[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.We cannot, however, say this unconditionally the religious spirit alwaystends to separate from the rational and to confine itself to the elemental sphere of human energy, whilethe rational tends to break away from the vital instinct (and here the potentiality of a conflict betweenreligion and science resides) but we can say that religion, becoming itself a cause, has guided andinfluenced the whole of human evolution.Institutions, when once formed, are preserved by the religiousimpulse which produced them, and their life is then protected by a veil of religious mystery, covering whatis holy and not to be defiled.This is the case with the family, the marriage system, and the more fluid, yetno less permanent, unwritten regulations of the social organization.The chief significance of religion,however, resides in the fact that it has always performed, and still continues to perform, the importantduty of guarding those elemental forces, upon the soundness of which the permanence of civilizationdepends, and, in particular, to consecrate the life of the individual and the institution of the family, thetwo ultimate bases of progress.The various spheres of human activity are undifferentiated in primitive culture; they are all religious.But when we consider a barbarous stage, such as that of many early Mohammedan and Christian peoples,we find differentiation begun in practice, though not always as yet in theory.Politics and science, forinstance, lose their religious character, but everything is still controlled by and subservient to religion; thefaith sets limits and prescribes methods.We see, however, from time to time a remarkable recurrence ofthe primitive lack of differentiation, in the way in which religion takes the place of nationality, or ratherextends the idea of the family.The early Greek empire, and such offshoots from it as the Jacobites,Maronites, and Nestorians, supply examples of this; citizens of the Byzantine empire regarded themselvesnot as such, but as members of the Orthodox Church.This alone was the tie between them.Even in ourown country now, when the word Christian is used in ordinary parlance, it is a synonym for a trueEnglishman.But in modern civilization the process of differentiation has gone further, and the religioussphere is narrowed down until it embraces, as a rule, merely the subconscious life of the average individualand the domestic relations of the family circle, and not all of these, but only such part as is not concernedwith practical life.Much of this result is due to the modern tendency to turn religion into subjectiveidealism.Yet even here religion asserts its origin and enforces its primal claim over the elemental sphere;it is regarded still as the basis of character, and therefore as controlling the whole life of the man.Even incases where the influence of rationalism or expediency has completely excluded religion from theconsciousness, yet the material from which it may grow still remains, and gives rise subconsciously toprinciples which are essentially, though not consciously religious, as in the relations of domestic life, thepersonal rules of honour and decency, duty, commercial and social: religion still inspires these.In suchcases religion has become subconscious once more, and when we are told that sane and normal charactersdo actually live without religion, the reply is that they are still religious, subconsciously, and in many caseshave turned against the ancient faith through some misconception of its meaning.The average individual is rarely conscious of the ultimate motive of his acts; the most carefulintrospection hardly enables him to see further than the occasion or the proximate cause.Thus the95 Pythagoreans abstained from flesh-meat for a fanciful reason, and from beans for a grotesque corollary ofthat reason.Primitive humanity, whether viewed in the savage or the child, supplies many cases of this.Such being the state of the average mind, when consciousness demands at least a temporary sovereign inman s kingdom of ends, various partial motives usurp the throne.Patriotism, conservatism, altruism,human progress, thus may obscure the claims of life, the individual and the family, whose triple crown isreligion.Similarly, the mass of mankind supports institutions, just as a minority attacks them, for a wrongreason, the prejudice in favour of the present and of the old ways.Such support gives permanence to theelements of life, but supplies the far-sighted elder, priest, or other ruler, with a weapon by which he canquell discontent and check innovation.Often, it is true, both in modern and primitive times, the selfishand unscrupulous have used this weapon for their own ends, but such cases are really exceptional; in mostof them the very desire for self-assertion is but the conscious expression, showing indeed a certainnarrowness of vision, of what is subconsciously the true religious spirit, the affirmation of what must needsbe permanent.A ruler or priest may thus be following, without knowing it, a true and beneficent impulse.The case is not dissimilar when, as so often happens, a statesman is bound to give a false reason for action,simply because the people are unable to understand the true.Political irony of this sort is no lessinevitable and no less useful to the subjects of it than that which experience demands in the educationof the young, where religion fulfils towards the immature its function of safeguarding life and strengthundoubtedly better by the use of its veil of mystery than it could by premature revelation.Kidd has argued that the present phase of human evolution is not primarily intellectual.He comparesthe average modern intelligence with that of ancient Greece.But Greece was an abnormal case.A smallaristocratic population was able, thanks to slavery and the absence of commercial stress, to devote itselfto culture.It is a mistake to regard the whole population as being above the average.But in spite of theachievements of Greece, her thought had one fatal defect.It dealt with science, but was not reallyscientific, and could make no permanent progress in science because of its abstract nature and artisticbent.Science was to Greece a rhetorical exercise; applied and experimental science were impossible, forthe Greek mind was fatally æsthetic.Other races, as the Jews, have shown a genius for morality, butmorality, though a condition, is not a cause of progress.If we can point to any one cause that more than others doomed the ancient civilizations to failure, itis perhaps the absence of the qualities of mind necessary for exploiting nature and the means of existence,and for developing and applying experimental science, or perhaps, rather, the absence of opportunitiesfor exercising such qualities
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
