The Life of Reason Part 23

[Sidenote: Religion and science indirectly cognitive and directly ideal.]

In religion and science the overt purpose of symbols is to represent external truths. The inventors of these symbols think they are merely uncovering a self-existent reality, having in itself the very form seen in their idea. They do not perceive that the society of G.o.d or Nature is an ideal society, nor that these phantoms, looming in their imagination, are but significant figments whose existent basis is a minute and indefinite series of ordinary perceptions. They consequently attribute whatever value their genial syntheses may have to the object as they picture it. The G.o.ds have, they fancy, the aspect and pa.s.sions, the history and influence which their myth unfolds; nature in its turn contains hypostatically just those laws and forces which are described by theory. Consequently the presence of G.o.d or Nature seems to the mythologist not an ideal, but a real and mutual society, as if collateral beings, endowed with the conceived characters, actually existed as men exist. But this opinion is untenable. As Hobbes said, in a phrase which ought to be inscribed in golden letters over the head of every talking philosopher: _No discourse whatsoever can end in absolute knowledge of fact_. Absolute knowledge of fact is immediate, it is experiential. We should have to _become_ G.o.d or Nature in order to know for a fact that they existed. Intellectual knowledge, on the other hand, where it relates to existence, is faith only, a faith which in these matters means trust. For the forces of Nature or the G.o.ds, if they had crude existence, so that we might conceivably become what they are, would lose that causal and that religious function which are their essence respectively. They would be merely collateral existences, loaded with all sorts of irrelevant properties, parts of the universal flux, members of a natural society; and while as such they would have their relative importance, they would be embraced in turn within an intelligible system of relations, while their rights and dignities would need to be determined by some supervening ideal. A nature existing in act would require metaphysics--the account of a deeper nature--to express its relation to the mind that knew and judged it. Any actual G.o.d would need to possess a religion of his own, in order to fix his ideal of conduct and his rights in respect to his creatures or rather, as we should then be, to his neighbours. This situation may have no terrors for the thoughtless; but it evidently introduces something deeper than Nature and something higher than G.o.d, depriving these words of the best sense in which a philosopher might care to use them.

[Sidenote: Their opposite outlook.]

The divine and the material are contrasted points of reference required by the actual. Reason, working on the immediate flux of appearances, reaches these ideal realms and, resting in them, perforce calls them realities. One--the realm of causes--supplies appearances with a basis and calculable order; the other--the realm of truth and felicity--supplies them with a standard and justification. Natural society may accordingly be contrasted with ideal society, not because Nature is not, logically speaking, ideal too, but because in natural society we ally ourselves consciously with our origins and surroundings, in ideal society with our purposes. There is an immense difference in spirituality, in ideality of the moral sort, between gathering or conciliating forces for action and fixing the ends which action should pursue. Both fields are ideal in the sense that intelligence alone could discover or exploit them; yet to call nature ideal is undoubtedly equivocal, since its ideal function is precisely to be the substance and cause of the given flux, a ground-work for experience which, while merely inferred and potential, is none the less mechanical and material. The ideality of nature is indeed of such a sort as to be forfeited if the trusty instrument and true antecedent of human life were not found there. We should be frivolous and inconstant, taking our philosophy for a game and not for method in living, if having set out to look for the causes and practical order of things, and having found them, we should declare that they were not _really_ casual or efficient, on the strange ground that our discovery of them had been a feat of intelligence and had proved a priceless boon. The absurdity could not be greater if in moral science, after the goal of all effort had been determined and happiness defined, we declared that this was not _really_ the good.

Those who are shocked at the a.s.sertion that G.o.d and Nature are ideal, and that their contrasted prerogatives depend on that fact, may, of course, use the same words in a different way, making them synonymous, and may readily "prove" that G.o.d or Nature exists materially and has absolute being. We need but agree to designate by those terms the sum of existences, whatever they (or it) may be to their own feeling. Then the ontological proof a.s.serts its rights unmistakably. Science and religion, however, are superfluous if what we wish to learn is that there is Something, and that All-there-is must a.s.suredly be All-there-is.

Ecstasies may doubtless ensue upon considering that Being is and Non-Being is not, as they are said to ensue upon long enough considering one's navel; but the Life of Reason is made of more variegated stuff.

Science, when it is not dialectical, describes an ideal order of existences in s.p.a.ce and time, such that all incidental facts, as they come, may fill it in and lend it body. Religion, when pure, contemplates some pertinent ideal of intelligence and goodness. Both religion and science live in imaginative discourse, one being an aspiration and the other a hypothesis. Both introduce into the mind an ideal society.

The Life of Reason is no fair reproduction of the universe, but the expression of man alone. A theory of nature is nothing but a ma.s.s of observations, made with a hunter's and an artist's eye. A mortal has no time for sympathy with his victim or his model; and, beyond a certain range, he has no capacity for such sympathy. As in order to live he must devour one-half the world and disregard the other, so in order to think and practically to know he must deal summarily and selfishly with his materials; otherwise his intellect would melt again into endless and irrevocable dreams. The law of gravity, because it so notably unifies the motions of matter, is something which these motions themselves know nothing of; it is a description of them in terms of human discourse.

Such discourse can never a.s.sure us absolutely that the motions it forecasts will occur; the sensible proof must ensue spontaneously in its own good time. In the interval our theory remains pure presumption and hypothesis. Reliable as it may be in that capacity, it is no replica of anything on its own level existing beyond. It creates, like all intelligence, a secondary and merely symbolic world.

[Sidenote: In translating existence into human terms they give human nature its highest exercise.]

When this diversity between the truest theory and the simplest fact, between potential generalities and actual particulars, has been thoroughly appreciated, it becomes clear that much of what is valued in science and religion is not lodged in the miscellany underlying these creations of reason, but is lodged rather in the rational activity itself, and in the intrinsic beauty of all symbols bred in a genial mind. Of course, if these symbols had no real points of reference, if they were symbols of nothing, they could have no great claim to consideration and no rational character; at most they would be agreeable sensations. They are, however, at their best good symbols for a diffused experience having a certain order and tendency; they render that reality with a difference, reducing it to a formula or a myth, in which its tortuous length and trivial detail can be surveyed to advantage without undue waste or fatigue. Symbols may thus become eloquent, vivid, important, being endowed with both poetic grandeur and practical truth.

The facts from which this truth is borrowed, if they were rehea.r.s.ed unimaginatively, in their own flat infinity, would be far from arousing the same emotions. The human eye sees in perspective; its glory would vanish were it reduced to a crawling, exploring antenna. Not that it loves to falsify anything. That to the worm the landscape might possess no light and shade, that the mountain's atomic structure should be unpicturable, cannot distress the landscape gardener nor the poet; what concerns them is the effect such things may produce in the human fancy, so that the soul may live in a congenial world.

Naturalist and prophet are landscape painters on canvases of their own; each is interested in his own perception and perspective, which, if he takes the trouble to reflect, need not deceive him about what the world would be if not foreshortened in that particular manner. This special interpretation is nevertheless precious and shows up the world in that light in which it interests naturalists or prophets to see it. Their figments make their chosen world, as the painter's apperceptions are the breath of his nostrils.

[Sidenote: Science should be mathematical and religion anthropomorphic.]

While the symbol's applicability is essential to its worth--since otherwise science would be useless and religion demoralising--its power and fascination lie in its acquiring a more and more profound affinity to the human mind, so long as it can do so without surrendering its relevance to practice. Thus natural science is at its best when it is most thoroughly mathematical, since what can be expressed mathematically can speak a human language. In such science only the ultimate material elements remain surds; all their further movement and complication can be represented in that kind of thought which is most intimately satisfactory and perspicuous. And in like manner, religion is at its best when it is most anthropomorphic; indeed, the two most spiritual religions, Buddhism and Christianity, have actually raised a man, overflowing with utterly human tenderness and pathos, to the place usually occupied only by cosmic and thundering deities. The human heart is lifted above misfortune and encouraged to pursue unswervingly its inmost ideal when no compromise is any longer attempted with what is not moral or human, and Prometheus is honestly proclaimed to be holier than Zeus. At that moment religion ceases to be superst.i.tious and becomes a rational discipline, an effort to perfect the spirit rather than to intimidate it.

[Sidenote: Summary of this book.]

We have seen that society has three stages--the natural, the free, and the ideal. In the natural stage its function is to produce the individual and equip him with the prerequisites of moral freedom. When this end is attained society can rise to friendship, to unanimity and disinterested sympathy, where the ground of a.s.sociation is some ideal interest, while this a.s.sociation const.i.tutes at the same time a personal and emotional bond. Ideal society, on the contrary, transcends accidental conjunctions altogether. Here the ideal interests themselves take possession of the mind; its companions are the symbols it breeds and possesses for excellence, beauty, and truth. Religion, art, and science are the chief spheres in which ideal companionship is found. It remains for us to traverse these provinces in turn and see to what extent the Life of Reason may flourish there.

*** End of Volume Two ***

REASON IN RELIGION

Volume Three of "The Life of Reason"

GEORGE SANTAYANA

he gar noy enhergeia zohe

This Dover edition, first published in 1982, is an unabridged republication of volume three of _The Life of Reason; or The Phases of Human Progress_, originally published by Charles Scribner's Sons, N.Y., in 1905.

CONTENTS

REASON IN RELIGION

CHAPTER I

HOW RELIGION MAY BE AN EMBODIMENT OF REASON

Religion is certainly significant, but not literally true.--All religion is positive and particular.--It aims at the Life of Reason, but largely fails to attain it.--Its approach imaginative.--When its poetic method is denied its value is jeopardised.--It precedes science rather than hinders it.--It is merely symbolic and thoroughly human. Pages 3-14

CHAPTER II

RATIONAL ELEMENTS IN SUPERSt.i.tION

Felt causes not necessary causes.--Mechanism and dialectic ulterior principles.--Early selection of categories.--Tentative rational worlds.--Superst.i.tion a rudimentary philosophy.--A miracle, though unexpected, more intelligible than a regular process.--Superst.i.tions come of haste to understand.--Inattention suffers them to spread.--Genius may use them to convey an inarticulate wisdom. Pages 15-27

CHAPTER III

MAGIC, SACRIFICE, AND PRAYER

Fear created the G.o.ds.--Need also contributed.--The real evidences of G.o.d's existence.--Practice precedes theory in religion.--Pathetic, tentative nature of religious practices.--Meanness and envy in the G.o.ds, suggesting sacrifice.--Ritualistic arts.--Thank-offerings.--The sacrifice of a contrite heart.--Prayer is not utilitarian in essence.--Its supposed efficacy magical.--Theological puzzles.--A real efficacy would be mechanical.--True uses of prayer.--It clarifies the ideal.--It reconciles to the inevitable.--It fosters spiritual life by conceiving it in its perfection.--Discipline and contemplation are their own reward Pages 28-48

CHAPTER IV

MYTHOLOGY

Status of fable in the mind.--It requires genius.--It only half deceives.--Its interpretative essence.--Contrast with science.--Importance of the moral factor.--Its submergence.--Myth justifies magic.--Myths might be metaphysical.--They appear ready made, like parts of the social fabric.--They perplex the conscience.--Incipient myth in the Vedas.--Natural suggestions soon exhausted.--They will be carried out in abstract fancy.--They may become moral ideals.--The Sun-G.o.d moralised.--The leaven of religion is moral idealism Pages 49-68

CHAPTER V

THE HEBRAIC TRADITION

Phases of Hebraism.--Israel's tribal monotheism.--Problems involved.--The prophets put new wine in old bottles.--Inspiration and authority.--Beginnings of the Church.--Bigotry turned into a principle.--Penance accepted.--Christianity combines optimism and asceticism.--Reason smothered between the two.--Religion made an inst.i.tution Pages 69-82

CHAPTER VI

THE CHRISTIAN EPIC