knowing or contemplating of any object, however high. It is not mere philosophy nor art, because it is not mere seeing, no mere theoretic activity, considered as such or merely from its theoretical side. The religious consciousness tells us that a man is not religious, or more religious because the matter of his theoretic activity is religious; just as the moral consciousness told us that a man was not moral, or more moral, simply because he was a moral philosopher. Religion is essentially a doing, and a doing which is moral. It implies a realizing, and a realizing of the good self.
Are we to say then that morality is religion? Most certainly not. In morality the ideal is not: it for ever remains a ‘to be.’ The reality in us or the world is partial and inadequate; and no one could say that it answers to the ideal, that, morally considered, both we and the world are all we ought to be, and ought to be just what we are. We have at furthest the belief in an ideal which in its pure completeness is never real; which, as an ideal, is a mere ‘should be.’ And the question is, Will that do for religion? No knower of religion, who was not led away by a theory, would answer Yes. Nor does it help us to say that religion is ‘morality touched by emotion;’ for loose phrases of this sort may suggest to the reader what he knows already without their help, but, properly speaking, they say nothing. All morality is, in one sense or another, ‘touched by emotion.’ Most emotions, high or low, can go with and ‘touch’ morality; and the moment we leave our phrase-making, and begin to reflect, we see all that is meant is that morality ‘touched’ by religious emotion is religious; and so, as answer to the question What is religion? all that we have said is, ‘It is religion when with morality you have—religion.’ I do not think we learn a very great deal from this.[1]
- ↑ Compare (Mill, Dissertations, i. 70-1) the definition of poetry as ‘man’s thoughts tinged by his feelings;’ where the whole matter again is, what feelings? Anything in the way of shallow reflection on the psychological form, anything rather than the effort to grasp the content. All that Mill saw wanting in this ‘definition’ was that it missed ‘the poet’s utter unconsciousness of a listener.’ However, to make sure of hitting the mark, he, so to speak, set it down as hit beforehand, and in his own ‘definition’ of poetry introduced ‘the poet’s mind.’ This is much as if we were to say, ‘Religion is the sort of thing you have in a religious man.’
