

IV

The correction of superstition brings us to our second type, which I have chosen to call tutelary religion. It is distinguished by the fact that life is organized into a definite purpose, which, although still narrow and partisan with reference to humanity at large, nevertheless embraces and subordinates the manifold desires of a community. The deity represents this purpose in the cosmos at large, and rallies the forces of nature to its support. He is no longer capricious, but is possessed of a character defined by systematic devotion to an end. His ways are the ways of effectiveness. Furthermore, since his aims are identical with those of his worshippers, he is now loved and served for himself. It follows that he will demand of his followers only conformity to those rules which define the realization of the {238} common aim, and that these rules will be enforced by the community as the conditions of its secular well-being. Ritual is no longer arbitrary, but is based on an enlightened knowledge of ways and means.

While this type of religion is clearly present in the most primitive tribal worship, it is best exemplified when a racial or national purpose manifests itself aggressively and self-consciously, as in the cases of ancient Assyria and Egypt. Here God is identified with the kingship, both being symbols of nationality. Among the Assyrians the national purpose was predominantly one of military aggrandizement. Istar communicates to Esar-haddon this promise of support: "Fear not, O Esar-haddon; the breath of inspiration which speaks to thee is spoken by me, and I conceal it not. . . . I am the mighty mistress, Istar of Arbela, who have put thine enemies to flight before thy feet. Where are the words which I speak unto thee, that thou hast not believed them? . . . I am Istar of Arbela; in front of thee and at thy side do I march. Fear not, thou art in the midst of those that can heal thee; I am in the midst of thy host." [10]

Egyptian nationality was identified rather with the principles of agriculture and political organization. The deity is the fertilizing Nile, or the judge of right conduct. There is recorded in {239} the Book of the Dead the pleading of a soul before Osiris, in which the commands of the god are thus identified with the conditions of national welfare:

I have not committed fraud and evil against men. I have not diverted justice in the judgment hall. I have not known meanness. I have not caused a man to do more than his day's work. I have not caused a slave to be ill treated by his overseer. I have not committed murder. I have not spoiled the bread of offering in the temple. I have not added to the weight of the balance. I have not taken milk from the mouths of children. I have not turned aside the water at the time of inundation. I have not cut off an arm of the river in its course.[11]

Similar illustrations might be drawn from the nationalistic phase of Hebraism. The same principle appears in mediaeval Christianity, and is thus embodied in the prologue of the Salic Law, "Long live the Christ, who loves the Franks." In more recent times one might point to the Christianity of the Puritan revolution, not wholly misrepresented by the maxim popularly attributed to Cromwell, "Put your trust in God and keep your powder dry," or in Poor Richard's observation that "God helps them that help themselves."

Such is the religion of nationalism, {240} sectarianism, of sustained but narrow purpose. I shall not attempt to formulate exhaustively the ideas through which this religion has been corrected. It is clear that its defect lies in its partisanship. All forms of partisanship yield slowly but inevitably to the higher conception of social solidarity. Such enlightenment reflects a recognition of community of interest, and a widening of sympathy through intercourse and acquaintance. Tutelary religion, in short, is corrected through the validity of the ethical principles of justice and good-will. The cosmological correction of this type of religion is due to the same enlightenment that discredits superstition, a knowledge, namely, of the systematic unity of the cosmos. The laws of nature are as indifferent to private purposes as they are to private desires, and whether these be personal or social in their scope. Furthermore, the universality of God is recognized in principle in the rules of worship. For a god of war or agriculture or politics can not be privately appropriated. If the observance of the principles proper to these institutions brings success to one, it brings success to all. In short, a god of nationality must be a god of all nations.

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V

The correction of tutelary religion brings us at length to a type which may be said to be formally enlightened. Both components of belief, the ethical and the cosmological, are universalized. I shall call this type, in its general form, philosophical religion, since it recognizes the unities which systematic reflection defines. It recognizes, on the one hand, the summing up of life in a universal ideal, and on the other hand, a summing up of the total environment in some scientifically formulated generalization. It affirms the priority of justice and good-will over party interest, and the determination of the world without reference to special privilege. Religion is now the issue between the good—the highest good, the good of all—and the undivided cosmos.

Within the limits of philosophical religion thus broadly defined there is yet provision for almost endless variety of belief. Religions may still differ in tradition, symbolism, and ritual. They may differ as moral codes and sentiments differ, and reflect all shades of opinion as this is determined by discovery and criticism.

But I propose to confine myself to a difference which is at once the most broad and fundamental, and the most clearly defined in contemporary controversy. This difference relates to neither {242} ethics nor cosmology exclusively, but to the religious judgment itself in which these two are united. How is the universe in its entirety to be construed with reference to the good? In both of the answers which I propose to consider it is claimed that goodness in some sense possesses the world. Hence both may be called idealisms. But in one of these answers, which I shall call metaphysical idealism, the cosmological motive receives the greater emphasis. The good is construed in terms of being; and, in order that it may be absolutely identified therewith, its original nature must, if necessary, be compromised. In the other, the moral motive predominates. It is held that goodness must not lose its meaning, even if it be necessary that its claims upon the cosmos should be somewhat abated.

Metaphysical idealism is the extreme form of the optimistic bias. It provides a moral individual with a sense of proprietorship in the universe; it justifies him in the belief that the moral victory has been won from all eternity. Goodness is held to be the very essence and condition of being.

Let me briefly state the inherent difficulty in this philosophy of religion. Being is judged to be identical with good. But the world of experience is not good; it must therefore be condemned as unreal. Of what, then, do goodness and being consist? If an empty formalism is {243} to be avoided, the all-good-and-all-real must be restored to the world of experience. But as the all-real it can not consistently be identified with only a part of that world; and if it be identified with the whole, its all-goodness contradicts the moral distinction within the world of experience, between good and evil. The theory is now confronted with the opposite danger, that of materialism, or moral promiscuousness. Let me illustrate this full swing of the pendulum from formalism to materialism by briefly summarizing certain well-known types of religious philosophy.

At the formalistic extreme stands the Buddhistic pessimism,[12] which rests on a recognition of the inevitable taint of this world, of the implication of evil in life. To avoid this taint, the all-real-and-all-good must be freed even from existence. It can be conceived and attained only by denial. Nirvana is at once the all-real, the all-good, and—in terms of the existent world—nothing.

Other-worldliness is the Christian modification of the Oriental philosophy of illusion. Heaven is a world beyond, to be exchanged for this. It is not constituted by the denial of this world, as is Nirvana, but access to it is conditioned by such denial. It is goodness and happiness hypostasized, and offered as compensation for martyrdom. But since every natural impulse and source {244} of satisfaction must be repudiated, it remains a purely formal conception, except in so far as the worldly imagination unlawfully prefigures it. Rigorously construed, it consists only in obedience, a willing of God's will, whatever that may be.

Mysticism,[13] which appears as a motive in all religions of this type, defines the all-real-and-all-good in terms of the consummation of a progression, certain intermediate stages of which constitute man's present activities. In Brahmanism, God is the perfect unity, which may be approximated by dwelling on identities and ignoring differences; in Platonism, God is the good-for-all, which may be approximated by dwelling exclusively upon the utilities and fitness of things. The absolute world still remains beyond this world and excludes it, although a hint of its actual nature may now be obtained. But there at once appears a formidable difficulty. So long as the absolute world is wholly separated from this world, and therefore purely formal, evil need not be imputed to it; but at the moment when it is conceived by completing and perfecting certain processes belonging to this world, it is committed to these processes with all their implications, and tends to be usurped by them. In other words, heaven, in so far as it obtains meaning, grows worldly.

In the conception which may be termed panlogism, {245} heaven is boldly removed to earth. It is identified with laws or other universals, that lie within the scope of human intelligence and control the course of nature. God is now immanent rather than transcendent; he has obtained a certain definable content. But the difficulty which has already appeared in mysticism now grows more formidable. How can it be said that a being that coincides with the known laws of nature works only good? Among the Stoics the attempt was made to conceive all necessities as somehow "beneficial," as somehow good in the commonly accepted sense of the term.[14] But even the Stoics found themselves compelled to abandon the common conception of goodness. And in Spinoza the motive of panlogism is clear and uncompromising.[15] God as the immanent order of the world is good only in that he is necessary—good only in so far as he satisfies the logical interest and enables the mind to understand. In panlogism, then, we find metaphysical idealism already compelled in behalf of its cardinal principle to deny the moral consciousness. But this is not all. For even were it to be admitted that mere system and order constitute the good, wholly without reference to their bearing on the concerns of life, the fact remains that even such a good does not fairly represent the character of this world. For experience conveys not only law, {246} but also irrelevance and chaos; not only harmony but also discord.

To meet this last difficulty, and at the same time better to provide for the complexity of human interests, metaphysical idealism finally assumes the aesthetic form. The absolute world, the all-real-and-all-good, is boldly construed in terms of the historical process itself, with all its concreteness and immediacy. Endless detail, contrast, and even contradiction may be brought under the form of aesthetic value. The very flux of experience, the very struggles and defeats of life, are not without their picturesqueness and dramatic quality. Upon this romantic love of tumult and privation is founded the last of all metaphysical idealisms.[16] A strange sequel to the doctrine of despair with which our brief survey began!

I can only recapitulate most briefly the characteristic limitations of an aesthetic idealism. First, in spite of the fact that aesthetic value may be extraordinarily comprehensive in its content, as a value it is none the less narrow and exclusive. For in order that experience may have aesthetic value, an aesthetic interest must be taken in it. And even were all experience to satisfy some such interest, this would in no wise provide for the endless variety of non-aesthetic interests that are also taken in it. Thus, were it to be proved that life on the whole is picturesque, this {247} would in no way affect the fact that it is also painful, stultifying, and otherwise abounding in evil.

But, even if it were to be granted that aesthetic value embraces and subordinates all other values, this higher value would still exist only where such an aesthetic interest was actually fulfilled. If it were assumed that the totality of the world is pleasing in the sight of God, this would in no way affect the fact that it is otherwise in the eyes of men. Those who furnish a spectacle which has dramatic value for an observer do not necessarily themselves share in that value. It is an incontrovertible fact that the aesthetic interests of men are actually defeated; and this whether or no some other aesthetic interest—that, for example, of a divine onlooker—is fulfilled.

But the radical defect of this aesthetic philosophy of religion lies in its absolute discrediting of moral distinctions. Optimism has so far overreached itself as to sacrifice the very meaning of goodness. In order that the ideal may possess the world, it has been reduced to the world. God is no more than a name for the unmitigated reality. Like Hardy's Spirit of the Years, he is the mere affirmation of things as they are:

"I view, not urge; nor more than mark What designate your titles Good and Ill. 'Tis not in me to feel with, or against, These flesh-hinged mannikins Its hand upwinds {248} To click-clack off Its preadjusted laws; But only through my centuries to behold Their aspects, and their movements, and their mould." [17]

Morally, there could be no more sinister interpretation of life. It offers itself as a philosophy of hope, promising the lover of good that his purpose shall be fulfilled, nay, that it is fulfilled from all eternity. But when the pledge is redeemed, it is found to stipulate that the good shall mean only life as it is already possessed. In other words, man is promised what he wants if he will agree to want what he has. This is worse than a sorry jest. It is a philosophy of moral dissolution, discrediting every downright judgment of good and evil, removing the grounds upon which is based every single-minded endeavor to purify and consummate life. John Davidson says: "Irony integrates good and evil, the constituents of the universe. It is that Beyond-Good-and-Evil which somebody clamoured for." [18] Irony is indeed the last refuge of that uncompromising optimism that equates goodness and being.

VI

But the bankruptcy of metaphysical idealism does not end the matter. There is another idealism in which religious faith both confirms moral endeavor and gives it the incentive of hope. This {249} idealism establishes itself upon an unequivocal acceptance of moral truth. It calls good good and evil evil, with all the finality which attaches to the human experience of these things, leaving no room for compromise. Its faith lies in the expectation that the world shall become good through the elimination of evil; it manifests itself in the resolution to hasten that time. God is loved for the enemies he has made. Evil is hated without reservation as none of his doing, and man is free to reverence the Lord his God with all his heart.

From the stand-point of moral idealism the universe resumes something of its pristine ruggedness and grandeur. If, as James says, "the world appears as something more epic than dramatic," the dignity of life is enhanced and not diminished on that account.[19] Life is not a spiritual exercise the results of which are discounted in advance; but is actually creative, fashioning and perfecting a good that has never been. And the moment evil is conceived as the necessary but diminishing complement to partial success, the sting of it is gone. Evil as a temporary and accidental necessity is tolerable; but not so an evil which is absolutely necessary, and which must be construed with some hypothetical divine satisfaction.

This in no way contradicts the fact that the {250} fullest life under present conditions involves contact with evil. Innocence must be tragic if it is not to be weak. Jesus without the cross would possess something of that quality of unreality which attaches to Aristotle's high-minded man. But this does not prove that life involves evil; it proves only that life will be narrow and complacent when it is out of touch with things as they are. Since evil is now real, he who altogether escapes it is ignorant and idle, taking no hand in the real work to be done. Not to feel pain when pain abounds, not to bear some share of the burden, is indeed cause for shame. In that remarkable allegory, "The Man Who Was Thursday," Chesterton has most vividly presented this truth. In the last confrontation, the real anarchist, the spokesman of Satan, accuses the friends of order of being happy, of having been protected from suffering. But the philosopher, who has hitherto been unable to understand the despair to which he and his companions have been driven, repels this slander.

'I see everything,' he cried, 'everything that there is. Why does each thing on the earth war against each other thing? Why does each small thing in the world have to fight against the world itself? . . . So that each thing that obeys law may have the glory and isolation of the anarchist. So that each man fighting for order may be as brave and good a man as the dynamiter. So that the real lie of Satan may be {251} flung back in the face of this blasphemer, so that by tears and torture we may earn the right to say to this man, "You lie!" No agonies can be too great to buy the right to say to this accuser, "We also have suffered."

'It is not true that we have never been broken. We have been broken upon the wheel. . . . We have descended into hell. We were complaining of unforgettable miseries even at the very moment when this man entered insolently to accuse us of happiness. I repel the slander; we have not been happy.'[20]

But the charge of happiness is to be repelled as a slander only because there are real sufferers in the world to make the charge. It is, after all, not happiness but insensibility which is the real disgrace. If the suffering is real, not to see it, not to feel it, not to heal it, is intolerable. To say, however, that suffering is wilfully caused in order that it may eventually contribute to an ultimate reconciliation, is to charge God with something worse than complacency. If life is a real tragedy it can be endured, and to enter into it will bring the deep satisfaction which every form of heroism affords. But if the tragedy of life be preconceived and wilfully perpetrated, it must be resented for the sake of self-respect. Even man possesses a dignity which is not consistent with puppetry and mock heroics.

Moral idealism means to interpret life consistently with ethical, scientific, and metaphysical truth. It endeavors to justify the maximum of {252} hope, without compromising or confusing any enlightened judgment of truth. In this it is, I think, not only consistent with the spirit of a liberal and rational age, but also with the primary motive of religion. There can be no religion with reservations, fearful of increasing light. No man can do the work of religion without an open and candid mind as well as an indomitable purpose.

I can not here elaborate the evidence upon which moral idealism is grounded; but it might be broadly classified as ethical, cosmological, and historical. The ethical ground of moral idealism is the virtual unity of life, the working therein of one eventual purpose sustained by the good-will of all moral beings. The cosmological proof lies in the moral fruitfulness and plasticity of nature. The historical proof lies in the fact of moral progress, in the advent and steady betterment of life.

VII

In conclusion I wish to revert to the topic of the generic proof of religion. We have defined the tests which any special religion must meet, and unless conformably to such tests it is possible to justify some form of idealism, it is clear that the full possibilities of religion as a source of strength and consolation must fail to be realized. But it may now be affirmed that there is a moral {253} value in religion which is independent of the cosmological considerations which prove or disprove a special religion. No scientific or metaphysical evidence can controvert the fact that man is engaged in an enterprise which comprehends all the actualities and possibilities of life, and that the success of this enterprise is conditioned, in the end, on the compliance of the universe. A summing up of the situation as involving these two factors is morally inevitable. Some solution of the problem, assimilated and enacted, in other words, some form of piety, is no more than the last stage of moral growth.

The value of religious belief, in this generic moral sense, consists in the enlargement of the circle of life. Man knows the best and the worst; he walks in the open, apprehending the world in its full sweep and just proportions. An inclusive view of the universe, whatever it may reveal, throws into relief the lot of man. Religion promulgates the idea of life as a whole, and composes and proportions its activities with reference to their ultimate end. Religion advocates not the virtues in their severalty, but the whole moral enterprise. With this it affiliates all the sundry activities of life, thus bringing both action and thought under the form of service of the ideal. At the same time it offers a supreme object for the passions, which are otherwise divided against {254} themselves, or vented upon unworthy and fantastical objects. Through being thus economized and guided, these moving energies may be brought to support moral endeavor and bear it with them in their current.

Piety carries with it also that sense of high resolve without which life must be haunted with a sense of ignominy. This is the immediate value of the good-will: the full deliverance of one's self to the cause of goodness. This value is independent of attainment. It is that doing of one's best, which is the least that one can do. Having sped one's action with good-will, one can only leave the outcome to the confluence and summing of like forces. But such service is blessed both in the eventualities and in a present harmony as well. The good of participation in the greatest and most worthy enterprise is proved in its lending fruitfulness, dignity, and momentousness to action; but also in its infusing the individual life with that ardor and tenderness which is called the love of humanity and of God, and which is the only form of happiness that fully measures up to the awakened moral consciousness.

Since religion emphasizes the unity of life and supplies it with meaning and dignity, it is the function of religion to kindle moral enthusiasm in society at large. Religion is responsible for the {255} prestige of morality. As an institution, it is the appointed guardian and medium of that supreme value which is hidden from the world; of that finality which, in the course of human affairs, is so easily lost to view and so infrequently proved. It is therefore the function of the religious leader to make men lovers, not of the parts, but of the whole of goodness. Embarrassed by their very plenitude of life, men require to have the good-will that is in them aroused and put in control. This, then, is the work of religion: to strike home to the moral nature itself, and to induce in men a keener and more vivid realization of their latent preference for the higher over the lower values. This office requires for its fulfilment a constructive moral imagination, a power to arouse and direct the contagious emotions, and the use of the means of personality and ritual for the creation of a sweetening and uplifting environment.

In culture and religion human life is brought to the elevation which is proper to it. They are both forms of discipline through which is inculcated that quality of magnanimity and service which is the mark of spiritual maturity. But while culture is essentially contemplative, far-seeing, sensitive, and tolerant, religion is more stirring and vital. Both are love of perfection, but culture is admiration; religion, concern. {256} "Not he that saith Lord, Lord, but he that doeth the will of his Father, shall be saved." In religion the old note of fear is always present. It is a perpetual watchfulness lest the work of life be undone, or lest a chance for the best be forfeited.



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NOTES

CHAPTER I

[1] Joseph Butler: Sermon VII, edited by Gladstone, p. 114. Cf. also Sermon X, on Self-Deceit.

[2] Nietsche: Beyond Good and Evil, translated by Helen Zimmern, p. 174.

[3] Edmund Burke: A Vindication of Natural Society, Preface, pp. 4, 5. (Boston, 1806.)

[4] The classic discussion of the whole matter is to be found in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Book I, Chapters I-VI, translated by J. E. C. Welldon. Cf. also Fr. Paulsen: System of Ethics, Book II, Chapters I, II, translated by Frank Thilly; G. H. Palmer: The Nature of Goodness, Chapters I, II; and W. James: The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life, in his Will to Believe.

[5] The issue is presented clearly and briefly in Paulsen: Op. cit., Book II, Chapter II, and in James's Principles of Psychology, Vol. II, pp. 549-559.

[6] Nietsche: Op. cit., p. 107.

[7] Huxley: Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays, pp. 81-82. The first two essays contained in this volume, the Prolegomena, and the Romanes Lecture, contain a very interesting study of the relation of morality to nature.

[8] Huxley: Op. cit., p. 13.

[9] G. K. Chesterton: Napoleon of Notting Hill, p. 291. The whole book is a brilliant satire, intended to show that all of the heroic sentiments and virtues depend on war and local pride.

[10] Nietsche: Op. cit., pp. 59, 163, 176, 223, 235, 237, 122.

[11] Chesterton: Heretics, and Orthodoxy.

[12] Plato: Protagoras, p. 322 (marginal pagination), and passim; translated by Jowett.

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CHAPTER II

[1] Locke: The Conduct of the Understanding, Bohn's Library Edition, Vol. I, p. 72; also, passim.

[2] Locke: Op. cit., p. 56.

[3] Descartes: Discourse on Method, translated by Veitch, pp. 13-14. Also, passim.

[4] Spinoza: The Improvement of the Understanding, translated by Elwes, Vol. II, p. 4.

[5] Cf. Plato's Republic, Books V-VII, passim.

[6] For further discussion of the meaning of duty, cf. Kant's Critical Examination of the Practical Reason, Book I, Chapter III, translated in Abbott's Kant's Theory of Ethics, p. 164; Bradley's Ethical Studies, Essays II and V; and Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics, Book I, Chapter III.

[7] Chesterton: Napoleon of Notting Hill, p. 162.

[8] G. E. Moore: Principia Ethica, Chapter III, Sect. 58-63.

[9] Locke: Op. cit., p. 29.

[10] There is an excellent account of the questions that lie on the border between ethics and jurisprudence in S. E. Mezes's Ethics, Descriptive and Explanatory, Chapter XIII.

[11] Kant: Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals, translated in Abbott's Kant's Theory of Ethics, p. 47.

[12] H. G. Lord: The Abuse of Abstraction in Ethics, in Essays Philosophical and Psychological in Honor of William James, pp. 376-377.

[13] John Davidson: A Rosary, pp. 77, 82.

[14] Maurice Maeterlinck: The Measure of the Hours, translated by A. T. de Mattos, p. 151. The essay in this volume, entitled "Our Anxious Morality," charges rationalism with destroying the romantic and mystical element in life.

CHAPTER III

[1] A good discussion of the several virtues will be found in Paulsen: Op. cit., Book III.

[2] W. H. S. Jones: Greek Morality, p. 50.

[3] Jeremy Taylor: Rules and Exercises of Holy Living, edited by Ezra Abbot, p. 73.

[4] Jones: Op. cit., p. 124.

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[5] Count Baldesar Castiglione: The Book of the Courtier, translated by Opdycke, p. 250.

[6] Cf. Hobbes: Leviathan, Chapters XIII, XIV, XV. In Hobbes's account, morality is reduced wholly to the prudential economy.

[7] H. G. Wells: First and Last Things, p. 82.

[8] Castiglione: Op. cit., p. 257.

[9] Burke: Op. cit., p. 8.

[10] Epictetus: Discourses, Book III, Chapter XXII, translated by Long, Vol. II, pp. 82, 83.

[11] Taylor: Op. cit., p. 7.

[12] Epictetus: Op. cit., Book II, Chapter XXI, translated by Long, Vol. I, p. 229.

[13] Cf. Hegel: Philosophy of Right, Third Part, Third Section, translated by S. W. Dyde; and Philosophy of History, Introduction, translated by J. Sibree.

[14] Cf. Plato's Republic, passim, but especially Book IV. Plato makes the state analogous to the individual organism, requiring baser classes that shall permanently supply its lower functions, as well as classes that shall supply its higher functions and so participate in its full benefits.

[15] Aristotle: Politics, Book II, Chapter V, translated by Jowett, p. 35. Cf. also Chapter II.

[16] Epictetus: Op. cit., Book II, Chapter XV, translated by Long, Vol. I, p. 189.

[17] Sophocles: Antigone, translated by G. H. Palmer, pp. 61, 62.

[18] Munro and Sellery: Medieval Civilization, pp. 349-350.

[19] Castiglione: Op. cit., p. 261.

[20] Quoted from Diog. Laert. by Jones, Op. cit., p. 69. For a full account, cf. Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Books VIII and IX, translated by Welldon, pp. 245-314.

[21] Walter Bagehot: Physics and Politics, No. V, in the edition of the International Scientific Series, pp. 165-166. Cf. this chapter passim.

[22] Matthew Arnold: Culture and Anarchy, p. 100.

[23] Quoted by Jones: Op. cit., p. 128.

[24] Ibid.

[25] Arnold: Op. cit., pp. 25-26. Cf. passim.

[26] Euripides: Medea, translated by Gilbert Murray, pp. 67-68.

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[27] Cf., e. g., Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book X. Also J. A. Farrer's Paganism and Christianity, passim; and Paulsen, op. cit., Book I, Chapters I-III.

[28] Sir Thomas Browne; Religio Medici, edited by J. M. Dent & Co., p. 97.

[29] W. James: Pragmatism, p. 230.

[30] Browne: Op. cit., pp. 118-119.

[31] Ibid., p. 110.

[32] Castiglione: Op. cit., pp. 304-305.

CHAPTER IV

[1] The nearest approach to such a philosophy of history is George Santayana's Life of Reason. The reader will find it the best book of reference for this and the following chapter. Cf. also, Samuel Alexander's Moral Order and Progress.

[2] Bagehot: Op. cit., No. VI, pp. 208-209.

[3] Ibid., p. 161.

[4] Nietsche: Op. cit., pp. 65-66.

[5] For a general ethical discussion of the function of government, cf. Santayana: Reason in Society, Chapters III-VIII.

[6] Sophocles: Antigone, translated by Palmer, pp. 60, 63-64.

[7] 1 Samuel, Chapter VIII.

[8] Quoted in Taine's Philosophy of Art in Greece, translated by J. Durand, p. 130.

[9] Thucydides: Peloponnesian War, Book II, Chapters 37-40, translated by Jowett, pp. 117-119.

[10] Plato: Republic, Book IV, p. 433, translated by Jowett.

[11] Burke: Op. cit., p. 43.

[12] For a brief statement of the elements of political science in their application to modern institutions, cf. E. Jenks: A History of Politics.

[12] Arnold: The Future of Liberalism, in the volume, Mixed Essays, Irish Essays and Others, p. 383. Cf. also the admirable essay on Democracy in the same volume.

[14] Plato: Republic, Book I, p. 335, translated by Jowett.

[15] Wells: Op. cit., pp. 130-131.

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CHAPTER V

[1] A good account of the meaning of art is to be found in Santayana's Reason in Art, Chapters I-III.

[2] For this whole topic of the aesthetic interest, cf. H. R. Marshall's Pleasure, Pain, and Aesthetics.

[3] For an interpretation of painting in terms of the perceptual process, cf. B. Berenson's Florentine Painters of the Renaissance, pp. 1-16; and North Italian Painters of the Renaissance, pp. 145-157.

[4] The best account of the emotions and instincts is to be found in James's Principles of Psychology, Vol. II, Chapters XXIV, XXV.

[5] Walter Pater: The Renaissance, p. 140.

[6] Taine: Op. cit., pp. 112, 114-115, and passim.

[7] Pater: Op. cit., pp. 129-130; cf. the chapter on Leonardo da Vinci, entire.

[8] Plato: Republic, Book III, p. 398, translated by Jowett. The whole of Books III and X are interesting in this connection.

[9] In connection with the general topic of the moral criticism of art, cf. Santayana's Reason in Art, Chapters IX-XI; also Ruskin's Lectures on Art, Lectures II-IV.