experience has been one-sided--one-or-other-sided instead of two-sided.
The intellectually-inclined, the theologians, frame more or less
adequate ideas of external reality, but fail in the majority of cases
to set their own house in order, to organize the inner reality to react
with the outer; they have theory without practice, are Dry-as-dusts.
On the other hand, the emotionally-minded who are gifted besides
with organizing and intuitive power, the mystics--they build up
their own souls into a desired and lovely edifice, in which too they
have constructed a spiritual machinery capable of viewing external
realities on a new plane, under a more highly synthesized aspect; but
they neglect the precise analysis of that outer reality, and so can
only speak in the barest symbols and metaphors, and cannot put their
hard-won knowledge into a form available for others. They have that
non-communicable skill which is that of the craftsman alone as opposed
to the craftsman who is also in some degree a scientist. We know good
mysticism from bad, as we know good art from bad--as definitely and
as personally. And we are sure that good mysticism, like good art, is
somehow of supreme, transcendent importance; but almost always it has
remained like a purely symbolic art, not having for others the value
which it should have or did have for the mystic himself, because not
properly enchained, as the French say, with stern and immutable fact.
And of the theologian we feel that he gives us the grammar, not the
spirit, that he does not help us toward the supremely important act of
experiencing, but only to understanding experience if we chance to have
had it.
One word on the problem of transcendence. The mystic will tell us that
transcendence is a hall-mark of religion at its highest. His mode of
experience transcends normal experience; things of everyday life become
surcharged with new, transcendent values; he has transcended from a
plane of disharmony to one of harmony. But the mystic is not alone in
this. Familiar examples are best examples: and the transcendence of
the lover’s experience is so familiar that all mankind is divided into
those who have it, those who long for it, and those who laugh at it.
But the great philosopher too must mediate between the transcendent and
mankind, and the true artist also, and the moralist worthy of the name.
What goes under this technical name of transcendence, therefore, is the
product of some special psychological mechanism which may be at work
in the most diverse spheres. It we wish to substitute one technical
phrase for another, we can say that it consists in the successful
attachment of what we have called absolute value to some human
activity, so as to make it for the time at least unitary, dominant, and
all-embracing. But psychologically speaking the genesis of “absolute
values” depends upon the generalizing of particular values; the raising
of them to the highest possible pitch; and the putting of them and
the rest of the mental organization into a relation in which they are
permanently or temporarily the dominating head and front, and are
connected with and gain strength and support from all the rest of the
mind.
The problem of transcendence, in other words, is not one of divine
inspiration, of wholly mysterious experience, but one special case of
the problem of sublimation; and as such it is to be investigated by
psychological science, to be understood, to be democratized, to be made
more available to all who wish for it.
The most ardent enemies of traditional religion have often professed
the most transcendental type of morality. Some men are pragmatic
and utilitarian in regard to Truth; by others she is worshipped as
fanatically as any goddess. So some men deliberately make _mariages
de convenance_; to others, the transcendence of their love is such
that they precipitate themselves into what can only be described as
_mariages d’inconvenance_.
I have dilated upon this at some length, because those whom we may
call the religious writers on religion so often lay such stress on this
question of transcendence and its special value and importance. But you
do not--in the long run at least--make a thing more important by giving
it an imposing title; you only give it a false exclusiveness.
Transcendence is the experimental side of what we have been describing
all along: it is the finding of unity in diversity, the synthesis
of discord in harmony and in especial the finding of something of
supreme value (and therefore dominant) which can be linked up with the
whole extent of our mental being. Transcendence in religion differs
from transcendence in art or love only in its objects. In love the
discrepancy between the object and the ideal values hung round it is
often so glaring as to provoke laughter from cynics, compassion from
the rest. In art, the operations by which an artist turns a collection
of mean and commonplace objects into a beautiful and single whole,
a poet invests failure and death with authentic tragedy, or drags
every-day to a seat in eternity, are just as transcendent as that by
which the mystic converts the relation between the warring passions
of his soul and the infinite catalogue of differences which he finds
around him into what he can only speak of as a divine communion,
all-satisfying in itself, all-important for the conduct of his life.
Science can here help religion by analysing and interpreting phenomena
such as transcendence, paring the false from the true, cutting down
false claims, substituting the hopefulness of natural causation for
the illogical vagaries of supernaturalism and incommunicability.
* * * * * * *
I may perhaps be allowed to close with a few more practical aspects of
the problem.
Many religious ideas and practices, as man’s thought clarified
itself, have proved to be unserviceable, and have been thrown on the
lumber-heap, or left only with the losers in the race. It is impossible
for any educated man nowadays to believe in the efficacy of magic,
or of animal sacrifice; to accept the first chapter of Genesis as
literally true; or to believe that God has human parts and passions.
But there was a time when all these could be, and were, believed.
The time is obviously coming when a great many other ideas must be cast
aside in favour of new ones. If you have followed me, you will agree
that it is impossible for me and those who think like me to believe in
God as a person, a ruler, to continue to speak of God as a spiritual
_Being_ in the ordinary way. Consequently, although the value of prayer
persists in so far as it is meditative and a self-purification of
the mind, yet its commonly accepted petitive value must fall to the
ground;[52] so must all idea of miracle and of direct inspiration;
so must all that is involved in the ordinary materialist ideas of
ritual, self-denial, and worship as merely propitiation or “acceptable
incense”; so must all the externally-projected parts of the ideas
concerning the ordaining of special priests; so must all notion of
our having a complete, peculiar, or absolute knowledge of God, or of
there being a divinely-appointed rule of conduct or a divinely-revealed
belief.
On such matters, most advanced thinkers have been long in general
agreement. But there is one very important point which, so far as I
know, has been very little touched upon--chiefly, I think, because such
radical thinkers have been for the most part destructive, and so have
not envisaged this particular side of the question.
I hope I have been able to convince you that the scientific manner of
thinking can lay the foundation for something constructive in religion:
this great problem, however, remains: what sort of form or organization
shall any such new-moulded religion take on itself?
We have just decided that fixed and rigid dogma is impossible, and that
completeness is out of the question. Yet humanity craves for certainty
and is not content to leave any factor out of the scheme of things.
To this we answer that it is here that real faith enters. We cannot
know the absolute, nor have we discovered a goal for our efforts. But
we have discovered a unity embracing all that we know, and a direction
starting at the first moment to which our reconstructive thought can
penetrate, continuing till to-day, and showing an acceleration of
speed on which we may raise our hopes for the future.
We do not know all. For instance, I have studiously avoided ever
mentioning the word _immortality_, since I believe that Science cannot
yet profitably discuss that question. But the discovery of unity in all
that has so far been studied gives us reasonable faith that its wings
will reach out to cover all that we shall still be enabled to learn,
while the unbroken continuity of evolutionary direction gives us the
same sort of right to believe that it will continue to-morrow and on
into time as we have to believe that apples will continue to fall to
the earth.
The study of evolution may give us a further help. We have seen how the
final steps of the highest forms of animals have been in the direction
of plasticity of organization: we see it in the rise of man from
mammals, in higher as against more primitive levels of human culture,
in great men as against ordinary men. There can be no doubt that its
acquisition constitutes a step in evolutionary progress. Plasticity is
needed in any new religion. And plasticity means tolerance, means the
reduction of fixity of ritual, of convention, of dogma, of clericalism.
It is clear that, as complexity increases, need will be felt for a
finer adjustment of satisfaction to mood, a more delicate adaptation of
religion to the individual. A few types of ceremony satisfied primitive
races: an elaborate system, fixed in essence, fluctuating in detail,
has grown up in modern Christianity. But the more complex the mind,
the less does it like to have to “wait till Sunday”--the less is it
satisfied with the solely biblical point of view, or the literary and
musical level of Hymns A. and M.
The less also is it satisfied with the mediation of a priest.
Priest (or Priest-King) is sole mediator in most savage tribes: his
mediation is enormously important in the Roman Catholic Church: less
so in Protestant Churches: until with the progressive raising of the
spiritual and cultural level, it is perhaps possible that he may become
an obstacle instead of a help. Mediators there must always be. They are
the great ones--prophets and poets, heroes, philosophers, musicians,
artists, and all who discover or interpret or display what for the
ordinary man is hidden or difficult or rare. They mediate between the
utmost attainable by man and man in the lump. As Hegel says of one
group of these mediators, the artists, it is the function of their
art to deliver to the domain of feeling and delight of vision all
that the mind may possess of essential and transcendent Being. But,
with the spread of invention and the change of civilization, their
mediations are becoming more and more readily accessible to all. I
can get, on the whole, more satisfactory mediation from three or four
feet of properly filled bookshelf than from a dozen priests. Milton
will give me doctrine if I want it, but stupendously: Wordsworth will
reveal nature: Shakespeare the hearts of men: Blake can put men into
a mystical, Shelley into an intellectual ecstasy, while Keats and a
dozen others can open universal doors of beauty. What is more, if I
have had the mediation of wise parents and good teachers, or to be so
fortunate as to be enthusiastic, I find that in many things I can be
my own mediator, in the same way as the Protestant found that he could
read his Bible and eat the holy bread and wine for himself as well or
better than the priest could do it for him.
Whatever we may say or like, it is an obvious fact that much of what
is essential in religious experience, which in a simpler society was
only attainable in prayer and sacrifice, communal ceremony or ritual
worship, is now attainable to an increasing degree through literature,
music, drama, art, and is, again, as a matter of fact, so attained by
an increasing number of people who do not profess a creed or belong
to a church. So that, as regards the personal, individual side of
religion, many of the functions of Churches will inevitably be better
performed through direct contact between the individual and the
mediator--philosopher, poet, artist, or whatever he be--who provides
the experience.
There remains public worship and community-religion. It is clear that
whereas a Church in the Middle Ages was not only Church but also Museum
of curiosities, Art-gallery and Theatre, and in large measure also took
the place of our press and public libraries, now it is none of these
things. There is now less reason for public worship, fewer functions
for it to perform. On the other hand a religion is essentially in one
aspect social, and not only does the unity of nature demand a unity of
religion, but such unity of religion would be of the highest importance
as a bond of civilization and a guarantee of the federalist as against
the solely nationalist ideal. Moreover, to many types of mind, and to
almost all men in certain circumstances, the partaking in a public
religious ceremony in common with others is of real importance. It is
safe to say, therefore, that these ceremonies will continue, however
much modified, and that for them a mediator or priest, even if but
temporarily acting as such, will be needed. The problem is largely
that of combining in public worship the religious effectiveness of the
simple, the hallowed, and the universally familiar--such as inheres in
many of the prayers, psalms, and hymns of the Church to-day--with the
spontaneity and immediacy which, for instance, are to be found at a
devotional meeting of the Society of Friends.
In any case, the new intellectual premisses once granted, the
limitations imposed on human mind once understood, the important thing
is to give a greater vigour and reality to religious experience itself,
whether personal and private or social and public. It is just here that
Science may help, where knowledge may be power. Atonement, conversion,
sense of grace, ecstasy, prayer, sacrifice--the meaning and value of
these and of other religious acts and experiences can be put on a
proper psychological basis, they can be shorn of excrescences, and
their practice take its place in normal spiritual development. That
is of the essence of any religion rooted in scientific ideas--that
comprehension should make practice easier and better worth while.
I am only too painfully aware of the omissions which such a cursory
treatment of the subject inevitably involves. I have given you, I know,
little but dry bones; but bones are the framework necessary before
impatient life can animate a new form. If Science can construct that
form, the emotions and hopes and energies of humanity will vivify and
clothe it. It is with the aid of such intellectual scaffolding that the
common mind of humanity in the future, inevitably rooted in scientific
conceptions as it will be, must try to raise that much-desired
building, a religion common to all.
In any case, I shall be more than content if I have been able to
persuade you first that the term God, just as much as the terms
Energy, say, or Justice, has a real meaning and scientifically-based
sense. Second, that the idea of God has and will continue to have an
important biological function in man as denoting an idea, organized
in a particular way, of the whole of the reality with which he is
in contact. Thirdly, that the physical and biological sciences, in
discovering the unity of matter and energy, and the direction operating
in cosmic evolution, have provided a real basis for what up till now
have been only theological speculations. Fourthly, that psychological
science, in revealing some of the mechanism of mind, is helping us to
appreciate the value of so-called mystical experience, is laying a
foundation for the proper spiritual training and development of human
mind, and shows us how the idea of God may be efficacious as a dominant
idea in the all-important process of sublimation. And finally that,
since the scientific mode of thought is of general and not merely local
or temporary validity, to build a religion on its basis is to make it
possible for that religion to acquire a stability, a universality, and
a practical value hitherto unattained.
We are yet at the very beginning of that task, but I cannot close
better than by reminding you of another biological fact of importance,
that from all analogy the human species is yet near the beginning of
its evolutionary career, and that man has before him vast tracts of
time to set against the vastness of his tasks.
A chapter in the history of Earth closed with the appearance of Man.
In man, the _Weltstoff_ had been made able to think and feel, to love
beauty and truth--the cosmos had generated soul. A new chapter then
began, a chapter in which we all are characters. Matter had flowered in
soul. Soul has now to mould matter.
That moulding of matter by spirit is, under one aspect, Science; under
another, Art; under still another, Religion. Let us be careful not to
allow the moulding forces to counteract each other when they might be
made to co-operate.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Arnold, M., ’73, ’75. “Literature and Dogma”; and “God and the
Bible.” London, 1873 and 1875.
Baudouin, C., ’20. “Suggestion and Auto-Suggestion.” London, 1920.
Bergson, H., ’11. “Creative Evolution.” London, 1911.
Boutroux, E., ’12. “Science and Religion in Contemporary
Philosophy.” London, 1912.
Brown, W., ’22. “Psychology and Psychotherapy.” London, 1922.
Buckland, ’37. “Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference
to Natural Theology.” London, 1837.
Crawley, ’02. “The Mystic Rose.” London, 1902.
Danysz, J., ’21. “La Genèse de l’Energie Psychique.” Paris, 1921.
Flaubert, G. “La Tentation de St. Antoine.”
Frazer, J. “The Golden Bough.” 3 vols.
Freud, S., ’13. “The Interpretation of Dreams.” London, 1913. ’14.
“Psychopathology of Everyday Life.” London, 1914.
Haldane, J. S., ’21. “Mechanism, Life, and Personality.” London,
1921.
Harrison, Jane, ’09. “The Influence of Darwin on the Study of
Religions.” In Seward, ’09, q. v.
Huxley, T. H. “Evolution and Ethics. Collected Essays.” Vol. 9.
London, 1906.
James, W., ’02. “Varieties of Religious Experience.” London, 1902.
---- ---- ’09. “A Pluralistic Universe.” London, 1909.
Jevons, ’10. “The Idea of God in Early Religions.” Cambridge,
1910.
Johnstone, J., ’21. “The Mechanism of Life.” London, 1921.
Jung, C. G., ’18 and ’20. “Psychology of the Unconscious.” London,
1918; “Analytical Psychology.” London, 1920.
Lloyd-Morgan, ’23. “Emergent Evolution.” London, 1923.
Lull, R. S., ’17. “Organic Evolution.” New York, 1917.
M’Dougall, W., ’16. “Social Psychology” (10th Ed.). London, 1916.
Nicoll, ’20. _In_ “Functional Nerve Disease” (Ed. H. Crichton
Miller). Oxford, 1920.
Prince, M., ’06. “The Dissociation of a Personality.” New York,
1906.
---- ---- ’16. “The Unconscious.” New York, 1916.
Reinach, S., ’09. “Orpheus; a General History of Religions.”
London, 1909.
Rivers, W. H., ’20. “Instinct and the Unconscious.” Cambridge,
1920.
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of Social Reconstruction.” London, 1917.
Seward, A. C. (ed.), ’09. “Darwin and Modern Science.” Cambridge,
1909.
Thouless, ’23. “Introduction to the Psychology of Religion.”
Cambridge, 1923.
Trotter, W., ’19. “Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War” (2nd
Ed.). London, 1919.
Turner, A. C, ’16. _In_ “Concerning Prayer.” By the author of “Pro
Christo et Ecclesia” and Others. London, 1916.
Underhill, E., ’20. “Essentials of Mysticism.” London, 1920.
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FOOTNOTES:
[44] W. James, ’09, p. 21.
[45] See Danysz, ’21.
[46] See Danysz, ’21.
[47] See Haldane, ’21; Thouless, ’23.
[48] A confusion of thought easily arises here. It may be absolutely
true that 2 and 2 make 4; we may be absolutely right in certain cases
to tell a lie; or may find an expression of absolute beauty in some one
lovely thing. But we may grow to find that same thing aesthetically
unsatisfying; we can imagine a state of society in which it would never
be right to lie; while our correct knowledge of elementary arithmetic
is something very partial and incomplete considered in relation to
mathematical truth as a whole.
[49] It is interesting to note that a scientific treatment of the
problem may force an author almost unwittingly to similar conclusions.
For instance, in Jevons’ book (’10) the term “God” hardly occurs at
all, whereas the phrase “the idea of God” is to be found on nearly
every page. If, as we are urging, God as efficient agent in the world
and as reality in contact with human beings _is_ outer world organized
as idea, the reason for such periphrasis at once appears.
[50] See Prince, ’06 and ’16; Freud, ’22; Jung, ’19; Rivers, ’20;
Brown, ’22.
[51] See Trotter, ’19.
[52] See Turner, ’16.
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