PART III.

THE RELIGION OF PHILOSOPHY.

CHAPTER XVII.

SUPERSTITION AND MYSTERY.

Resemblance between Primitive and Modern Religious Beliefs-Superstition the Negative, Morality the Positive Form of Religion.

RELIGIOUS criticism is wholly a modern art. As language reached a high state of perfection before the manner of its growth was discovered, so the higher human sentiments have grown into bonds of universal sympathy before the race has been able to form any adequate idea of the laws of thought and feeling.

It is the study of the development of language which makes possible an intelligent view of the great subject of Religion. The races of the world have unconsciously written their emotional and moral history in the formation of their speech. The comparative study of languages gives us an insight into the origin of nations, so that we are enabled to classify the races of mankind with far greater accuracy than before the advent of this science.

The different races of men represent different classes of ideas; representative types of thought and feeling which have their expression in certain forms of social organization or Morality, and certain forms of the higher sentiments or Religion. The morals and the religions of the world as we find them are the products of the slow evolution of human

ity, the results of past conditions, and they can only be accounted for by studying the phases of development through which they have passed.

The foregoing divisions of this work have been devoted to establishing a clear understanding of the fundamental principles of life, to building up a true conception of knowledge. We have dealt, not with the circumstances of social life, not with human history, but with the nature of man himself, the interaction of his physical and psychical nature, with a view to explaining the wonderful phenomena of language and perception. We are now, in a measure, prepared to deal with that highest aspect of human existence which we call Morality, and that vast emotional structure known as Religion. As the greatest logical achievements have resulted from the ceaseless energies of metaphysical investigation, notwithstanding the apparent hopelessness and unreality of the pursuit, so our best conceptions of duty and life have sprung from the emotions of religion, notwithstanding the various degrees of degradation and misery to which mistaken religious beliefs have subjected all races and civilizations.

Where the tenets of logic are concerned, men have always been comparatively free to contend without interference or reproach; the populace has taken but little interest in these wars of abstractions; but with the contentions of religious faiths it has been very different, and it is natural that it should have been so. To wantonly assail a religious faith is a very serious matter: it may cause inestimable harm, and it seldom if ever has a good influence.

As will afterward appear, religion and morality are but the obverse aspects of the higher phases of human character. To disturb the one is to disturb the other.

If there is one opinion with regard to the criticism of religion which is universal, it is that we have no right to destroy a faith unless to supplant it with a better one. Proselytism has never been condemned as immoral, however much it has been resisted, for the missionary believes that he is im

parting a better religion than the one which he opposes. The iconoclast, on the contrary, has always been a dreaded destroyer: he offers nothing to replace the objects of worship which he ruins.

The Religion of Philosophy is the purest of all faiths, the highest of all moralities. Its creed is the ever-brightening zenith of human knowledge; its precepts spring from the deepest principles of our existence; its understanding of human life and destiny has nothing to yield to any existing faith; and its conception of God is so much purer and better than that of any other religion, that a comparison becomes ungenerous. It requires no consecrated temples for its worship, no priests or sacraments, no ritual for its dead. Its followers can worship in any temple, learn of any priest, and, as they honor all forms of religion, none of its ceremonies can be inappropriate to their memory.

Each religion represents the highest or most general conceptions of its believers; for this reason the conventional classification of faiths can give but the merest outline of the actual religious convictions of individuals. Creeds are only partially acquiesced in; the same formulas of belief are interpreted in widely different ways; and there is, after all, an innate independence in religious belief which only gives formal acquiescence to the established forms of faith. The spirit of organization, therefore, which pervades the whole practical world, that strong sense of the necessity of harmony and co-operation as conditions of success, gives to organized religion a dominion which in a logical sense it does not possess.

The difference between the passive believer in any special faith and the conscientious critic of religion may be thus described: The believer holds that there are divine truths which the simple and the learned can alike appreciate; the careful critic holds that all truths are divine in the sense that they are related to universal truth, but that the quality of each mind determines the degree of appreciation of that truth. They both admit the existence of divine truth, but

one believes that it belongs exclusively to a religion, while the other believes it to be coextensive with all existence. The chances for disagreement are infinite; for there is clearly no possibility of limiting the scope of a religion so that it may not include all existence, or of limiting existence so that it may not include all religion. The only possible chance for an agreement is to fix, once for all, upon the meaning of divine, and all words signifying God. This being accomplished, the whole question becomes clear. Divine means the highest or most general; God means the Universal Principle, which is the same thing. To say, therefore, that all truths are related to the divine is simply to admit that the universe is an interdependent organon suggesting neither absolute limits nor separations. With this understanding it becomes possible to form some idea of the degree in which each type of mind, from the most simple to the most complex, can appreciate general truths.

It is only by a study of the facts of religious and moral history that we can succeed in the logical attempt which is here announced. Upon nothing less tangible than the framework of these facts can the argument take form and avoid those extreme attenuations which are more apt to confuse than enlighten.

Our first assumption is, that religion and morality are not only interdependent activities, but are the obverse aspects of a single fact of development. The quality of life is but another name for morality. The quality of the mind determines the quality of the religion. Superstitions are but the negative side of religion, while right thinking, feeling, and doing, or morality, constitute all that is real in religious life.

Worship is universally conceded to be a lifting up of the heart to God. When we find the idea of God undeveloped, therefore, we must expect to find no worship, or worship in its most degraded forms. The term atheist (godless one) has a purely relative meaning. If God is the universal fact, if the conception of God is an appreciation of divine unity, what life can be godless? Tylor tells how ancient invading