acknowledge that morality is a gift; since, if the goodness of the physical virtues is denied, there is left, at last, no goodness at all. Morality, in short, finds it essential that every excellence should be good, and it is destroyed by a division between its own world and that of goodness.
It is a moral demand then that every human excellence should genuinely be good, while at the same time a high rank should be reserved for the inner life. And it is a moral demand also that the good should be victorious throughout. The defects and the contradiction in every self must be removed, and must be succeeded by perfect harmony. And, of course, all evil must be overruled and so turned into goodness. But the demand of morality has also a different side. For, if goodness as such is to remain, the contradiction cannot quite cease, since a discord, we saw, was essential to goodness. Thus, if there is to be morality, there cannot altogether be an end of evil. And, so again, the two aspects of self-assertion and of self-sacrifice will remain. They must be subordinated, and yet they must not have entirely lost their distinctive characters. Morality in brief calls for an unattainable unity of its aspects, and, in its search for this, it naturally is led beyond itself into a higher form of goodness. It ends in what we may call religion.[1]
- ↑ The origin of religion is a question which does not concern us here. Religion appears to have two roots, fear and admiration or approval. The latter need not be taken as having a high or moral sense. Wonder or curiosity seems not to be religious, unless it is in the service of these other feelings. And, of the two main roots of religion, one will be more active at one time and place, and the other at another. The feelings also will attach themselves naturally to a variety of objects. To enquire about the origin of religion as if that origin must always be one, seems fundamentally erroneous.
It concerns us more to know what religion now means among ourselves. I have come to the conclusion that it is impossible to answer this question, unless we realize that religion, in the end, has more meanings than one. Part of this variety rests no doubt on mere misunderstanding. That which is mainly intellectual, or mainly aesthetic, would probably be admitted in the end to fall outside religion. But we come at last, I should say, to a stubborn discrepancy. There are those who would call religious any kind of practical relation to the “other world,” or to the supersensible generally. The question, for instance, as to life after death, or as to the possibility of communication with what are called “spirits,” seems to some essentially religious. And they might deny that religious feeling can exist at all towards an object in “our world.” Another set of minds would insist that, in order to have religion, you must have a relation of a special and particular kind. And they would add that, where you have this relation, whether towards an object of the “other world” or not, you have got religion. The question as to life after death, or as to the possibility of spirit-rapping or witchcraft, is really not in itself in the very least religious. And it is only, they would urge, because per accidens our feelings to the unseen are generally (not always) religious, that religion has been partly narrowed and partly extended without just cause. I consider this latter party to be wholly right, and I shall disregard from this point forward the opposing view.
What then in general is religion? I take it to be a fixed feeling of fear, resignation, admiration or approval, no matter what may be the object, provided only that this feeling reaches a certain strength, and is qualified by a certain degree of reflection. But I should add, at once, that in religion fear and approval to some extent must always combine. We must in religion try to please, or at least to submit our wills to, the object which is feared. That conduct towards the object is approved of, and that approbation tends again to qualify the object. On the other side in religion approval implies devotion, and devotion seems hardly possible, unless there is some fear, if only the fear of estrangement.
But in what degree must such a feeling be present, if we are to call it religion? Can the point be fixed exactly? I think we must admit that it cannot be. But it lies generally there where we feel that our proper selves, in comparison, are quite powerless or worthless. The object, over against which we find ourselves to be of no account, tends to inspire us with religion. If there are many such objects, we are polytheists. But if, in comparison with one only, all the rest have no weight, we have arrived at monotheism.
Hence any object, in regard to which we feel a supreme fear or approval, will engage our devotion, and be for us a Deity. And this object, most emphatically, in no other sense need possess divinity. It is a common phrase in life that one may make a God of this or that person, object, or pursuit; and in such a case our attitude, it seems to me, must be called religious. This is the case often, for example, in sexual or in parental love. But to fix the exact point at which religion begins, and where it ends, would hardly be possible.
In this chapter I am taking religion only in its highest sense. I am using it for devotion to the one perfect object which is utterly good. Incomplete forms of religion, such as the devotion to a woman or to a pursuit, can exist side by side. But in this highest sense of religion there can be but one object. And again, when religion is fully developed, this object must be good. For towards anything else, although we feared it, we should now entertain feelings of revolt, of dislike, and even of contempt. There would not any longer be that moral prostration which is implied in all religion.
