[ p. 350 ]
Tip to this point we have examined the data of religious origins as objective historical phenomena without raising the question whether these data correspond to anything real. In closing this investigation, however, it is almost inevitable that we ask ourselves whether there is any reason to believe in the reality of religion. Is there only a mass of nebular hypotheses regarding gods and God to examine as historical products similar to other human illusions, such as the philosopher’s stone arid the fountain of youth, or are the religious phenomena of the world the weak but illuminative expression of an underlying verity! Belief is widespread, but by establishing the fact of belief we do not establish the reality of what is believed, only the reality of believing. Nor p even universal savage belief a ground of belief,to anyone except a savage. Savages from China to Peru believe many things which are quite absurd, for example, that animals talk Chinese or Chibcha, a belief which persisted in semi-civilized circles until recent times, for in the Middle Ages fishes came up once a year to hear Mass and birds discussed theology with saints. The test ought to be whether religion is real not to all savages but to all civilized people, but there are many civilized people who think that there is no basis for religious belief at all, that there is no spiritual power in the world, and that soul, as the scoffing Hindu said six centuries before Christ, is only “a sort of bodily effervescence like the foam of beer.”
It is not, however, because the question is one rather [ p. 351 ] vital to us that we may legitimately raise it here, but because in a way it is the logical end. of our listorical survey. We ought to trace back religion to its source if that is possible before we conclude the study of religious principles. If to do so we have to venture out of the history of man into that of other creatures and trace map himself back to his non-human beginnings, we are in truth only extending the domain of history.
But first let us reconsider for a moment the statement that religion is universal. When an informed writer says this, he does not mean that all savages believe in God and an immortal soul, but that savages have some “ideas of higher beings in at least a rudimentary statfe” (Tylor) or that no races are “destitute of all idea of religion’ (Jevons). Now many of the savages thus cited believe only in ghosts, which are merely human beings that have disappeared from view and, as many of these savages think, will soon fade out altogether even from the tenuous post-mortem existence they enter at death. A belief in ghosts is merely a belief in a continuation of life in a man; it is not, to speak strictly, a belief in higher beings, only in men surviving death and often not so capable in that condition as when they were alive. This itself would seriously impair the validity of the argument based on universality of religion; but as a matter of fact some savages do not believe in a life after death and appear to believe in no spiritual power at all. In man’s own belief as thus revealed there is therefore no cogent argument for the reality of religion.
Of course, belief in special forms of spiritual powers, such as gods, angels, devils, and so on, is today not baaed upon individual testimony or tangible evidence but upon faith in tradition. Such tradition is furnished, for example, by the Vedas, the Buddhist scriptures, the Koran, and the Bible, all of unimpeachable authority to those [ p. 352 ] who believe that they are divinely inspired, and there are millions of men who believe that each of them is divinely inspired; but such belief and faith objectively regarded are of themselves incapable of demonstrating their own trustworthiness, since for every man who believes in the authority of Veda or Koran there are many more who believe not. If there were only one sacred tradition, it would at least be supported by the universal faith of those who believed in tradition at all. As it is, the sacred books of the world are sacred only to part of the world.
We resume then the principles of religion by extending the investigation to a pre-religious stage, in order to see whether the history of man himself affords ground for belief in his belief. Man bears within himself the record of his slow upward growth. Superfluous and even dangerous structures survive in his body to show that he was once a different sort of creature from that which he now is, as the six aortic arches of the lizard, where but one arch is needed, show that they revert to a precedent type, where all six were useful, or as a whale’s structure still shows that he was once a hairy quadruped living .on land. The germ cell in developing reflects man’s progress. He once had a brain like that of a fish, then like that of a reptile, and so on through the types of bird and marsupial, upward to the brain of the higher mammals. At first only a prolonged spinal cord, the brain is enlarged into several ganglia, of which that one which is to become the adult brain is the smallest. Then the cerebrum gradually covers the optic lobes, as in the bird stage, till it becomes so large that it overhangs and conceals all other parts. These embryonic changes reproduce the stage of evolution and in like manner the inner changes of man’s brain correspond in succession to the stage represented by fish, reptile, bird, before becoming that [ p. 353 ] of the adult mammal, the cerebrum being smooth at first and then becoming convoluted till in man the inequalities are greatest. The greater the inequalities the more the surface of grey matter. Fishes are the earliest vertebrates; man has a brain the earliest form of which in the embryo is like that of the fish. After the fishes come in due order reptiles, birds, marsupials, and the higher mammals, the series recapitulated in the growth of the human embryo. Man then was not suddenly created.
But in explaining how man was gradually created the biologist does not explain what life is. All that can be said is that there was an orderly change or growth, as the astronomer also shows that there has been an orderly reduction of matter in the sky. If we might assume a capitalized Heaven, we should say that Order is Heaven’s great law. In establishing this order, a natural process must be granted, but a directive power would not be ruled out, a power acting not dynamically but persistently. The orderliness of the process would suggest that it was not a result of chance; but the Vedic poet said Ibng ago that the regular succession of seasonal phenomena was “for our faith” and Euripides declared that belief in the gods springs from the recognition of universal law; so that this solution of law’s origin is naught new. But a new presentation of this truth has been advanced by Professor Eoyce in the following argument.
If any power is in control of the universe, it directs forms of life in an orderly way from invertebrate to vertebrate, from vertebrate to conscious, self-conscious, rational, orderly life. A remarkable exhibition of this innate orderliness has been given by the scientists who for tw© generations or more have laboriously collected all the material facts in the universe open to their view and arranged them in methodical array, tabulating mechanical changes and verifying the unvarying laws of the [ p. 354 ] physical world, specializiig in matter till they know it so well that they have cone to regard it as a form of force. But why have they devoted so much time and labor to matter and its laivs? Obviously because they desire order. Man has from tae beginning sought to bring order out of chaos. In chaos he is unconaf ortable; he wishes to escape from it and enjoy the comfort of feeling that he is in a well regulated world. He began by trying to make the world orderly by magic; he now orders it by understanding it. He feels that only by understanding it can he better himself. Like the Hindu sage, though with a different implication, he thinks that knowledge is his salvation.
Perhaps it is, but knowledge to be effective must not be one-sided. A body of selected facts proves only what certain facts prove, not what all facts taken together prove. The very investigator who proves by an indisputable array of facts that nature is subject to mechanical laws and then argues from this that life is mechanical, is himself a part of nature; but no one can predict what he will do; he is not himself subject to material laws in his volition. His array of natural facts is not complete until it includes the operation of will, not of his own will alone but of that of others, and their will is not based on his subjective impression but is objective fact. The ideality of another produces creations of the individual will not subject to mechanical laws; the investigator’s own ideal of Order, far from proving that there is no ideal in nature, shows that such an ideal exists. The materialistic protest against ideality is based on the ideal of order. As Professor Boyce has said, the growth and increasing love bf ideals, in being part of civilization, is part of nature, as man is part of nature and his ideals are part of man.[1]
[ p. 355 ]
Life then possesses an immaterial something actually existing as an objective reality. Whether nature is du^ or one of these phases be an expression of the other, in either ease an immaterial power must be accepted. K we reduce matter and force to different manifestations of the same thing, we shall still have to admit that the forceform cannot be explained, for example, as electricity, for. electri.Ity has no will power. There must be a power implying will, of which electricity is one expression, for will cannot be referred to matter without force, only to force or energy. Energy operative with will must then be assumed in the infinite as it is revealed in the finite. Whether it is called energized will or willing energy or some unlmown power, which for want of a better term may be described as a spiritual power, is unimportant. Some call it God.
Life as it now is thus demands the explanation of an immaterial power, infinite energy or will, operative in the universe and controlling it. Life as it has been in tiie past shows that whatever power is in control directs life to a higher plane, from invertebrate unconscious life to a rational moral life in the highest vertebrates. life therefore as a whole, past and present, shows a steady development toward a higher level, in which self-consciousness is the final finite expression, a development apparently controlled and as such the expression of wiU, either immanent in matter or exterior to it. Natural phenomena are, or may be, objectified modes of immaterial thought, a form not of my idea but of the infinite idea, whidi, whether immanent or not, since it produces ever higher foiSs, must be a conscious power. Consciously and in accordance with will an intellectual power controls the universe and directs its development. “God,” says Le Conte, who speaks not as a metaphysician but as a scientist, [ p. 356 ] “God is infinite self or will.”[2] Lord Kelvin, as a scientist, says, “If you think strongly enough, you will be forced by science to the belief in God.”[3] It is interesting to see that science is gradually becoming weaned from materialism. The real and the ideal are no longer opposed; perhaps the only real is the ideal.
Yet it may be asked. How does this concern us after aU? A belief in an intelligent or call it spiritual power, immanent or not immanent, in the universe, what is this but the old problem of ancient Hindu sages with their solution,
“There is One eternal Thinker thinking non-etemal thoughts”?
How does it affect man today? The most obvious reply is that if we are ourselves the expression of a power ever manifesting itself in higher forms, then for our own higher development we should practice that which 'conforms to the higher manifestation or we shall descend to the lower. AU types arising from careful cultivation tend when neglected to retrograde. For example, a cultivated but neglected cat or dog or .orange tree -will at once tend to a lower type. As morality is the result of a more developed social and mental process than immorality, we shall be moral through logical necessity; we shall not •withstand but, so to speak, stand in with the spiritual power that governs us, since faith in a moral ideal is founded on reason and history. Immorality is a repudiation of that faith. There is no reason tb suppose that man has not developed or has ceased to develop[4] and by reaching [ p. 357 ] Tip and grasping at higher things he can perhaps aid in this development. This leads us to the idea of conformity to an ideal, which has been expressed in all higher religions as conformity to the will of God, in the practice of which conformity awe and sympathy have equal part. Sympathy again will make us concerned with others as the Power in the universe has apparently been concerned not with ourselves alone but with the race, with others; in them we may love Him, if one may so speak of this Power. At any rate, what is done unto the least is done unto the highest, from this point of view, as well as from that of the Christian believer. To do this calls often for the abnegation of self, but to overcome the lower for the higher is a sacrifice not to be despised, and to give oneself for others entails such a sacrifice in another form.
Moral evil is only the result of harmful neglect to keep up. to the standard set by a more advanced civilization. As has been said, much that we now call sinful was once righteous, that is, necessary to the salvation of the race and individual. The lex talionis was once a condition of individual security and so of advancing civilization; at a later stage it became harmful, that is, evil. Physical evil also has done more good than harm. Hunger, want, weakness, have forced men to live in communities, to work for common ends, to exchange horde for tribe, to develop, to inaugurate civilization. Ease, which is now necessary for mental development, meant to the savage isolation and stagnation, and development is impossible in a stagnant community. Strife and conflict were necessary for that which is called the survival of the fittest, as they are still necessary in matters of opinion, and desirable in the individual, for every man has advanced to efficient manhood only through physical and moral strife. We must pay for our blessings. The individual has been destroyed. [ p. 358 ] physical suffering has existed, but the result is the advance of the race. We lose to gain, sacrifice to obtain more; do ut des, God gives nothing for nothing. The individual shares in what the race obtains, both physically and morally. A single man may renounce his birthright and give up what the struggle of the race has won for him, but on the other hand he may share in that heritage, abide by the results of knowledge and truth, as interpreted by science, and so abide by the supreme Will, which is revealed in all knowledge. Whether called divine or not, one con rolling conscious intelligence appears to exert its will toward the realization of a mora,l ideal in which we participate. It is as if the Unknown Power were itself knowable to this extent that it must be ethical, or it would not have guided man toward a moral goal. Evil is the struggle of human will against the divine will,- even as it seemed to Aeschylus. But our conception of morality is limited and there may be a moral governor of the universe who yet is little concerned with human ignorance except to diminish it gradually. Some of our ethical rules may be provisional; a higher social environment will perhaps recognize them merely as steps of attainment useful for a once-needed uplift.
The history of religions, finally, teaches us little in regard to the nature of the individual soul, only the weird ideas that man has had about it, which have already been explained. In general, it is clear that it is the self rather than a spiritual double or other-self which is imagined in a post-mortem existence, a self which at first is regarded as of doubtful longevity, but is afterwards thought of as existing indefinitely and finally as immortal, like God, its creator or source. Taking up this conception from the same point of view as has been adopted in regard to man and God, we find that a progressive series offers two solutions of the soul. At any [ p. 359 ] one moment in the series a new principle may have been introduced. Incandescent gas does not appear to have life such as an animal has; at some point, life may have been introduced. Similarly, at a later period in evolution, the soul-principle may have been inserted into the series; it would not be a mere product of evolution of incandescent gas. According to this theory, advocated by Le Conte, sentient life and self-consciousness mark other like stages; and soul was infused into man (not the individual but the species) when he became self-conscious. Matter is first ennobled by life and then by thought and finally by soul. But it is not plain how this agrees with Le Conte’s belief that “consciousness and will which are in nature belong to nature from within.”
Opposed to this theory would be the explanation that energy immanent in the universe is manifested in more individuated forms as progress is made in the series; life, thought, self-consciousness, would each be a form in higher grade of the same energy or power. It is not known that any new thing enters into vegetal life and turns it into animal; the line between is not apparent. Some things are both animal and vegetal and, on the other hand, a vegetable growth does not become an animal. Both seem to be differentiations of an anterior form. The intelligence of an invertebrate is that of a vertebrate, only there is less of it, as it is only a question of degree in the intelligences of different vertebrates. It would seem, therefore, that one universal intelligence pervades the universe, manifesting itself in different degrees in different forms. As very young children are not self-conscious, so the human series goes back to a conscious but not self-conscious man or human prototype. “An original series of automata does not suddenly give place to an intellectual series, but a simple diffused intelligence in an undifferentiated body gradually becomes [ p. 360 ] specialized in a nervous system and greatly developed in range and scope.” Such is the explanation of Professor Shaler, who would then define soul as the fullest individualized expression of the spiritual power found in the highest or most differentiated bodily environment. Soul would thus he a part of the supreme Power, an idea beautifully expressed by the Polynesians when they said, as ’ they baptized an infant, that a god had breathed a soul into it. This soul, as the Hebrews, who held the same opinion, said, is the breath of God, which at death goes back to Him.
The series of development may also point to the immortality of the human soul, in that matter becomes ever less the controlling power, as if, in the language of the Upanishad, soul might in the end shake itself free of matter altogether “as a great horse- of noble breed, long fettered to the peg within the ground, rouses himself; then struggling and rearing in disdain of the fastening, breaks it at last, and so leaps free of all restraining bonds”; and thus finally it may become aware of itself as one with the heart of reality. Religion itself, in what we are pleased to call its mystic phase, is the experience in which the soul thus becomes conscious of itself as one with the divine soul. It is an experience which can convince only him who experiences it, but to him the proof is irrefragable and not to be gainsaid.
International Quaterly, VII, pp. 85ff. ↩︎
Le Conte, Evolution and Its Relation to Religious Thought. ↩︎
The Nineteenth Century, 1903, p. 1069, ↩︎
Man’s social development is higher even if, man individual, he is not more intellectually capable than of ol4. Man inherits not only his ancestor’s mind but what that mind has accomplished. ↩︎