1 a Common Faith

8/12/2019 1 a Common Faith

1/100

CommonJohn Deiuey

p a Yale Paperbound $12S C8s.6d.netJ


2/100

,34^


3/100

n


4/100

Digitized by tine Internet Arcinivein 2010

http://www.archive.org/details/commonfaitliOOdewe


5/100

COMMON FAITHJOHN DEWEY

NEW HAVExX AND LONDONYALE UNIVERSITY TRESS


6/100

Copyright 19^4 by Yale University PressTwentieth printing, March 196^Printed in the United States of America byThe Carl Purington Rollins Printing-Office ofthe Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut.

All rights reserved. This book may not bereproduced, in whole or in part, in any form(except by reviewers for the public press),without written permission, from the publishers.


7/100

CONTENTSI. Religion Versus the Religious .

II. Faith and Its Object . . .III. The Human Abode of the Religious Func-

tion 69


8/100


9/100

RELIGION VERSUS THE RELIGIOUSNEVER before in history has mankind been somuch of two minds, so divided into two camps,as it is today. Religions have traditionally been al-lied with ideas of the supernatural, and often havebeen based upon explicit behefs about it. Todaythere are many who hold that nothing worthy of be-ing called religious is possible apart from the super-natural. Those who hold this belief differ in manyrespects. They range from those who accept thedogmas and sacraments of the Greek and RomanCathohc church as the only sure means of access tothe supernatural to the theist or mild deist. Betweenthem are the many Protestant denominations whothink the Scriptures, aided by a pure conscience, areadequate avenues to supernatural truth and power.But they agree in one point: the necessity for aSupernatural Being and for an immortality that isbeyond the power of nature.The opposed group consists of those who think the

advance of culture and science has completely dis-credited the supernatural and with it all religionsthat were allied with belief in it. But they go beyondthis point. The extremists in this group believe thatwith elimination of the supernatural not only musthistoric religions be dismissed but with them every-thing of a religious nature. When historical knowl-


10/100

2 A Common Faithedge has discredited the claims made for the super-natural character of the persons said to have foundedhistoric religions; when the supernatural inspirationattributed to literatures held sacred has been riddled,and when anthropological and psychological knowl-edcre has disclosed the all-too-human source fromwhich religious beliefs and practices have sprung,everything religious must, they say, also go.r There is one idea held in common by these two op-

posite groups : identification of the religious with thesupernaturalyThe question I shall raise in thesechapters concerns the ground for and the conse-quences of this identification: its reasons and itsvalue. In the discussion I shall develop another con-ception of the nature of the religious phase of ex-perience, one that separates it from the supernaturaland the things that have grown up about it. I shalltry to show that these derivations are encumbrancesand that what is genuinely religious will undergo anemancipation when it is relieved from them ; thatthen, for the first time, the religious aspect of ex-perience will be free to develop freely on its own ac-count.

This view is exposed to attack from both the othercamps. It goes contrary to traditional religions, in-cluding those that have the greatest hold upon thereligiously minded today. The view announced willseem to them to cut the vital nerve of the religiouselement itself in taking away the basis upon whichtraditional religions and institutions have beenfounded. From the other side, the position I am tak-


11/100

Religion versus the Reijgious 8ing seems like a timid halfway position, a conces-sion and compromise unworthy of tliought that isthoroughgoing. It is regarded as a view entertainedfrom mere tendcrmindedness, as an emotional hang-over from childhood indoctrination, or even as amanifestation of a desire to avoid disapproval andcurry favor.The heart of my point, as far as I shall develop it

in this first section, is that there is a difference be-tween religion, a religion, and the religious ; betweenanything that may be denoted by a noun substantiveand the quality of experience that is designated byan adjective. It is not easy to find a definition of re-ligion in the substantive sense that wins general ac-ceptance. However, in the Oxford Dictionary I findthe following: Recognition on the part of man ofsome unseen higher power as having control of hisdestiny and as being entitled to obedience, reverenceand worship.

This particular definition is less explicit in asser-tion of the supernatural character of the higher un-seen power than are others that might be cited. Itis, however, surcharged with implications havingtheir source in ideas connected with the belief in thesupernatural, characteristic of historic religions. Letus suppose that one familiar with the history of re-ligions, including those called primitive, comparesthe definition with the variety of known facts and bymeans of the comparison sets out to determine justwhat the definition means. I think he will be struckby three facts that reduce the terms of the detinition


12/100

4 A Common Faithto such a low common denominator that little mean-ing is left.He will note that the unseen powers referred tohave been conceived in a multitude of incompatibleways. Eliminating the differences, nothing is leftbeyond the bare reference to something unseen andpowerful. This has been conceived as the vague andundefined Mana of the Melanesians; the Kami ofprimitive Shintoism ; the fetish of the Africansspirits, having some human properties, that pervadenatural places and animate natural forces ; the ulti-mate and impersonal principle of Buddhism ; the un-moved mover of Greek thought; the gods and semi-divine heroes of the Greek and Roman Pantheons;the personal and loving Providence of Christianity,omnipotent, and limited by a corresponding evilpower; the arbitrary Will of Moslemism; the su-preme legislator and judge of deism. And these arebut a few of the outstanding varieties of ways inwhich the invisible power has been conceived.

There is no greater similarity in the ways in whichobedience and reverence have been expressed. Therehas been worship of animals, of ghosts, of ancestors,phallic worship, as well as of a Being of dread powerand of love and wisdom. Reverence has been ex-pressed in the human sacrifices of the Peruvians andAztecs ; the sexual orgies of some Oriental religionsexorcisms and ablutions; the offering of the humbleand contrite mind of the Hebrew prophet, the elabo-rate rituals of the Greek and Roman Churches. Noteven sacrifice has been uniform; it is highly subli-


13/100

Religion atcrsus the Religious 5mated in Protestant denominations and in Moslem-ism. Where it has existed it has taken all kinds offorms and been directed to a great variety of powersand spirits. It has been used for expiation, for pro-pitiation and for buying special favors. There is noconceivable purpose for which rites have not beenemployed.

Finally, there is no discernible unity in the moralmotivations appealed to and utilized. They havebeen as far apart as fear of lasting torture, hope ofenduring bliss in which sexual enjoyment has some-times been a conspicuous element; mortification ofthe flesh and extreme asceticism; prostitution andchastity ; wars to extirpate the unbeliever ; persecu-tion to convert or punish the unbeliever, and philan-thropic zeal; servile acceptance of imposed dogma,along with brotherly love and aspiration for a reignof justice among men.

I have, of course, mentioned only a sparse numberof the facts which fill volumes in any well-stockedlibrary. It may be asked by those who do not like tolook upon the darker side of the history of religionswhy the darker facts should be brought up. We allknow that civilized man has a background of besti-ality and superstition and that these elements arestill with us. Indeed, have not some rehgions, includ-ing the most influential forms of Christianity, taughtthat the heart of man is totally corrupt.? How couldthe course of religion in its entire sweep not bemarked by practices that are shameful in their cru-elty and lustfulness, and by beliefs that are degraded


14/100

6 A Common Faithand intellectually incredible? What else than whatwe find could be expected, in the case of people hav-ing little knowledge and no secure metliod of know-ing; with primitive institutions, and with so littlecontrol of natural forces that they lived in a constantstate of fear?

I gladly admit that historic religions have beenrelative to the conditions of social culture in whichpeoples lived. Indeed, what I am concerned with is topress home the logic of this method of disposal ofoutgrown traits of past religions. Beliefs and prac-tices in a religion that now prevails aie by this logicrelative to the present state of culture. If so muchflexibility has obtained in the past regarding an un-seen power, the way it affects human tlcstiny, and theattitudes we are to take toward it, wliy should it beassumed that change in conception and action hasnow come to an end? ^he logic involved in gettingrid of inconvenient aspects of past religions compelsus to inquire how much in religions now accepted aresurvivals from outgrown cultures?) It compels us toask what conception of unseen powers and our rela-tions to them would be consonant with the bestachievements and aspirations of the present. It de-mands that in imagination we wipe the slate cleanand start afresh by asking what would be the idea ofthe unseen, of the manner of its control over us andthe ways in which reverence and obedience would bemanifested, if whatever is basically religious in ex-perience had the opportunity to express itself freefrom all historic encumbrances.


15/100

Religion versus the Religious 7So we return to the elements of the definition that

has been given. What boots it to accept, in defenseof the universaHty of rehgion, a definition that ap-plies equally to the most savage and degraded be-liefs and practices that have related to unseen powersand to noble ideals of a religion having the greatestshare of moral content? There are two points in-volved. One of them is that there is nothing left worthpreserving in the notions of unseen powers, control-ling human destiny to which obedience, reverence andworship are due, if we glide silently over the naturethat has been attributed to the powers, the radicallydiverse ways in which they have been supposed tocontrol human destiny, and in which submission andawe have been manifested. The other point is thatwhen we begin to select, to choose, and say that somepresent ways of thinking about the unseen powersare better than others; that the reverence shown bya free and self-respecting human being is better thanthe servile obedience rendered to an arbitrary powerby frightened men ; that we should believe that con-trol of human des^^iny is exercised by a wise and lov-ing spirit rather than by madcap ghosts or sheerforcewhen I say, we begin to choose, we have en-tered upon a road that has not yet come to an end.We have reached a point that invites us to proceedfarther.For we are forced to acknowledge that concretely

there is no such thing as religion in the singular.There is only a multitude of religions. Religion isa strictly collective term and the collection it stands


16/100

8 A Common Faithfor is not even of the kind illustrated in textbooks oflogic. It has not the unity of a regiment or assemblybut that of any miscellaneous aggregate. Attemptsto prove the universality prove too much or toolittle. It is probable that religions have been univer-sal in the sense that all the peoples we know anythingabout have had a religion. But the differences amongthem are so great and so shocking that any commonelement that can be extracted is meaningless. Theidea that religion is universal proves too little in thatthe older apologists for Christianity seem to havebeen better advised than some modern ones in con-demning every religion but one as an impostor, as atbottom some kind of demon worship or at any rate asuperstitious figment. Choice among religions is im-perative, and the necessity for choice leaves nothingof any force in the argument from universality.Moreover, when once we enter upon the road ofchoice, there is at once presented a possibility not yetgenerally realized.

For the historic increase of the ethical and idealcontent of religions suggests that the process of puri-fication may be carried further. It indicates thatfurther choice is imminent in which certain valuesand functions in experience may be selected. Thispossibility is what I had in mind in speaking of thedifference between the religious and a religion. I amnot proposing a religion, but rather the emancipa-tion of elements and outlooks that may be called re-ligious. For the moment we have a religion, whetherthat of the Sioux Indian or of Judaism or of Chris-


17/100

Religion versus the Religious 9tianity, that moment the ideal factors in experiencethat may be called religious take on a load that isnot inherent in them, a load of current beliefs andof institutional practices that are irrelevant to them.

I can illustrate what I mean by a common phe-nomenon in contemporary life. It is widely supposedthat a person who does not accept any religion isthereby shown to be a non-religious person. Yet it isconceivable that the present depression in religionis closely connected with the fact that religions nowprevent, because of their weight of historic encum-brances, the religious quality of experience fromcoming to consciousness and finding the expressionthat is appropriate to present conditions, intellectualand moral, I believe that such is the case. I believethat many persons are so repelled from what existsas a religion by its intellectual and moral implica-tions, that they are not even aware of attitudes inthemselves that if they came to fruition would begenuinely religious. I hope that this remark mayhelp make clear what I mean by the distinction be-tween religion as a noun substantive and reli-gious as adjectival.To be somewhat more explicit, a religion (and asI have just said there is no such thing as religion ingeneral) always signifies a special body of beliefsand practices having some kind of institutional or-ganization, loose or tight. In contrast, the adjectivereligious denotes nothing in the way of a speci-fiable entity, either institutional or as a system ofbeliefs. It does not denote anything to which one can


18/100

10 A Common Faithspecifically point as one can point to this and thatiiistoric religion or existing church. For it does notdenote anytiiing that can exist by itself or that canbe organized into a particular and distinctive formof existence. It denotes attitudes that may be takentoward every object and every proposed end or ideal.

Before, however, I develop my suggestion that re-alization of the distinction just made would operateto emancipate the religious quality from encum-brances that now smother or limit it, I must refer toa position that in some respects is similar in wordsto the position 1 have taken, but that in fact is awhole world removed from it. I have several timesused the phrase religious elements of experience.Now at present there is much talk, especially in lib-eral circles, of religious experience as vouching forthe authenticity of certain beliefs and the desirabilityof certain practices, such as particular forms ofprayer and worship. It is even asserted that religiousexperience is the ultimate basis of religion itself. Thegulf between this position and that which I havetaken is wiiat I am now concerned to point out.Those who hold to the notion that there is a defi-nite kind of experience which is itself religious, bythat very fact make out of it something specific, asa kind of experience that is marked off from experi-ence as aesthetic, scientific, moral, political; from ex-perience as companionship and friendship. But re-ligious as a quality of experience signifies some-thing that may belong to all these experiences. It isthe polar opposite of some type of experience that


19/100

Religion versus the Religious 11can exist by itself. Tiie distinction comes out clearl}?when it is noted tliat t ie concept of this distinct kindof experience is used to validate a belief in somespecial kind of object and also to justify some specialkind of practice.

For there are many religionists who are now dis-satisfied with the older proofs of the existence ofGod, those that go by the name of ontological, cos-moloffical and telcoloirical. The cause of the dissatis-faction is perhaps not so much the arguments thatKant used to sliow the insufficiency of these allegedproofs, as it is the growing feeling that they are tooformal to offer any support to religion in action.Anyway, the dissatisfaction exists. JNIoreover, thesereligionists are moved by the rise of the experimentalmethod in other fields. What is more natural andproper, accordingly, than that they should affirmthey are just as good empiricists as anybody elseindeed, as good as the scientists themselves.'* As thelatter rely upon certain kinds of experience to provethe existence of certain kinds of objects, so the re-ligionists rely upon a certain kind of experience toprove the existence of the object of religion, espe-cially the supreme object, God,The discussion may be made more definite by in-

troducing, at this point, a particular illustration ofthis type of reasoning. A writer says : I broke dowTifrom overwork and soon came to the verge of nervousprostration. One morning after a long and sleeplessnight ... I resolved to stop drawing upon myselfso continuously and begin drawing upon God. I de-


20/100

12 A Common Faithtermined to set apart a quiet time every day in which1 could relate my life to its ultimate source, regainthe consciousness that in God I live, move and havemy being. That was thirty years ago. Since then Ihave had literally not one hour of darkness or de-spair.

This is an impressive record. I do not doubt itsauthenticity nor that of the experience related. It il-lustrates a religious aspect of experience. But it il-lustrates also the use of that quality to carry a super-imposed load of a particular religion. For havingbeen brought up in the Christian religion, its sub-ject interprets it in the terms of the personal Godcharacteristic of that religion. Taoists, Buddhists,Moslems, persons of no religion including those whoreject all supernatural influence and power, have hadexperiences similar in their efTect. Yet another authorcommenting upon the passage says: The religiousexpert can be more sure that tliis God exists than hecan of either the cosmological God of speculative sur-mise or the Christlike God involved in the validity ofmoral optimism, and goes on to add that such ex-periences mean that God the savior, the power thatgives victory over sin on certain conditions that mancan fulfill, is an existent, accessible and scientificallyknowable reality. It should be clear that this infer-ence is sound only if the conditions, of whatever sort,that produce the effect are called God. But mostreaders will take the inference to mean that the exist-ence of a particular Being, of the type called God


21/100

Religion versus the Religious 13in the Christian rehgion, is proved by a method akinto that of experimental science.In reality, the only thing that can be said to beproved is the existence of some complex of condi-tions that have operated to effect an adjustment inlife, an orientation, that brings with it a sense ofsecurity and peace. The particular interpretationgiven to this complex of conditions is not inherent inthe experience itself. It is derived from the culturewith which a particular person has been imbued. Afatalist will give one name to it ; a Christian Scientistanother, and the one who rejects all supernaturalbeing still another. The determining factor in theinterpretation of the experience is the particulardoctrinal apparatus into which a person has been in-ducted. The emotional deposit connected with priorteaching floods the whole situation. It may readilyconfer upon the experience such a peculiarly sacredpreciousness that all inquiry into its causation isbarred. The stable outcome is so invaluable that thecause to which it is referred is usually nothing but areduplication of the thing that has occurred, plussome name that has acquired a deeply emotionalquality.The intent of this discussion is not to deny the

genuineness of the result nor its importance in life.It is not, save incidentally, to point out the possi-bility of a purely naturalistic explanation of theevent. My purpose is to indicate what happens whenreligious experience is already set aside as some-


22/100

14 A Common Faiththing sui generis. The actual religious quality in theexperience described is the ejfect produced, the betteradjustment in life and its conditions, not the mannerand cause of its production. The way in which theexperience operated, its function, determines its reli-gious value. If the reorientation actually occurs, it,and the sense of security and stability accompanyingit, are forces on their own account. It takes place indifferent persons in a multitude of ways. It is some-times brought about by devotion to a cause; some-times by a passage of poetry that opens a new per-spective; sometimes as was the case with Spinozadeemed an atheist in his daythrough philosophicalreflection.The difference between an experience having a re-

ligious force because of what it does in and to theprocesses of living and religious experience as a sepa-rate kind of thing gives me occasion to refer to aprevious remark. If this function were rescuedthrough emancipation from dependence upon specifictypes of beliefs and practices, from those elementsthat constitute a religion, many individuals wouldfind that experiences having the force of bringingabout a better, deeper and enduring adjustment inlife are not so rare and infrequent as tliev are com-monly supposed to be. They occur frequently in con-nection with many significant moments of hving. Theidea of invisible powers would take on the meaning ofall the conditions of nature and human associationthat support and deepen the sense of values whichcarry one through periods of darkness and despair to


23/100

Religion ^^rsus the Religious 15such an extent that they lose their usual depressivecharacter.I do not suppose for many minds the dislocationof the rehgious from a religion is easy to effect. Tra-dition and custom, especially when emotionallycharged, are a part of the habits that have becomeone with our very being. But the possibihty of thetransfer is demonstrated by its actuality. Let us thenfor the moment drop the term rehgious, and askwhat are the attitudes that lend deep and enduringsupport to the processes of living. I have, for exam-ple, used tlie words adjustment and orientation.What do they signify.'^.

While the words accommodation, adaptation,and adjustment are frequently employed as syno-nyms, attitudes exist that are so different that for thesake of clear thought they should be discriminated.There are conditions we meet that cannot be changed.If they are particular and limited, we modify ourovm particular attitudes in accordance with them.Thus we accommodate ourselves to changes inweather, to alterations in income when we have noother recourse. When the external conditions arelasting we become inured, habituated, or, as the proc-ess is now often called, conditioned. The two maintraits of this attitude, which I should like to call ac-commodation, are that it affects particular modes ofconduct, not the entire self, and that the process ismainly passive. It may, however, become general andthen it becomes fatalistic resignation or submission.There are other attitudes toward the environment


24/100

16 A Common Faiththat are also particular but that are more active. Were-act against conditions and endeavor to changethem to meet our wants and demands. Plays in a for-eign language are adapted to meet the needs of anAmerican audience. A house is rebuilt to suit changedconditions of the household ; the telephone is inventedto serve the demand for speedy communication at adistance; dry soils are irrigated so that they maybear abundant crops. Instead of accommodating our-selves to conditions, we modify conditions so thatthey will be accommodated to our wants and pur-poses. This process may be called adaptation.Now both of these processes are often called by themore general name of adjustment. But there are alsochanges in ourselves in relation to the world in whichwe live that are much more inclusive and deep seated.They relate not to this and that want in relation tothis and that condition of our surroundings, but per-tain to our being in its entirety. Because of theirscope, this modification of ourselves is enduring. Itlasts through any amount of vicissitude of circum-stances, internal and external. There is a composingand harmonizing of the various elements of our beingsuch that, in spite of changes in the special condi-tions that surround us, these conditions are also ar-ranged, settled, in relation to us. This attitude in-cludes a note of submission. But it is voluntary, notexternally imposed; and as voluntary it is some-thing more than a mere Stoical resolution to endureunperturbed throughout tlic bulTctings of fortune. Itis more outgoing, more ready and glad, than the lat-


25/100

Religion ^-ersus the Religious 17ter attitude, and it is more active than the former.And in calling it voluntary, it is not meant that it de-pends upon a particular resolve or volition. It is achange of will conceived as the organic plenitude ofour being, rather than any special change in will.

It is the claim of religions that they effect thisgeneric and enduring change in attitude. I shouldlike to turn the statement around and say that when-ever this change takes place there is a definitely re-ligious attitude. It is not a religion that brings itabout, but when it occurs, from whatever cause andby whatever means, there is a religious outlook andfunction. As I have said before, the doctrinal or in-tellectual apparatus and the institutional accretionsthat grow up are, in a strict sense, adventitious tothe intrinsic quality of such experiences. For theyare affairs of the traditions of the culture with whichindividuals are inoculated. Mr. Santayana has con-nected the religious quality of experience with theimaginative, as that is expressed in poetry. Reli-gion and poetry, he says, are identical in essence,and differ merely in the way in which they are at-tached to practical affairs. Poetry is called religionwhen it intervenes in life, and religion, when itmerely supervenes upon life, is seen to be nothing butpoetry. The difference between intervening in andsupervening upon is as important as is the identityset forth. Imagination may play upon life or it mayenter profoundly into it. As Mr. Santayana puts it,poetry has a universal and a moral function, forits highest power lies in its relevance to the ideals


26/100

18 A Common Faithand purposes of life. Except as it intervenes, allobservation is observation of brute fact, all disciplineis mere repression, until these facts digested and thisdiscipline embodied in humane impulses become thestarting point for a creative movement of the im-agination, the firm basis for ideal constructions insociety, religion, and art.

If I ma}' make a comment upon this penetratinginsiglit of Mr. Santayana, I would say that the dif-ference between imagination that only supervenesand imagination that intervenes is the difference be-tween one that completely interpenetrates all the ele-ments of our being and one that is interwoven withonly special and partial factors. There actually oc-curs extremely little observation of brute facts merelyfor the sake of the facts, just as there is little disci-pline that is repression and nothing but repression.Facts are usually observed with reference to somepractical end and purpose, and that end is presentedonly imaginatively. The most repressive disciplinehas some end in view to which there is at least im-puted an ideal quality; otherwise it is purely sadis-tic. But in such cases of observation and disciplineimagination is limited and partial. It does not extendfar ; it does not permeate deeply and widely.The connection between imagination and the har-

monizing of the self is closer than is usually thought.The idea of a whole, whether of the whole personalbeing or of the world, is an imaginative, not a lit-eral, idea. The limited world of our observationand reflection becomes the Universe only through im-


27/100

Religion versus the Rei>igious 19aginative extension. It cannot be apprehended inknowledge nor realized in reflection. Neither observa-tion, thouglit, nor practical activity can attain thatcomplete unification of the self which is called awhole. The xvhole self is an ideal, an imaginative pro-jection. Hence the idea of a thoroughgoing and deep-seated harmonizing of the self with the Universe (asa name for the totality of conditions with which theself is connected) operates only through imaginationwhich is one reason why this composing of tlie selfis not voluntary in the sense of an act of special vo-lition or resolution. An adjustment possesses thewill rather than is its express product. Religionistshave been right in thinking of it as an influx fromsources beyond conscious deliberation and purposea fact that lielps explain, psychologically, why it hasso generally been attributed to a supernatural sourceand that, perhaps, throws some light upon the refer-ence of it by William James to unconscious factors.And it is pertinent to note that the unification of theself throughout the ceaseless flux of what it does, suf-fers, and achieves, cannot be attained in terms of it-self. The self is always directed toward somethingbeyond itself and so its own unification depends uponthe idea of the integration of the shifting scenes ofthe w^orld into that imaginative totality we call theUniverse.The intimate connection of imagination with ideal

elements in experience is generally recognized. Suchis not the case with respect to its connection withfaith. The latter has been regarded as a substitute


28/100

20 A Common Faithfor knowledge, for sight. It is defined, in the Chris-tian religion, as evidence of things not seen. The im-plication is that faith is a kind of anticipatory visionof things that are now invisible because of the limita-tions of our finite and erring nature. Because it is asubstitute for knowledge, its material and object areintellectual in quality. As John Locke summed upthe matter, faith is assent to a proposition ... onthe credit of its proposer. Religious faith is thengiven to a body of propositions as true on the creditof their supernatural author, reason coming in todemonstrate the reasonableness of giving such credit.Of necessity there results the development of theolo-gies, or bodies of systematic propositions, to makeexplicit in organized form the content of the proposi-tions to which belief is attached and assent given.Given the point of view, those who hold that religionnecessarily implies a theology are correct.

But belief or faith has also a moral and practicalimport. Even devils, according to the older theolo-gians, believeand tremble. A distinction was made,therefore, between speculative or intellectual be-lief and an act called justifying faith. Apart fromany theological context, there is a difference betweenbelief that is a conviction that some end should besupreme over conduct, and belief that some object orbeing exists as a truth for the intellect. Convictionin the moral sense signifies being conquered, van-quished, in our active nature by an ideal end ; it sig-nifies acknowledgment of its rightful claim over ourdesires and purposes. Such acknowledgment is prac-


29/100

Religion versus the Religious 21tical, not primarily intellectual. It goes beyond evi-dence that can be presented to any possible observer.Reflection, often long and arduous, may be involvedin arriving at the conviction, but tlie import ofthought is not exhausted in discovery of evidencethat can justify intellectual assent. The authority ofan ideal over choice and conduct is the authority ofan ideal, not of a fact, of a truth guaranteed to in-tellect, not of the status of the one who propoundsthe truth.

Such moral faith is not easy. It was questioned ofold whether the Son of Man should find faith on theearth in his coming. Moral faith has been bolsteredby all sorts of arguments intended to prove that itsobject is not ideal and that its claim upon us is notprimarily moral or practical, since the ideal in ques-tion is already embedded in the existent frame ofthings. It is argued that the ideal is already the finalreality at the heart of things that exist, and that onlyour senses or the corruption of our natures preventus from apprehending its prior existential being.Starting, say, from such an idea as that justice ismore than a moral ideal because it is embedded inthe very make-up of the actually existent world, menhave gone on to build up vast intellectual schemes,philosophies, and theologies, to prove that ideals arereal not as ideals but as antecedently existing actu-alities. They have failed to see that in convertingmoral realities into matters of intellectual assent theyhave evinced lack of moral faith. Faith that some-thing should be in existence as far as lies in our power


30/100

22 A Common Faithis changed into the intellectual belief that it is al-ready in existence. When physical existence does notbear out the assertion, the physical is subtly changedinto the metaphysical. In this way, moral faith hasbeen inextricably tied up with intellectual beliefsabout the supernatural.The tendency to convert ends of moral faith and

action into articles of an intellectual creed has beenfurthered by a tendency of which psychologists arewell aware. What we ardently desire to have thus andso, we tend to believe is already so. Desire has a pow-erful influence upon intellectual beliefs. Moreover,

- when conditions are adverse to realization of the ob-jects of our desireand in the case of significantideals they are extremely adverseit is an easy wayout to assume that after all they are already em-bodied in the ultimate structure of what is, and thatappearances to the contrary are merely appearances.Imagination then merely supervenes and is freedfrom the responsibility for intervening. Weak na-tures take to reverie as a refuge as strong ones do tofanaticism. Those who dissent are mourned over bythe first class and converted through the use of forceby the second.What has been said does not imply that all moral

/faith in ideal ends is by virtue of that fact religious' in quality. The religious is morality touched byemotion only when the ends of moral convictionarouse emotions that are not only intense but are ac-tuated and supported by ends so inclusive tliat theyunify the self. The inclusiveness of the end in rela-


31/100

Religion versus the Reijgious 23tion to both self and the universe to which an in-clusive self is related is indispensable. According tothe best authorities, religion comes from a rootthat means being bound or tied. Originally, it meantbeing bound by vows to a particular way of lifeasles religieux were monks and nuns who had assumedcertain vows. The religious attitude signifies some-thing that is bound through imagination to a generalattitude. This comprehensive attitude, moreover, ismuch broader than anything indicated by moral inits usual sense. Tlie quality of attitude is displayedin art, science and good citizenship.

If we apply the conception set forth to the termsof the definition earlier quoted, these terms take on anew significance. An unseen power controlling ourdestiny becomes the power of an ideal. All possibili-ties, as possibilities, are ideal in character. The artist^scientist, citizen, parent, as far as they are actuatedby the spirit of their callings, are controlled by theunseen. For all endeavor for the better is moved byfaith in what is possible, not by adherence to the ac-tual. Nor does this faith depend for its moving powerupon intellectual assurance or belief that the thingsworked for must surely prevail and come into em-bodied existence. For the authority of the object todetermine our attitude and conduct, the right that isgiven it to claim our allegiance and devotion is basedon the intrinsic nature of the ideal. The outcome,given our best endeavor, is not with us. The inherentvice of all intellectual schemes of idealism is that theyconvert the idealism of action into a system of beliefs


32/100

24 A Common Faithabout antecedent reality. The character assigned thisreahty is so different from that which observationand reflection lead to and support that these schemesinevitably glide into alliance with the supernatural.

All religions, marked by elevated ideal quality,have dwelt upon the power of religion to introduceperspective into the piecemeal and shifting episodesof existence. Here too we need to reverse the ordinarystatement and say that whatever introduces genuineperspective is religious, not that religion is somethingthat introduces it. There can be no doubt (referringto the second element of the definition) of our de-pendence upon forces beyond our control. Primitiveman was so impotent in the face of these forces that,especially in an unfavorable natural environment,fear became a dominant attitude, and, as the old say-ing goes, fear created the gods.

With increase of mechanisms of control, the ele-ment of fear has, relatively speaking, subsided. Someoptimistic souls have even concluded that the forcesabout us are on the whole essentially benign. Butevery crisis, whether of the individual or of the com-munity, reminds man of the precarious and partialnature of the control he exercises. When man, indi-vidually and collectively, has done his uttermost, con-ditions that at different times and places have givenrise to the ideas of Fate and Fortune, of Chance andProvidence, remain. It is the part of manliness to in-sist upon the capacity of mankind to strive to directnatural and social forces to humane ends. But un-qualified absolutistic statements about the omnipo-


33/100

Religion versus the Religious 25tence of such endeavors reflect egoism rather than in-telligent courage.The fact that human destiny is so interwoven with

forces beyond human control renders it unnecessaryto suppose that dependence and the humility that ac-companies it have to find the particular channel thatis prescribed by traditional doctrines. What is espe-cially significant is rather the form which the sense ofdependence takes. Fear never gave stable perspectivein the life of anyone. It is dispersive and withdraw-ing. Most religions have in fact added rites of com-munion to those of expiation and propitiation. Forour dependence is manifested in those relations to theenvironment that support our undertakings and as-pirations as much as it is in the defeats inflicted uponus. The essentially unreligious attitude is that whichattributes human achievement and purpose to man inisolation from the world of physical nature and hisfellows. Our successes are dependent upon the co-operation of nature. The sense of the dignity of hu-man nature is as religious as is the sense of awe andreverence when it rests upon a sense of human natureas a cooperating part of a larger whole. Naturalpiety is not of necessity either a fatalistic acquies-cence in natural happenings or a romantic idealiza-tion of the world. It may rest upon a just sense ofnature as the whole of which we are parts, while italso recognizes that we are parts that are marked byintelligence and purpose, having the capacity tostrive by their aid to bring conditions into greaterconsonance with what is humanly desirable. Such


34/100

26 A Common Faithpiety is an inherent constituent of a just perspectivein life.

Understanding and knowledge also enter into aperspective that is religious in quality. Faith in thecontinued disclosing of truth through directed co-operative human endeavor is more religious in qual-ity than is any faith in a completed revelation. It isof course now usual to hold that revelation is notcompleted in the sense of being ended. But religionshold that the essential framework is settled in itssignificant moral features at least, and that new ele-ments that are offered must be judged by conform-ity to this framework. Some fixed doctrinal appara-tus is necessary for a religion. But faith in thepossibiUties of continued and rigorous inquiry doesnot limit access to truth to any channel or scheme ofthings. It does not first say that truth is universaland then add there is but one road to it. It does notdepend for assurance upon subjection to any dogmaor item of doctrine. It trusts that the natural inter-actions between man and his environment will breedmore intelligence and generate more knowledge pro-vided the scientific methods that define intelligencein operation are pushed further into the mysteries ofthe world, being themselves promoted and improvedin the operation. There is such a thing as faith in in-telligence becoming religious in qualitya fact thatperhaps explains the efforts of some religionists todisparage the possibilities of intelligence as a force.They properly feel such faith to be a dangerousrival.


35/100

Religion versus the Religious 27Lives that are consciously inspired by loyalty to

such ideals as have been mentioned are still compara-tively infrequent to the extent of that comprehensive-ness and intensity which arouse an ardor religious infunction. But before we infer the incompetency ofsuch ideals and of the actions they inspire, we shouldat least ask ourselves how much of the existing situa-tion is due to the fact that the religious factors ofexperience have been drafted into supernaturalchannels and thereby loaded with irrelevant encum-brances. A body of beliefs and practices that areapart from the common and natural relations ofmankind must, in the degree in which it is influential,weaken and sap the force of the possibilities inherentin such relations. Here lies one aspect of the emanci-pation of the religious from religion.Any activity pursued in behalf of an ideal end

against obstacles and in spite of threats of personalloss because of conviction of its general and endur-ing value is religious in quality. Many a person, in-quirer, artist, philanthropist, citizen, men and womenin the humblest walks of life, have achieved, withoutpresumption and without display, such unification ofthemselves and of their relations to the conditions ofexistence. It remains to extend their spirit and in-spiration to ever wider numbers. If I have said any-thing about religions and religion that seems harsh,I have said those things because of a firm belief thatthe claim on the part of religions to possess a mo-nopoly of ideals and of the supernatural means bywhich alone, it is alleged, they can be furthered.


36/100

28 A Common Faithstands in the way of the reaHzation of distinctivelyreligious values inherent in natural experience. Forthat reason, if for no other, I should be sorry if anywere misled by the frequency with which I have em-ployed the adjective religious to conceive of whatI have said as a disguised apology for what havepassed as religions. The opposition between religiousvalues as I conceive them and religions is not to bebridged. Just because the release of these values is soimportant, their identification with the creeds andcults of religions must be dissolved.


37/100

II

FAITH AND ITS OBJECTALL religions, as I pointed out in the preceding

. chapter, involve specific intellectual beliefs, andthev attachsome greater, some lessimportance toassent to these doctrines as true, true in the intel-lectual sense. Thej have literatures held especiallysacred, containing historical material with which thevalidity of the religions is connected. They have de-veloped a doctrinal apparatus it is incumbent uponbelievers (with varying degrees of strictness indifferent religions) to accept. They also insist thatthere is some special and isolated channel of accessto the truths they hold.No one will deny, I suppose, that the present crisisin religion is intimately bound up with these claims.The skepticism and agnosticism that are rife andthat from the standpoint of the religionist are fatalto the religious spirit are directly bound up with theintellectual contents, historical, cosmological, ethical,and theological, asserted to be indispensable in every-thing religious. There is no need for me here to gowith any minuteness into the causes that have gener-ated doubt and disbelief, uncertainty and rejection,as to these contents. It is enough to point out that allthe beliefs and ideas in question, whether having todo with historical and literary matters, or with as-tronomy, geology and biology, or with the creation


38/100

30 A Common Faithand structure of the world and man, are connectedwith the supernatural, and that this connection is thefactor that has brought doubt upon them ; the factorthat from the standpoint of historic and institutionalreligions is sapping the religious life itself.The obvious and simple facts of the case are that

some views about the origin and constitution of theworld and man, some views about the course of hu-man history and personages and incidents in that his-tory, have become so interwoven with religion as tobe identified with it. On the other hand, the growthof knowledge and of its methods and tests has beensuch as to make acceptance of these beliefs increas-ingly onerous and even impossible for large numbersof cultivated men and women. With such persons, theresult is that the more these ideas are used as thebasis and justification of a religion, the more dubiousthat religion becomes.

Protestant denominations have largely abandonedthe idea that particular ecclesiastic sources can au-thoritatively determine cosmic, historic and theologi-cal beliefs. The more liberal among them have at leastmitigated the older belief that individual hardnessand corruption of heart are the causes of intellectualrejection of the intellectual apparatus of the Chris-tian religion. But these denominations have also, withexceptions numerically insignificant, retained a cer-tain indispensable minimum of intellectual content.They ascribe peculiar religious force to certain liter-ary documents and certain historic personages. Evenwhen they have greatly reduced the bulk of intellec-


39/100

Faith and Its Object 31tual content to be accepted, thej have insisted atleast upon theism and the immortahty of the indi-vidual.

It is no part of my intention to rehearse in anydetail tiie weighty facts that collectively go by thename of the conflict of science and rcliijiona con-flict that is not done away with b}^ calling it a con-flict of science with theology, as long as even a mini-mum of intellectual assent is prescribed as essential.The inijjact o astronomy not merely upon the oldercosmogony of religion but upon elements of creedsdealing with historic eventswitness the idea of as-cent into heavenis familiar. Geological discoverieshave displaced creation myths which once bulkedlarge. Jiiology has revolutionized conceptions of souland mind which once occupied a central place in re-ligious beliefs and ideas, and this science has made aprofound impression upon ideas of sin, redemption,and immortality. Anthropology, history and literarycriticism have furnished a radically different versionof the historic events and personages upon whichChristian religions have built. Psychology is alreadyopening to us natural explanations of ])henomena soextraordinary that once their supernatural originwas, so to say, the natural explanation.The significant bearing for my purpose of all this

is that new methods of inquiry and reflection havebecome for the educated man today the final arbiterof all questions of fact, existence, and intellectualassent. Nothing less than a revolution in the seat ofintellectual authority has taken place. This revolu-


40/100

32 A Common Faithtion, rather than any particular aspect of its impactupon this and that religious belief, is the centralthing. In this revolution, every defeat is a stimulusto renewed inquiry; every victory won is the opendoor to more discoveries, and every discovery is a newseed planted in the soil of intelligence, from whichgrow fresh plants with new fruits. The mind of manis being habituated to a new method and ideal : Thereis but one sure road of access to truththe road ofpatient, cooperative inquiry operating by means ofobservation, experiment, record and controlled re-flection.The scope of the change is well illustrated by the

fact that whenever a particular outpost is surren-dered it is usually met by the remark from a liberaltheologian that the particular doctrine or supposedhistoric or literary tenet surrendered was never, afterall, an intrinsic part of religious belief, and thatwithout it the true nature of religion stands out moreclearly than before. Equally significant is the grow-ing gulf between fundamentalists and liberals in thechurches. What is not realizedalthough perhaps itis more definitely seen by fundamentalists than byliberalsis that the issue does not concern this andthat piecemeal item of belief, but centers in the ques-tion of the method by which any and every item ofintellectual belief is to be arrived at and justified.The positive lesson is that religious qualities and

values if they are real at all are not bound up withany single item of intellectual assent, not even that ofthe existence of the God of theism ; and that, under


41/100

Fahh and Its Object 33existing conditions, the religious function in experi-ence can be emancipated only through surrender ofthe whole notion of special truths that are religiousby their own nature, together with the idea of pe-culiar avenues of access to such truths. For were weto admit that there is but one method for ascertain-ing fact and truththat conveyed by the word sci-entific in its most general and generous sensenodiscovery in any branch of knowledge and inquirycould then disturb the faith that is religious. I shoulddescribe this faith as the unification of the selfthrough allegiance to inclusive ideal ends, which im-agination presents to us and to which the human willresponds as worthy of controlling our desires andchoices.

It is probably impossible to imagine the amount ofintellectual energy that has been diverted from nor-mal processes of arriving at intellectual conclusionsbecause it has gone into rationalization of the doc-trines entertained by historic religions. The set thathas thus been given the general mind is much moreharmful, to my mind, than are the consequences ofany one particular item of belief, serious as have beenthose flowing from acceptance of some of them. Themodern liberal version of the intellectual content ofChristianity seems to the modern mind to be morerational than some of the earlier doctrines that havebeen reacted against. Such is not the case in fact.The theological philosophers of the INIiddle Ages hadno greater difficulty in giving rational form to all thedoctrines of the Roman church than has the liberal


42/100

34 A Common Faiththeologian of today in formulating and justifyingintellectually the doctrines he entertains. This state-ment is as applicable to the doctrine of continuingmiracles, penance, indulgences, saints and angels,etc., as to the trinity, incarnation, atonement, andthe sacraments. The fundamental question, I repeat,is not of this and that article of intellectual belief butof intellectual habit, method and criterion.One method of swerving aside the impact of

changed knowledge and method upon the intellectualcontent of religion is the method of division of terri-tory and jurisdiction into two parts. Formerly thesewere called the realm of nature and the realm ofgrace. They are now often known as those of revela-tion and natural knowledge. Modern religious liber-alism has no definite names for them, save, perhaps,the division, referred to in the last chapter, betweenscientific and religious experience. The implication isthat in one territory the supremacy of scientificknowledge must be acknowledged, while there is an-other region, not very precisely defined, of intimatepersonal experience wherein other methods and cri-teria hold sway.

This method of justifying the peculiar and legiti-mate claim of certain elements of belief is alwaysopen to the objection that a positive conclusion isdrawn from a negative fact. Existing ignorance orbackwardness is employed to assert the existence of adivision in the nature of the subject-matter dealtwith. Yet the gap may only reflect, at most, a limita-tion now existing but in the future to be done away


43/100

Faith and Its Object 3.5with. The argument that because some province oraspect of experience has not 3'et been invaded byscientific methods, it is not subject to tliem, is as oldas it is dangerous. Time and time again, in some par-ticular reserved field, it has been invalidated. Psy-chology is still in its infancy. He is bold to tlie pointof raslmess who asserts that intimate personal ex-perience will never come within the ken of naturalknowledge.

It is more to the present point, however, to con-sider the region that is claimed by religionists as aspecial reserve. It is mystical experience. The differ-ence, however, between mystic experience and thetheory about it that is offered to us must be noted.The experience is a fact to be inquired into. Thetheor}^, like any theory, is an interpretation of thefact. The idea that by its very nature the experienceis a veridical realization of the direct presence ofGod does not rest so much upon examination of thefacts as it does upon importing into their interpreta-tion a conception that is formed outside them. In itsdependence upon a prior conception of the super-natural, which is the thing to be proved, it begs thequestion.

History exhibits many types of mystic experience,and each of these types is contemporaneously ex-plained by the concepts that prevail in the cultureand the circle in which the phenomena occur. Thereare mystic crises that arise, as amonff some NorthAmerican Indian tribes, induced by fasting. Theyare accompanied by trances and semi-hysteria. Their


44/100

36 A Common Faithpurpose is to gain some special power, such perhapsas locating a person who is lost or finding objectsthat have been secreted. There is the mysticism ofHindoo practice now enjoying some vogue in West-ern countries. There is the mystic ecstasy of Neo-platonism with its complete abrogation of the self andabsorption into an impersonal whole of Being. Thereis the mysticism of intense aesthetic experience inde-pendent of any theological or metaphysical interpre-tation. There is the heretical mysticism of WilliamBlake. There is the mysticism of sudden unreasoningfear in which the very foundations seem shaken be-neath one^to mention but a few of the types thatmay be found.What common element is there between, say, theNeoplatonic conception of a super-divine Beingwholly apart from human needs and conditions andthe medieval theory of an immediate union that isfostered through attention to the sacraments orthrough concentration upon the heart of Jesus ? Thecontemporary emphasis of some Protestant theolo-gians upon the sense of inner personal communionwith God, found in religious experience, is almost asfar away from medieval Christianity as it is fromNeoplatonism or Yoga. Interpretations of the ex-perience have not gro\vn from the experience itselfwith the aid of such scientific resources as may beavailable. They have been imported by borrowingwithout criticism from ideas that are current in thesurrounding culture.The mystic states of the shaman and of some


45/100

Faith and Its Object 37North American Indians are frankly techniques forgaining a sj)ccial power the power as it is conceivedby some revivahst sects. There is no especial intel-lectual objectification accompanying the experience.The knowledge that is said to be gained is not thatof Being but of particular secrets and occult modesof operation. The aim is not to gain knowledge ofsuperior divine power, but to get advice, cures for thesick, prestige, etc. The conception that mystic ex-perience is a normal mode of religious experience bywhich we may acquire knowledge of God and divinethings is a nineteenth-century interpretation thathas gained vogue in direct ratio to the decline ofolder methods of religious apologetics.

There is no reason for denying the existence ofexperiences that are called mystical. On the con-trary, there is every reason to suppose that, in somedegree of intensity, they occur so frequently thatthey may be regarded as normal manifestations thattake place at certain rhythmic points in the move-ment of experience. The assumption that denial of aparticular interpretation of their objective contentproves that those who make the denial do not havethe experience in question, so that if they had it theywould be equally persuaded of its objective source inthe presence of God, has no foundation in fact. Aswith every empirical phenomenon, the occurrence ofthe state called mystical is simply an occasion for in-quiry into its mode of causation. There is no morereason for converting the experience itself into animmediate knowledge of its cause than in the case of


46/100

38 A Common Faithan experience of lightning or any other natural oc-currence.My purpose, then, in this brief reference to mys-ticism is not to throw doubt upon the existence ofparticular experiences called mystical. Nor is it topropound any theory to account for them. I have re-ferred to the matter merely as an illustration of thegeneral tendency to mark off two distinct realms inone of wliich science has jurisdiction, while in theother, special modes of immediate knowledge of re-ligious objects have authority. This dualism as itoperates in contemporary interpretation of mysticexperience in order to validate certain beliefs is but areinstatement of the old duahsm between the naturaland the supernatural, in terms better adapted to thecultural conditions of the present time. Since it is theconception of the supernatural that science calls inquestion, the circular nature of this type of reason-ing is obvious.

Apologists for a religion often point to the shiftthat goes on in scientific ideas and materials as evi-dence of the unreliability of science as a mode ofknowledge. They often seem peculiarly elated by thegreat, almost revolutionary, change in fundamentalphysical conceptions that has taken place in scienceduring the present generation. Even if the allegedunreliability were as great as they assume (or evengreater), the question would remain: Have we anyother recourse for knowledge? But in fact they missthe point. Science is not constituted by any particu-lar body of subject-matter. It is constituted by a


47/100

Faith and Its Object 39method, a mctliod of changing behefs by means oftested inquiry as well as of arriving at them. It is itsglory, not its condemnation, that its subject-matterdevelops as the method is improved. There is no spe-cial subject-matter of belief that is sacrosanct. Theidentification of science with a particular set of be-liefs and ideas is itself a hold-over of ancient andstiD current dogmatic habits of thought which areopposed to science in its actuality and which scienceis undermining.For scientific method is adverse not only to dogma

but to doctrine as well, provided we take doctrinein its usual meaninga body of definite beliefs thatneed only to be taught and learned as true. Thisnegative attitude of science to doctrine does not indi-cate indifference to truth. It signifies supreme loy-alty to the metliod by which truth is attained. Thescientific-religious conflict ultimately is a conflict be-tween allegiance to this method and allegiance toeven an irreducible minimum of belief so fixed in ad-vance that it can never be modified.The metliod of intelligence is open and public. Thedoctrinal method is limited and private. This limita-tion persists even when knowledge of the truth thatis religious is said to be arrived at by a special modeof experience, that termed rehgious. For the lat-ter is assumed to be a very special kind of experience.To be sure it is asserted to be open to all who obeycertain conditions. Yet the mystic experience yields,as we have seen, various results in the way of beliefto different persons, depending upon the surround-


48/100

40 A Common Faithing culture of those who undergo it. As a method, itlacks the public character belonging to the methodof intelligence. Moreover, when the experience inquestion does not yield consciousness of the presenceof God, in the sense that is alleged to exist, the retortis always at hand that it is not a genuine religiousexperience. For by definition, only that experienceis religious which arrives at this particular result.The argument is circular. The traditional position isthat some hardness or corruption of heart preventsone from having the experience. Liberal religionistsare now more humane. But their logic does not differ.

It is sometimes held that beliefs about religiousmatters are symbolic, like rites and ceremonies. Thisview may be an advance upon that which holds totheir literal objective validity. But as usually putforward it suffers from an ambiguity. Of what arethe beliefs symbols.? Are they symbols of things ex-perienced in other modes than those set apart as re-ligious, so that the things symbolized have an inde-pendent standing? Or are they symbols in the senseof standing for some transcendental realitytran-scendental because not being the subject-matter ofexperience generally? Even the fundamentalist ad-mits a certain quality and degree of symbolism inthe latter sense in objects of religious belief. For heholds that the objects of these beliefs are so farbeyond finite human capacity that our beliefs mustbe couched in more or less metaphorical terms. Theconception that faith is the best available substitutefor knowledge in our present estate still attaches to


49/100

Faith and Its Object 41the notion of the symboHc character of the materialsof faith ; unless by ascribing to tliem a symbolic na-ture we mean that these materials stand for some-thing that is verifiable in general and public ex-perience.Were we to adopt the latter point of view, it would

be evident not only that the intellectual articles of acreed must be understood to be symbolic of moraland other ideal values, but that the facts taken to behistoric and used as concrete evidence of the intel-lectual articles are themselves symbolic. These ar-ticles of a creed present events and persons that havebeen made over by the idealizing imagination in theinterest, at their best, of moral ideals. Historic per-sonages in their divine attributes are materializationsof the ends that enlist devotion and inspire endeavor.They are symbolic of the reality of ends moving usin many forms of experience. The ideal values thatare thus symbolized also mark human experience inscience and art and the various modes of human asso-ciation: they mark ahnost everything in life thatrises from the level of manipulation of conditions asthey exist. It is admitted that the objects of religionare ideal in contrast with our present state. Whatwould be lost if it were also admitted that they haveauthoritative claim upon conduct just because theyare ideal.? The assumption that these objects of re-ligion exist already in some realm of Being seems toadd nothing to their force, while it weakens theirclaim over us as ideals, in so far as it bases that claimupon matters that are intellectually dubious. The


50/100

42 A Common Faithquestion narrows itself to this: Are the ideals thatmove us genuinely ideal or are they ideal only incontrast with our present estate?The import of the question extends far. It deter-

mines the meaning given to the word God. On onescore, the word can mean only a particular Being.On the other score, it denotes the unity of all idealends arousing us to desire and actions. Does the unifi-cation have a claim upon our attitude and conductbecause it is already, apart from us, in reaUzed exist-ence, or because of its own inherent meaning andvalue.? Suppose for the moment that the word Godmeans the ideal ends that at a given time and placeone acknowledges as having authority over his voli-tion and emotion, the values to which one is su-premely devoted, as far as these ends, through imagi-nation, take on unity. If we make this supposition,the issue will stand out clearly in contrast with thedoctrine of religions that God designates somekind of Being having prior and therefore non-idealexistence.The word non-ideal is to be taken literally in re-gard to some religions that have historically existed,

to all of them as far as they are neglectful of moralqualities in their divine beings. It does not apply inthe same literal way to Judaism and Christianity.For they have asserted that the Supreme Being hasmoral and spiritual attributes. But it applies to themnone the less in that these moral and spiritual char-acters are thought of as properties of a particularexistence and are thought to be of religious value for


51/100

Faith and Its Object 48us because of this embodiment in sucli an existence.Here, as far as I can see, is the ultimate issue as tothe difference between a religion and the religious asa function of experience.The idea that God represents a unification of

ideal values that is essentially imaginative in originwhen the imagination supervenes in conduct is at-tended with verbal difficulties owing to our frequentuse of the word imagination to denote fantasy anddoubtful reality. But the reality of ideal ends asideals is vouched for by their undeniable power inaction. An ideal is not an illusion because imagina-tion is the organ through which it is apprehended.For all possibilities reach us through the imagina-tion. In a definite sense the only meaning that canbe assigned the term imagination is that thingsunrealized in fact come home to us and have powerto stir us. The unification effected through imagina-tion is not fanciful, for it is the reflex of the unifica-tion of practical and emotional attitudes. The unitysignifies not a single Being, but the unity of loyaltyand effort evoked by the fact that many ends are onein the power of their ideal, or imaginative, qualityto stir and hold us.We may well ask whether the power and signifi-cance in life of the traditional conceptions of Godare not due to the ideal qualities referred to by them,the hypostatization of them into an existence beingdue to a conflux of tendencies in human nature thatconverts the object of desire into an antecedent re-ality (as was mentioned in the previous chapter)


52/100

44 A Common Faithwith beliefs that have prevailed in the cultures of thepast. For in the older cultures the idea of the super-natural was natural, (^in the sense in which natu-ral signifies something customary and familial) Itseems more credible that religious persons have beensupported and consoled by the reality with whichideal values appeal to them than that they have beenupborne by sheer matter of fact existence. That,when once men are inured to the idea of the union ofthe ideal and the physical, the two should be sobound together in emotion that it is difficult to insti-tute a separation, agrees with all we know of humanpsychology.The benefits that will accrue, however, from mak-

ing the separation are evident. The dislocation freesthe religious values of experience once for all frommatters that are continually becoming more dubious.With that release there comes emancipation from thenecessity of resort to apologetics. The reality of idealends and values in their authority over us is an un-doubted fact. The validity of justice, affection, andthat inteljprtnal rorrespondence of our ideas with rp-j,lities that we calMvnTtTr, is so assured in its holdupon humanity that it is unnecessary for the reli-gious attitude to encumber itself with the apparatusof dogma and doctrine. Any other conception of thereligious attitude, when it is adequately analyzed,means that those who hold it care more for forcethan for ideal valuessince all that an Existencecan add is force to establish, to punish, and to re-ward. There are, indeed, some persons who frankly


53/100

Faith and Its Object 45say tliat their own faith does not require any guar-antee that moral values are backed up by physicalforce, but wlio hold that the masses are so backwardthat ideal values will not affect their conduct unlessin the popular belief these values have the sanctionof a power tiiat can enforce them and can executejustice upon tliose who fail to comply.

There arc some persons, deserving of more respect,who say: We agree that the beginning must bemade with the primacy of the ideal. But why stop atthis point.? Why not search with the utmost eager-ness and vifTor for all the evidence we can find, suchas is supplied by history, by presence of design innature, which may lead on to the belief that the idealis already extant in a Personality having objectiveexistence.' 'One answer to the question is that we are involved

by this search in all the problems of the existence ofevil that have haunted theology in the past and thatthe most ingenious apologetics have not faced, muchless met. If these apologists had not identified theexistence of ideal goods with that of a Person sup-posed to originate and support thema Being,moreover, to whom omnipotent power is attributedthe problem of the occurrence of evil would begratuitous. The significance of ideal ends andmeanings is, indeed, closely connected with the factthat there are in life all sorts of things that are evilto us because we would have them otherwise. Wereexisting conditions wholly good, the notion of possi-bilities to be realized would never emerge.


54/100

46 A Common FaithBut the more basic answer is that while if the

search is conducted upon a strictly empirical basisthere is no reason why it should not take place, as amatter of fact it is always undertaken in the interestof the supernatural. Thus it diverts attention andenergy from ideal values and from the explorationof actual conditions by means of which they may bepromoted. History is testimony to this fact. Menhave never fully used the powers they possess to ad-vance the good in life, because they have waited uponsome power external to themselves and to nature todo the work they are responsible for doing. Depend-ence upon an external power is the counterpart ofsurrender of human endeavor. Nor is emphasis onexercising our own powers for good an egoistical ora sentimentally optimistic recourse. It is not the first,for it does not isolate man, either individually or col-lectively, from nature. It is not the second, becauseit makes no assumption beyond that of the need andresponsibility for human endeavor, and beyond theconviction that, if human desire and endeavor wereenlisted in behalf of natural ends, conditions wouldbe bettered. It involves no expectation of a millen-nium of good.

Belief in the supernatural as a necessary power forapprehension of the ideal and for practical attach-ment to it has for its counterpart a pessimistic beliefin the corruption and impotency of natural means.That is axiomatic in Christian dogma. But this ap-parent pessimism has a way of suddenly changinginto an exaggerated optimism. For according to the


55/100

Faith and Its Object 47terms of the doctrine, if the faith in the supernaturalis of the rc'Cjuired order, regeneration at once takesplace. Goodness, in all essentials, is tliercby estab-lished ; if not, there is proof that the established re-lation to tlie supernatural has been vitiated. Thisromantic optimism is one cause for the excessive at-tention to individual salvation characteristic of tradi-tional Cliristianity. Belief in a sudden and completetransmutation tlirough conversion and in the ob-jective efficacy of prayer, is too easy a way out ofdifficulties. It leaves matters in general just about asthey were before; that is, sufficiently bad so thatthere is additional support for the idea that onlysupernatural aid can better them. The position ofnatural intelliij-ence is that there exists a mixture ofgood and evil, and that reconstruction in the direc-tion of the good which is indicated by ideal ends,must take place, if at all, through continued co-operative eflfort. There is at least enough impulsetoward justice, kindliness, and order so that if itwere mobilized for action, not expecting abrupt andcomplete transformation to occur, the disorder, cru-elty, and oppression that exist would be reduced.The discussion has arrived at a point where a more

fundamental objection to the position I am takingneeds consideration. The misunderstanding uponwhich tliis ol)jection rests should be pointed out. Theview I have advanced is sometimes treated as if theidentification of the divine with ideal ends left theideal wholly without roots in existence and withoutsupport from existence. The objection implies that


56/100

48 A Common Faithmy view commits one to such a separation of the idealand the existent that the ideal has no chance to findlodgment even as a seed that might grow and bearfruit. On the contrary, what I have been criticizingis the identification of the ideal with a particularBeing, especially when that identification makes nec-essary the conclusion that this Being is outside ofnature, and what I have tried to show is that theideal itself has its roots in natural conditions; itemerges when the imagination idealizes existence bylaying hold of the possibilities offered to thought andaction. There are values, goods, actually realizedupon a natural basisthe goods of human associa-tion, of art and knowledge. The idealizing imagina-tion seizes upon the most precious things found in theclimacteric moments of experience and projectsthem. We need no external criterion and g-uaranteefor their goodness. They are had, they exist as good,and out of them we frame our ideal ends.

Moreover, the ends that result from our projectionof experienced goods into objects of thought, desireand effort exist, only they exist as ends. Ends, pur-poses, exercise determining power in human conduct.The aims of philanthropists, of Florence Nightin-gale, of Howard, of Wilberforce, of Peabody, havenot been idle dreams. They have modified institu-tions. Aims, ideals, do not exist simply in mind ;they exist in character, in personality and action.One might call the roll of artists, intellectual in-quirers, parents, friends, citizens who are neighbors,to show that purposes exist in an operative way.


57/100

Faith and Its Object 49What I have been objecting to, I repeat, is not theidea that ideals are linked with existence and thatthey themselves exist, through human embodiment,as forces, but the idea that their authority and valuedepend upon some prior complete embodimentas ifthe efforts of human beings in behalf of justice, orknowledge or beauty, depended for their effectivenessand validity upon assurance that there already ex-isted in some supernal region a place where criminalsare humanely treated, where there is no serfdom orslavery, where all facts and truths are already dis-covered and possessed, and all beauty is eternally dis-played in actualized form.The aims and ideals that move us are generated

through imagination. But they are not made out ofimaginary stuff. They are made out of the hard stuffof the world of physical and social experience. Thelocomotive did not exist before Stevenson, nor thetelegraph before the time of Morse. But the condi-tions for their existence were there in physical ma-terial and energies and in human capacity. Imagina-tion seized hold upon the idea of a rearrangement ofexisting things that would evolve new objects. Thesame thing is true of a painter, a musician, a poet,a philanthropist, a moral prophet. The new visiondoes not arise out of nothing, but emerges throughseeing, in terms of possibilities, that is, of imagina-tion, old things in new relations serving a new endwhich the new end aids in creating.

Moreover the process of creation is experimentaland continuous. The artist, scientific man, or good


58/100

50 A Common Faithcitizen, depends upon what others have done beforehim and are doing around him. The sense of newvalues that become ends to be reahzed arises first indim and uncertain form. As the values are dweltupon and carried forward in action they grow indefiniteness and coherence. Interaction between aimand existent conditions improves and tests the idealand conditions are at the same time modified. Idealschange as they are applied in existent conditions.The process endures and advances with the life ofhumanity. What one person and one group accom-plish becomes the standing ground and startingpoint of those who succeed them. When the vital fac-tors in this natural process are generally acknowl-edged in emotion, thought and action, the processwill be both accelerated and purified through elimi-nation of that irrelevant element that culminates inthe idea of the supernatural. When the vital factorsattain the religious force that has been drafted intosupernatural religions, the resulting reinforcementwill be incalculable.

These considerations may be applied to the ideaof God, or, to avoid misleading conceptions, to theidea of the divine. This idea is, as I have said, one ofideal possibihties unified through imaginative reali-zation and projection. But this idea of God, or ofthe divine, is also connected with all the naturalforces and conditionsincluding man and human as-sociationthat promote the growth of the ideal andthat further its realization. We are in the presenceneither of ideals completely embodied in existence


59/100

P^AiTH AND Its Object 51nor yet of ideals that are mere rootless ideals, fan-tasies, Utopias. P'or there are forces in nature and so-ciety that generate and support the ideals. They arefurther unified by the action that gives them co-herence and solidity. It is this active relation betweenideal and actual to which I would give the nameGod. I would not insist that the name must begiven. There are those who hold that the associationsof the term with the supernatural are so numerousand close that any use of the word God is sure togive rise to misconception and be taken as a conces-sion to traditional ideas.They may be correct in this view. But the facts to

which I have referred are there, and they need to bebrought out with all possible clearness and force.There exist concretely and experimentally goodsthe values of art in all its forms, of knowledge, ofeffort and of rest after striving, of education andfellowship, of friendship and love, of growth in mindand body. These goods are there and yet they arerelatively embryonic. Many persons are shut outfrom generous participation in them ; there areforces at work that threaten and sap existent goodsas well as prevent their expansion. A clear and in-tense conception of a union of ideal ends with actualconditions is capable of arousing steady emotion. Itmay be fed by every experience, no matter what itsmaterial.

In a distracted age, the need for such an idea isurgent. It can unif^' interests and energies now dis-persed ; it can direct action and generate the heat of


60/100

52 A Common Faithemotion and the light of intelhgence. Whether onegives the name God to this union, operative inthought and action, is a matter for individual de-cision. But the function of such a working union ofthe ideal and actual seems to me to be identical withthe force that has in fact been attached to the con-ception of God in all the religions that have a spirit-ual content ; and a clear idea of that function seemsto me urgently needed at the present time.The sense of this union may, with some persons,be furthered by mystical experiences, using the termmystical in its broadest sense. That result dependslargely upon temperament. But there is a markeddifference between the union associated with mysti-cism and the union which I had in mind. There isnothing mystical about the latter ; it is natural andmoral. Nor is there anything mystical about the per-ception or consciousness of such union. Imaginationof ideal ends pertinent to actual conditions repre-sents the fruition of a disciplined mind. There is, in-deed, even danger that resort to mystical experienceswill be an escape, and that its result will be the pas-sive feeling that the union of actual and ideal is al-ready accompHshed. But in fact this union is activeand practical ; it is a uniting, not something given.One reason why personally I think it fitting to use

the word God to denote that uniting of the idealand actual which has been spoken of, lies in the factthat aggressive atheism seems to me to have some-thing in common with traditional supernaturalism.I do not mean merely that the former is mainly so


61/100

Faith and Its Object 58negative that it fails to give positive direction tothought, though that fact is pertinent. What I havein mind especially is the exclusive j)rc()ccupation ofboth militant atheism and supernatuinlisni with manin isolation. For in spite of supernaturalism's refer-ence to something be3'ond nature, it conceives of thisearth as the moral center of the universe and of manas the apex of the whole scheme of things. It regardsthe drama of sin and redemption enacted within theisolated and lonely soul of man as the one thing ofultimate importance. Apart from man, nature is heldeither accursed or negligible. Militant atheism is alsoaffected by lack of natural piety. The ties bindingman to nature that poets have always celebrated arepassed over lightly. The attitude taken is often thatof man living in an indifferent and hostile world andissuing blasts of defiance. A religious attitude, how-ever, needs the sense of a connection of man, in theway of both dependence and support, with the en-veloping world that the imagination feels is a uni-verse. Use of the words God or divine to conveythe union of actual with ideal may protect man froma sense of isolation and from consequent despair ordefiance.

In any case, whatever the name, the meaning isselective. For it involves no miscellaneous worship ofeverything in general. It selects those factors in ex-istence that generate and support our idea of goodas an end to be striven for. It excludes a multitudeof forces that at any given time are irrelevant to thisfunction. Nature produces whatever gives reinforce-


62/100

54s A Common Faithment and direction but also what occasions discordand confusion. The divine is thus a term of humanchoice and aspiration. A humanistic religion, if itexcludes our relation to nature, is pale and thin, asit is presumptuous, when it takes humanity as an ob-ject of worship. Matthew Arnold's conception of apower not ourselves is too narrow in its referenceto operative and sustaining conditions. While it isselective, it is too narrow in its basis of selectionrighteousness. The conception thus needs to be wid-ened in two ways. The powers that generate and sup-port the good as experienced and as ideal, workwithin as well as without. There seems to be a remi-niscence of an external Jehovah in Arnold's state-ment. And the powers work to enforce other valuesand ideals than righteousness. Arnold's sense of anopposition between Hellenism and Hebraism resultedin exclusion of beauty, truth, and friendship fromthe list of the consequences toward which powerswork within and without.

In the relation between nature and human endsP and endeavors, recent science has broken down theolder dualism. It has been engaged in this task for

three centuries. But as long as the conceptions ofscience were strictly mechanical (mechanical in thesense of assuming separate things acting upon oneanother purely externally by push and pull), re-ligious apologists had a standing ground in pointingout the differences between man and physical nature.The differences could be used for arguing that some-thing supernatural had intervened in the case of


63/100

Faith and Its Object 55man. The recent acclaim, however, by apologists forreligion of the surrender by science of the classictype of mechanicalism* seems ill-advised from theirown point of view. For the change in the modernscientific view of nature simply brings man and na-ture nearer together. We are no longer compelledto choose between explaining away what is distinctivein man through reducing him to another form of amechanical model and the doctrine that somethingHterally supernatural marks him off from nature.Tlie less mechanicalin its older sensephysicalnature is found to be, the closer is man to nature.

In his fascinating book. The Dawn of Conscience,James Henry Breasted refers to Haeckel as sayingthat the question he would most wish to have an- xk^ unive(tswered is this: Is the universe friendly to mar^)The /s nr^j^question is an ambiguous one. Friendly to man in iNDif^e''^'^'*^what respect? With respect to ease and comfort, Xolb ^^f^ 'material success, to egoistic ambitions.? Or to hisaspiration to inquire and discover, to invent and cre-ate, to build a more secure order for human exist-ence? In whatever form the question be put, the an-swer cannot in all honesty be an unqualified and ab-solute one. Mr. Breasted's answer, as a historian, isthat nature has been friendl}' to the emergence anddevelopment of conscience and character. Those whowill have all or nothing cannot be satisfied with thisanswer. Emergence and growth are not enough for

* 1 use this term because science has not abandoned its beliefsin working mecli

1 a Common Faith

Documents

Transcript of 1 a Common Faith