In this lecture I propose to consider the question whether morality is
based on religion or religion on morality. It is a question which may
be approached from the point of view either of philosophy or of
history. Quite recently it has been treated from the former point of
view by Professor Hoeffding in _The Philosophy of Religion_ (translated
into English, 1906); and from the point of view of the history of
morality by Mr. Hobhouse in his _Morals in Evolution_ (1906). It may,
of course, also be quite properly approached from the point of view of
the history of religion; and from whatever standpoint it is treated,
the question is one of importance for the missionary, both because of
its intrinsic interest for the philosophy of religion, and because its
discussion is apt to proceed on a mistaken view of facts in the history
of religion. About those facts and their meaning, the missionary, who
is to be properly equipped for his work, should be in no doubt: a right
view and a proper estimate of the facts are essential both for {212}
his practical work and for the theoretical justification of his
position.
One answer to the question before us is that morality is the basal
fact--the bottom fact: if we regard the question historically, we shall
find that morality came first and religion afterwards; and, even if
that were not so, we should find that as a matter of logic and
philosophy religion presupposes morality--religion may, for a time, be
the lever that moves the world, but it would be powerless if it had not
a fulcrum, and that fulcrum is morality. So long and so far as
religion operates beneficially on the world, it does so simply because
it supports and reenforces morality. But the time is not far distant,
and may even now be come, when morality no longer requires any support
from religion--and then religion becomes useless, nay! an encumbrance
which must either fall off or be lopped off. If, therefore, morality
can stand by itself, and all along has not merely stood by itself, but
has really upheld religion, in what is morality rooted? The answer is
that morality has its roots, not in the command that thou shalt love
the Lord thy God with all thy heart and all thy soul, but in human
solidarity, in humanity regarded as a spiritual whole. To {213} this
conclusion, it is said, the history of recent philosophy has steadily
been moving. If the movement had taken place in only one school of
philosophic thought, it might have been a movement running into a
side-track. But it is the direction taken by schools so different in
their presuppositions and their methods as that of Hegel and that of
Comte; and it is the undesigned coincidence of their tendency, which at
first could never have been surmised, that carries with it a conviction
of its correctness. Human solidarity, humanity regarded as a spiritual
whole, may be called, as Hegel calls it, self-conscious spirit; or you
may call it, as Comte calls it, the Mind of Humanity--it is but the
collective wisdom "of a common humanity with a common aim"; and, that
being so, morality is rooted, not in the will and the love of a
beneficent and omnipotent Providence, but in the self-realising spirit
in man setting up its "common aim" at morality. The very conception of
a beneficent and omnipotent God--having now done its work as an aid to
morality--must now be put aside, because it stands in the way of our
recognising what is the real spiritual whole, besides which there is
none other spirit, viz. the self-realising spirit in man. That spirit
is only realising; it is not yet {214} realised. It is in process of
realisation; and the conception of it, as in process of realisation,
enables it to be brought into harmony, or rather reveals its inner
harmony, with the notion of evolution. There is nothing outside
evolution, no being to whom evolution is presented as a spectacle or by
whom, as a process, it is directed. "Being itself," as Hoeffding says
(_Problems of Philosophy_, p. 136), "is to be conceived as in process
of becoming, of evolution." The spirit in man, as we have just said,
is the real spiritual whole, and it is self-realising; it is evolving
and progressing both morally and rationally. In Hoeffding's words
"Being itself becomes more rational than before" (_ib._, p. 137).
"Being itself is not ready-made but still incomplete, and rather to be
conceived as a continual becoming, like the individual personality and
like knowledge" (_ib._, p. 120). We may say, then, that being is
becoming rationalised and moralised as and because the spirit in man
realises itself. For a time the process of moralisation and
self-realisation was worked by and through the conception of a
beneficent and omnipotent god. That conception was, it would seem, a
hypothesis, valuable as long it was a working hypothesis, but to be
cast aside now that humanitarianism is found {215} more adequate to the
facts and more in harmony with the consistent application of the theory
of evolution. We have, then, to consider whether it is adequate to the
facts, whether, when we regard the facts of the history of religion, we
do find that morality comes first and religion later.
"What," Mr. Hobhouse enquires in his _Morals in Evolution_ (II, 74),
"What is the ethical character of early religion?" and his reply is
that "in the first stage we find that spirits, as such, are not
concerned with morality." That was also the answer which had
previously been given by Professor Hoeffding, who says in his
_Philosophy of Religion_: "in the lowest forms of it ... religion
cannot be said to have any ethical significance" (p. 323). Originally,
the gods were "purely natural forces which could be defied or evaded,"
though eventually they "became ethical powers whom men neither could
nor wished to defy" (p. 324). This first stage of early religion seems
on the terms of the hypothesis to be supposed to be found in the period
of animism and fetichism; and "the primitive conception of spirit" is,
Mr. Hobhouse says (II, 16), of something "feeling and thinking like a
rather stupid man, and open like him to supplication, exhortation, or
intimidation." If {216} that is so, then Professor Hoeffding may be
justified in saying that in the lowest forms of religion "the gods
appear as powers on which man is dependent, but not as patterns of
conduct or administrators of an ethical world order" (p. 324). Now, in
the period termed animistic because inanimate things are supposed to be
animated and actuated by spirits, it may be that many or most of such
spirits are supposed to feel and think like a rather stupid man, and
therefore to be capable of being cajoled, deluded, intimidated, and
castigated by the human being who desires to make use of them. But it
is not all such spirits that are worshipped then. Indeed, it is
impossible, Mr. Hobhouse says (II, 15), that any such spirit could be
"an object of worship in our sense of the term." Worship implies the
superiority of the object worshipped to the person worshipping. But,
though not an object of worship in our sense of the term, the spirit
that could be deluded, intimidated, and castigated was, according to
Mr. Hobhouse, "the object of a religious cult" on the part of the man
who believed that he could and did intimidate and castigate the spirit.
Probably, however, most students of the science of religion would agree
that a cult which included or {217} allowed intimidation and
castigation of the object of the cult was as little entitled to be
termed religious as it is to be called worship. In the period of
animism, then, either there was no religious cult, no worship in our
sense of the term; or, if there was religion, then the spirit
worshipped was worshipped as a being higher than man. Whether man has
at any time been without religion is a question on which there is here
no need to enter. The allegation we are now considering is that
whenever religion does appear, then in its first and earliest stage it
is not concerned with morality; and the ground for that allegation is
that the spirits of the animistic period have nothing to do with
morality or conduct. Now, it may be that these spirits which animate
inanimate things are not concerned with morality; but then neither are
they worshipped, nor is the relation between them and man religious.
Religion implies a god; and a spirit to be a god must have worshippers,
a community of worshippers--whether that community be a nation, a
tribe, or a family. Further, it is as the protector of the interests
of that community--however small--that the god is worshipped by the
community. The indispensable condition of religion is the existence of
a community; {218} and from the beginning man must have lived in some
sort of community,--whether a family or a horde,--for the period of
helpless infancy is so long in the case of human beings that without
some sort of permanent community the race could not be perpetuated.
The indispensable condition of religion, therefore, has always existed
from the time when man was man. Further, whatever the form of
community in which man originally dwelt, it was only in the community
and by means of the community that the individual could exist--that is
to say, if the interest of any one individual conflicted or was
supposed to conflict with the interests of the community, then the
interests of the community must prevail, if the community was to exist.
Here, then, from the beginning we have the second condition
indispensable for the existence of religion, viz. the possibility that
the conduct of some member of the community might not be the conduct
required by the interests or supposed interests of the community, and
prescribed by the custom of the community. In the case of such
divergence of interests and conduct, the being worshipped by the
community was necessarily, as being the god of the community, and
receiving the worship of the community, on the side {219} of the
community and against the member who violated the custom of the
community. But, at this period in the history of humanity, the
morality of the community was the custom of the community; and the god
of the community from the first necessarily upheld the custom, that is,
the morality of the community. Spirits "as such," that is to say,
spirits which animated inanimate things but which were not the
protectors of any human community, were, for the very reason that they
were not the gods of any community, "not concerned with morality."
Spirits, however, which were the protectors of a community necessarily
upheld the customs and therefore the morality of the community; they
were not "without ethical significance." It was an essential part of
the very conception of such spirits--of spirits standing in this
relation to the community--that they were "ethical powers." Hoeffding's
dictum that "the gods appear as powers on which man is dependent, but
not as patterns of conduct or administrators of an ethical world order"
(p. 323), overlooks the fact that in the earliest times not only are
gods powers on which man is dependent, but powers which enforce the
conduct required by the custom of the community and sanction the
ethical order as {220} far as it has then been revealed. The fact that
"the worship of the family, of the clan, or of the nation is shared in
by all," not merely "helps to nourish a feeling of solidarity which may
acquire ethical significance," as Hoeffding says (p. 325), it creates a
solidarity which otherwise would not exist. If there were no worship
shared in by all, there would be no religious solidarity; and, judging
from the very general, if not universal, occurrence of religion in the
lowest races as well as the highest, we may conjecture that without
religious solidarity a tribe found it hard or impossible to survive in
the struggle for existence. That religious solidarity however is not,
as Hoeffding suggests, something which may eventually "acquire ethical
significance"; it is in its essence and from the beginning the worship
of a god who punishes the community for the ethical transgression of
its members, because they are not merely violations of the custom of
the community, but offences against him. When Hoeffding says (p. 328)
"religious faith ... assumes an independent human ethic, which has, as
a matter of fact, developed historically under the practical influence
of the ethical feeling of man," he seems to overlook the fact that as a
matter of history human {221} ethics have always been based--rightly or
wrongly--on religious faith, that moral transgressions have always been
regarded as not merely wrongs done to a man's neighbour, but also as
offences against the god or gods of the community, that the person
suffering from foul wrong for which he can get no human redress has
always appealed from man to God, and that the remorse of the wrong-doer
who has evaded human punishment has always taken shape in the fear of
what God may yet do.
Those who desire to prove that at the present day morality can exist
apart from religion, and that in the future it will do so, finding its
basis in humanitarianism and not in religion, are moved to show that as
a matter of historic fact religion and morality have been things apart.
We have examined the assertion that religion in its lowest forms is not
concerned with morality; and we have attempted to show that the god of
a community, or the spirit worshipped by a community, is necessarily a
being conceived as concerned with the interests of the community and as
hostile to those who violate the customs--which is to transgress the
morality--of the community. But even if this be admitted, it may still
be said that it does not in the least disprove the assertion that {222}
morality existed before religion did. The theory we are examining
freely admits that religion is supposed, in certain stages of the
history of humanity, to reenforce morality and to be necessary in the
interest of morals, though eventually it is found that morality needs
no such support; and not only needs now no such support but never did
need it; and the fact that it did not need it is shown by demonstrating
the existence of morality before religion existed. If, then, it be
admitted that religion from the moment it first appeared reenforced
morality, and did not pass through a non-moral period first, still
morality may have existed before religion was evolved, and must have so
existed if morality and religion are things essentially apart. What
evidence then is there on the point? We find Mr. Hobhouse saying (I,
80) that "at almost, if not quite, the lowest stages" of human
development there are "certain actions which are resented as involving
the community as a whole in misfortune and danger. These include,
besides actual treason, conduct which brings upon the people the wrath
of God, or of certain spirits, or which violates some mighty and
mysterious taboo. The actions most frequently regarded in this light
are certain breaches of the marriage law and witchcraft." {223} These
offences, we are told (_ib._, 82), endanger the community itself, and
the punishment is "prompted by the sense of a danger to the whole
community." Here, then, from the beginning we find that offences
against the common good are punished, not simply as such, but as
misconduct bringing on the community, and not merely on the offender,
the wrath of gods or spirits. In other words--Mr. Hobhouse's words, p.
119--"in the evolution of public justice, we find that at the outset
the community interferes mainly on what we may call supernatural
grounds only with actions which are regarded as endangering its own
existence." We may then fairly say that if the community inflicts
punishments mainly on supernatural grounds from the time when the
evolution of public justice first begins, then morality from its very
beginning was reenforced--indeed prompted--by religion. The morality
was indeed only the custom of the community; but violation of the
custom was from the beginning regarded as a religious offence and was
punished on supernatural grounds.
The view that morality and religion are essentially distinct, that
morality not only can stand alone, without support from religion, but
has in reality always stood without such support--however much {224}
the fact has been obscured by religious prepossessions--this view
receives striking confirmation from the current and generally accepted
theory of the origin and nature of justice. That theory traces the
origin of justice back to the feeling of resentment experienced by the
individual against the particular cause of his pain (Westermarck,
_Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas_, I, 22). Resentment leads
to retaliation and takes the form of revenge. Vengeance, at first
executed by the person injured (or by his kin, if he be killed), comes
eventually, if slowly, to be taken out of the hands of the person
injured or his avengers, and to be exercised by the State in the
interests of the community and in furtherance, not of revenge, but of
justice and the good of society. Thus not only the origin of justice,
but the whole course of its growth and development, is entirely
independent of religion and religious considerations. Throughout, the
individual and society are the only parties involved; the gods do not
appear--or, if they do appear, they are intrusive and superfluous. If
this be the true view of the history and nature of justice, it may--and
probably must--be the truth about the whole of morality and not only
about justice. We have but {225} to follow Dr. Westermarck (_ib._, p.
21) in grouping the moral emotions under the two heads of emotions of
approval and emotions of disapproval, we have but to note with him that
both groups belong to the class of retributive emotions, and we see
that the origin and history of justice are typical of the origin and
history of morals: morality in general, just as much as justice in
particular, both originates independently of religion and
developes--where moral progress is made--independently of religion.
Let us now proceed to examine this view of the relation of religion and
morality and to consider whether their absolute independence of each
other is historic fact. It traces back justice to the feeling of
resentment experienced by the individual; but if the individual ever
existed by himself and apart from society, there could neither then be
justice nor anything analogous to justice, for justice implies, not
merely a plurality of individuals, but a society; it is a social
virtue. The individual existing by himself and apart from society is
not a historic fact but an impossible abstraction--a conception
essentially false because it expresses something which neither exists
nor has existed nor could possibly {226} exist. The origin of
justice--or of any virtue--cannot be found in the impossible and
self-contradictory conception of the individual existing apart from
society; it cannot be found in a mere plurality of such individuals: it
can only be found in a society--whether that society have the
organisation of a family, a tribe, or a nation. Justice in particular
and morality in general, like religion, imply the existence of a
society; neither is a merely individual affair. Justice is, as Mr.
Hobhouse states, "public action taken for the sake of public safety"
(I, 83): it is, from the outset of its history, public action; and back
of that we cannot go, for the individual did not, as a matter of
history, exist before society, and could not so have existed.
In the next place, justice is not the resentment of any individual, it
is the sentiment of the community expressing itself in public action,
taken not for the sake of any individual, but for the sake of public
safety. Its object from the beginning is not the gratification of
individual resentment, but the safety and welfare of the community
which takes common action. Proof of this, if proof were needed, would
be found in the fact that the existence of the individual, as such, is
not recognised. Not only does {227} the community which has suffered
in the wrong done to any of its members take action as a community; it
proceeds, not against the individual who has inflicted the wrong, but
against the community to which he belongs. "The wrong done," is, as
Mr. Hobhouse says (I, 91), "the act of the family or clan and may be
avenged on any member of that family or clan." There is collective
responsibility for the wrong done, just as there is collective
responsibility for righting it.
If, now, we enquire, What are the earliest offences against which
public action is taken? and why? we may remember that Mr. Hobhouse has
stated them to be witchcraft and breaches of the marriage law; and that
the punishment of those offences corresponds, as he has said, "roughly
to our own administration of justice" (I, 81). Now, in the case of
breaches of the marriage laws--mating with a cousin on the mother's
side instead of with a cousin on the father's side, marrying into a
forbidden class--it is obvious that there is no individual who has
suffered injury and that there is no individual to experience
resentment. It is the community that suffers or is expected to suffer;
and it expects to suffer, because it, in the person of one of its {228}
members, has offended. Collectively it is responsible for the misdeeds
of its members. Whom, then, has it offended? To whom is it
responsible? Who will visit it with punishment, unless it makes haste
to set itself right? The answer given by a certain tribe of the Sea
Dyaks makes the matter clear: they, Mr. St. John tells us in his _Life
in the Forests of the Far East_ (I, 63, quoted by Westermarck, I, 49),
"are of opinion that an unmarried girl proving with child must be
offensive to the superior powers, who, instead of always chastising the
individual, punish the tribe by misfortunes happening to its members.
They therefore on the discovery of the pregnancy fine the lovers, and
sacrifice a pig to propitiate offended heaven, and to avert that
sickness or those misfortunes that might otherwise follow." That is,
of course, only one instance. But we may safely say that the marriage
law is generally ascribed to the ordinance of the gods, even in the
lowest tribes, and that breaches of it are offences against heaven. It
is unnecessary to prove, it need only be mentioned, that witchcraft is
conspicuously offensive to the religious sentiment, and is punished as
an offence against the god or gods. When, then, we consider the origin
and nature of justice, not from {229} an abstract and _a priori_ point
of view, but in the light of historic fact, so far from finding that it
originates and operates in complete independence of religion, we
discover that from the beginning the offences with which the justice of
the primitive community deals are offences, not against the community,
but against heaven. "In the evolution of public justice," as Mr.
Hobhouse says, "at the outset the community interferes mainly on what
we may call supernatural grounds." From the beginning misdeeds are
punished, not merely as wrongs done to society, but as wrong done to
the gods and as wrong-doing for which the community collectively is
responsible to the gods. Justice from the beginning is not individual
resentment, but "public action taken for the public safety." It is
not, as Mr. Hobhouse calls it, "revenge guided and limited by custom."
It is the customary action of the community taken to avert divine
vengeance. The action taken assumes in extreme cases the form of the
death penalty; but its usual form of action is that of taboo.
If the origin of justice is to be sought in something that is not
justice, if justice in particular and morality in general are to be
treated as having been evolved out of something which was in a way
different {230} from them and yet in a way must have contained them,
inasmuch as they came forth from it, we shall do well to look for that
something, not in the unhistorical, unreal abstraction of an imaginary
individual, apart from society, but in society itself when it is as yet
not clearly conscious of the justice and morality at work within it.
Such a stage in the development of society is, I think, to be discerned.
We have seen that, "at almost, if not quite, the lowest stages" of
human development, there is something which, according to Mr. Hobhouse,
corresponds "roughly to our own administration of justice" (I, 81).
But this rough justice implies conscious, deliberate action on the part
of the community. It implies that the community as such makes some
sort of enquiry into what can be the cause of the misfortunes which are
befalling it; and that, having found out the person responsible, it
deliberately takes the steps it deems necessary for putting itself
right with the supernatural power that has sent the sickness or famine.
Now, such conscious, purposive, deliberate action may and probably does
take place at almost the lowest stage of development of society; but
not, we may surmise, at quite the lowest. What eventually is done
{231} consciously and deliberately is probably done in the first place
much more summarily and automatically. And--in quite the lowest stage
of social development--it is by means of the action of taboo that
summary and automatic punishment for breaches of the custom of the
community is inflicted. Its action is automatic and immediate: merely
to come in contact with the forbidden thing is to become tabooed
yourself; and so great is the horror and dread of such contact, even if
made unwittingly, that it is capable of causing, when discovered,
death. Like the justice, however, of which it is the forerunner, it
does not result always in death, nor does it produce that effect in
most cases. But what it does do is to make the offender himself taboo
and as infectious as the thing that rendered him taboo. Here, too, the
action of taboo, in excommunicating the offender, anticipates, or
rather foreshadows, the action of justice when it excludes the guilty
person from the community and makes of him an outlaw. Again, in the
rough justice found at almost, though not quite, the lowest stages, the
earliest offences of which official notice, so to speak, is taken, are
offences for which the punishment--disease or famine, etc.--falls on
the community as a whole, because the {232} community, in the person of
one of its members, has offended as a whole against heaven. In the
earlier stage of feeling, also, which survives where taboo prevails, it
is the community as a whole which may be infected, and which must
suffer if the offender is allowed to spread the infection; it is the
community, as a whole, which is concerned to thrust out the guilty
person--every one shuns him because he is taboo. Thus, in this the
earliest stage, the offender against the custom of the community is
outlawed just as effectively as in later stages of social development.
But no formal sentence is pronounced; no meeting of the men or the
elders of the community is held to try the offender; no reason is given
or sought why the offence should thus be punished. The operation of
taboo is like that of the laws of nature: the man who eats poisonous
food dies with no reason given. A reason may eventually be found by
science, and is eventually discovered, though the process of discovery
is slow, and many mistakes are made, and many false reasons are given
before the true reason is found. So, too, the true reason for the
prohibition of many of the things, which the community feels to be
forbidden and pronounced to be taboo, is found, with the progress of
society--when it does {233} progress, which is not always--to be that
they are immoral and irreligious, though here, too, many mistakes are
made before true morality and true religion are found. But at the
outset no reason is given: the things are simply offensive to the
community and are tabooed as such. We, looking back at that stage in
the evolution of society, can see that amongst the things thus
offensive and tabooed are some which, in later stages, are equally
offensive, but are now forbidden for a reason that can be formulated
and given, viz. that they are offences against the law of morality and
the law of God. That reason, at the outset of society, may scarcely
have been consciously present to the mind of man: progress, in part at
least, has consisted in the discovery of the reasons of things. But
that man did from the beginning avoid some of the things which are
forbidden by morality and religion, and that those things were taboo to
him, is beyond the possibility of doubt. Nor can it be doubted that in
the prohibition and punishment of them there was inchoate justice and
inchoate religion. Such prohibition was due to the collective action
and expressed the collective feeling of the community as a whole. And
it is from such social action and feeling that {234} justice, I
suggest, has been evolved--not from the feeling of resentment
experienced by the individual as an individual. Personal resentment
and personal revenge may have stimulated justice to action. But, by
the hypothesis we have been examining, they were not justice. Neither
have they been transformed into justice: they still exist as something
distinct from justice and capable of perverting it.
The form which justice takes in the period which is almost, but not
quite, the lowest stage of human evolution is the sense of the
collective responsibility of the community for all its actions, that is
to say, for the acts of all its members. And that responsibility in
its earliest shape is felt to be a responsibility to heaven, to the
supernatural powers that send disease and famine upon the community.
In those days no man sins to himself alone, just as, in still earlier
days, no man could break a taboo without becoming a source of danger to
the whole community. The wrong-doer has offended against the
supernatural powers and has brought down calamity upon the community.
He is therefore punished, directly as an offender against the god of
the community, and indirectly for having involved the {235} community
in suffering. In Dr. Westermarck's words (I, 194), there is "genuine
indignation against the offender, both because he rebels against God,
and because he thereby exposes the whole community to supernatural
dangers." But though society for many long centuries continues to
punish rebellion against God, still in the long run it ceases, or tends
to cease, doing so. Its reason for so ceasing is interpreted
differently by different schools of thought. On the one hand, it is
said in derision, let the gods punish offences against the gods--the
implication being that there are no such offences to punish, because
there is no god. On the other hand, it is said, "I will repay, saith
the Lord"--the implication being that man may not assume to be the
minister of divine vengeance. If, then, we bear in mind that the fact
may be interpreted in either of these different ways, we shall not fall
into the fallacy of imagining that the mere existence of the fact
suffices to prove either interpretation to be true. Yet this fallacy
plays its part in lending fictitious support to the doctrine that
morality is in no wise dependent upon religion. The offences now
punished by law, it is argued, are no longer punished as offences
against religion, but solely as offences {236} against the good of the
community. To this argument the reply is that men believe the good of
the community to be the will of God, and do not believe murder, theft,
adultery, etc., to be merely offences against man's laws. Overlooking
this fact, which is fatal to the doctrine that morality is in no wise
dependent on religion, the argument we are discussing proceeds to
maintain that the basis for the enforcement of morality by the law is
recognised by every one who knows anything of the philosophy of law to
be what is good for the community and its members: fraud and violence
are punished as such, and not because they are offences against this or
that religion. The fact that the law no longer punishes them as
offences against God suffices to show that it is only as offences
against humanity that there is any sense, or ever was any sense, in
punishing them. Religion may have reenforced morality very usefully at
one time, by making out that moral misdeeds were offences against God,
but such arguments are not now required. The good and the well-being
of humanity is in itself sufficient argument. Humanitarianism is
taking the place of religion, and by so doing is demonstrating that
morality is, as it always has been, {237} independent of religion; and
that in truth religion has built upon it, not it upon religion. As
Hoeffding puts it (p. 328): "Religious faith ... assumes an independent
human ethic developed historically under the practical influence of the
ethical feeling of man." That is to say, morality is in Hoeffding's
view independent of religion, and prior to religion, both as a matter
of logic and of history. As a matter of history--of the history of
religion--this seems to me, for the reasons already given, to be
contrary to the facts as they are known. The real reason for
maintaining that morality is and must be--and must have
been--independent of religion, seems to me to be a philosophical
reason. I may give it in Hoeffding's own words: "What other aims and
qualities," he asks (p. 324), "could man attribute to his gods or
conceive as divine, but those which he has learnt from his own
experience to recognise as the highest?" The answer expected to the
question plainly is not merely that it is from experience that man
learns, but that man has no experience of God from which he could
learn. The answer given by Mr. Hobhouse, in the concluding words of
his _Morals in Evolution_ is that "the collective wisdom" of man "is
all that we directly know of the Divine." {238} Here, too, no direct
access to God is allowed to be possible to man. It is from his
experience of other men--perhaps even of himself and his own
doings--that man learns all he knows of God: but he has himself no
experience of God. Obviously, then, from this humanitarian point of
view, what a man goes through in his religious moments is not
experience, and we are mistaken if we imagine that it was experience;
it is only a misinterpretation of experience. It is on the supposition
that we are mistaken, on the assumption that we make a
misinterpretation, that the argument is built to prove that morality is
and must be independent of religion. Argument to show, or proof to
demonstrate, that we had not the experience, or, that we mistook
something else for it, is, of course, not forthcoming. But if we hold
fast to our conviction, we are told that we are fleeing "to the bosom
of faith."
Until some better argument is produced, we may be well content not
merely to flee but to rest there.
{239}