The Sources of Religious Insight Part 5

Let us not here spend time, however, upon a.n.a.lysing this or that special form in which we are accustomed, for one special purpose or another, to conceive the wider insight. What is clear is that we constantly, and in every opinion, in every confession of {113} ignorance appeal to such an insight. That such an insight is real, must be presupposed even in order to a.s.sert that our present opinions are errors. What interests us most at this point is, however, this, that whatever else the whole real universe is, the real universe exists only in case it is the object, and the very being, of such an insight, of such an inclusive experience, of such a view of what is.

For, when you hold any opinions whatever about the real world, or about any of its contents, characters, or values, your opinions are either true or false, and are true or false by virtue of their actual conformity to the live insight which experiences what makes them true or false, and which therefore _ipso facto_ experiences what the real world is. If there is no such world-possessing insight, then, once more, your opinions about the world are neither true nor false. Or, otherwise stated, if there is no such inclusive insight there is no world. To the real world, then, this insight which comprehends the world, and which knows whatever is true to be true, and whatever is false about the world to be false--to the real world this insight, I say, belongs. And the whole world belongs to it and is its object and essence. Whatever is real is real for that insight, and is in its experience, and exists as its possession, and as its well-known and well-comprehended content, and as its image and expression and meaning.

All this I say, as you may note, not because I hold in high esteem any of our private human {114} opinions, but only because, _except in the light of such an all-seeing comprehension of facts as they are, our individual opinions about the world cannot even be false_. For opinion, in all its fleeting blindness and in its human chaos of caprices, is ceaselessly an appeal to the judge, to the seer, to the standard experience, to the knower of facts as they are, to the wider view, to the decisive insight. And opinions about reality in its wholeness, about the world, about the all, are appeals to the all-judging insight, to the all-seeing view, to the knowledge and experience that grasps the totality of facts, to the widest outlook, to the deepest insight, to the absolute rational decision. If this be so, then an opinion to the effect that there exists no such widest and deepest insight, and no such final view, is itself just such an appeal to the final insight, simply because it is an opinion about reality.

To a.s.sert then that there is no largest view, no final insight, no experience that is absolute, is to a.s.sert that the largest view observes that there is no largest view, that the final insight sees that there is no such insight, that the ultimate experience is aware that there is no ultimate experience. And such an a.s.sertion is indeed a self-contradiction.

This, I a.s.sert, is the only rational way of stating the nature of opinion, of truth or error, and consequently of reality. This is the synthesis which reason inevitably accomplishes whenever it rightly views the nature and the implications of even our most flickering and erroneous and uncertain {115} opinions. We can err about what you will. But if we err, we simply come short of the insight to which we are aiming to conform, and in the light of which our ideas get absolutely all of their meaning. In every error, in every blunder, in all our darkness, in all our ignorance, we are still in touch with the eternal insight. We are always seeking to know even as we are known.

I have sought in this sketch to vindicate the general rights of rational insight as against mere momentary or fragmentary intuition. I have also tried to show you what synthesis of reason gives us a genuinely religious insight.

"My first penitent," said the priest of our story, "was a murderer."

"And I," said the n.o.bleman, "was this priest's first penitent."

"I am ignorant of the vast and mysterious real world"--thus says our sense of human fallibility and weakness when we are first awakened to our need of rational guidance. The saying is true. The mystery is appalling. "I am ignorant of the real world." Yes; but reason, reflecting upon the nature and the essential meaning of opinion, of truth, of error, and of ignorance, points out to us this thesis: "That of which I am ignorant is that about which I can err. But error is failure to conform my momentary opinion to the very insight which I mean and to which I am all the while appealing. Error is failure to conform to the inclusive insight which {116} overarches my errors with the heaven of its rational clearness. Error is failure to grasp the very light which shines in my darkness, even while my darkness comprehends it not. That of which I am ignorant is then essentially the object of a super-human and divine insight."

"I am ignorant of the world. To be ignorant is to fail to grasp the object of the all-inclusive and divine insight." That is the expression of our situation. Reason easily makes the fitting synthesis when it considers the priest and the n.o.bleman. I ask you to make the a.n.a.logous synthesis regarding the world and the divine insight. This synthesis here takes form in concluding that the world is the object of an all-inclusive and divine insight, which is thus the supreme reality.

I have but sketched for you the contribution of reason to our quest.

This contribution will seem to many of you too abstract and too contemplative to meet vital religious needs. In fact, what I have said will mean little to you unless you come to see how it can be translated into an adequate expression in our active life. To this task of such a further interpretation of the mission of the reason as a guide of life my next lecture shall be devoted.

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IV

THE WORLD AND THE WILL

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IV

THE WORLD AND THE WILL

I could not discuss, in my last lecture, the office of the reason as a source of religious insight without sketching for you what insight I personally regard as the most important result of the right use of reason. This sketch was of course, in my own mind, a part of an extended body of philosophical doctrine. It does not lie within the intent of these lectures to present a system of philosophy. I ought, nevertheless, to begin this lecture by saying a few words about the relation of my last discussion to certain religious and philosophical opinions of which you have all heard, and by indicating why it has seemed to me worth while to call your attention to the mere hint of a philosophy with which the last discussion closed. Having thus indicated the setting in which I want you to see the brief exposition of a general theory which I find to be indispensable for our main purpose, I shall devote the rest of this lecture to the task of connecting the insight which reason gives to us with the main purpose of our inquiry, namely, with the undertaking to know the nature and the way of salvation. Reason is of importance in so {120} far as what it shows us enables us to direct our will and to come into closer touch with truths which are not only theoretical, but also practical.

We shall therefore discuss at some length the relation of our rational knowledge to our active life, and the relation of our rational will to the world in which we are to work out our salvation if we can.

I

The nature and the teachings of the human reason have interested philosophers from very nearly the beginning of philosophical inquiry.

What I told you about the subject in our former discussion reports a decidedly modern version of a very old opinion--an opinion which has been repeatedly examined, revised, a.s.sailed, and defended. Let me say a word as to its history.

Plato held that, through our reason, we are able to rise beyond the world of sense and to hold communion with a realm of ideally significant and eternal being. What Plato really meant by his ideal realm, and in what sense the world of what Plato called the eternal realities, the forms or ideas, could be, as Plato held it to be, a divine world, in its worth and dignity, later philosophy repeatedly attempted to grasp.

The results of such philosophical thinking have deeply affected the history of religion and still influence the religious interest of all of you. One {121} version of that philosophical tradition whose origin is in the thought of Plato--a late version, and also one greatly transformed by motives of which Plato had known in his day nothing, is the familiar version to which, in the last lecture, I in pa.s.sing alluded--the prologue to our Fourth Gospel. You will all agree that this prologue attempts to state a religious insight. The relation of this New Testament view of the world of the reason to the doctrine which still later came to be formulated by the theologians of the Christian Church I have here not time to discuss. It is enough now to say that an opinion according to which our articulate reason, as well as the more inarticulate intuition of faith, has some sort of access to the world of the "Logos," and some sort of partic.i.p.ation in a genuine apprehension of the divine life, has come to form part of the religion in which you all have been trained. In so far, then, it is surely right to say that the reason, as the philosophers have defined it, has been an actual source of religious opinion and experience.

In modern times, and especially since Kant, philosophy has been led to see the older doctrines of the human reason, and of its knowledge of the divine, from various decidedly novel points of view. The sketch of a theory of the reason as a source of insight, which I gave, was influenced by Kant's famous teaching about the nature and unity of human experience. Kant stated this theory as the doctrine that all our human knowledge involves an {122} interpretation of the data of our senses in the light of what he called the "unity of apperception." In less technical terms, Kant's meaning is that all facts of which a human experience can obtain knowledge are known to us as the possible objects of an insight which we conceive to be virtually one, as the insight of our own truly knowing Self, and as the insight without reference to which no opinion of ours has any sense whatever. This one cognitive Self is, according to Kant, the conceived virtual subject or possessor of all that we view as our experience. And this presupposed unity is the condition of all our knowledge.

But Kant's doctrine, as he stated it, is in many ways problematic and dissatisfying. The form of philosophical idealism which I myself defend goes in certain respects far beyond Kant's position. The "one experience," in which, according to him, we find a place for any fact which we conceive as knowable at all, is defined by Kant as a virtual insight, not, so to speak, a live and concrete consciousness. He regards it also as purely human, as a knowledge of appearances--not of any ultimate realities. The form of philosophical idealism which, at the last time, I outlined depends, however, upon simply universalising, and rendering live and concrete, Kant's conception of the Self, of the united experience, to which we appeal, and in the light of which our opinions get all their sense--all their character and value as true or as false opinions. {123} This one Self, this unity of experience, to which we always appeal, cannot consistently be viewed by us as merely our own individual or private self, or as merely human; and its insight cannot rationally be interpreted merely as an insight into what is apparent, that is into what is not really real. Nor can it be viewed merely as something virtual--a possible unity of experience, to which we would appeal if we could. In my opinion it must be conceived as more live and real and concrete and conscious and genuine than are any of our pa.s.sing moments of fleeting human experience. It must be viewed as an actual and inclusive and divinely rational knowledge of all facts in their unity. And the very nature of facts, their very being as facts, must be determined by their presence as objects in the experience of this world-embracing insight. This was the philosophical theory that I sketched in my former lecture. This is my view of what reason teaches.

Now this thesis, this somewhat remote descendant of the Platonic doctrine of the function of reason, this modern version of the concept of the "Logos" as the light that "shineth in the darkness" of our ordinary human experience, this revision and transformation of the Kantian theory of knowledge, has, by virtue of the long history of the doctrine in question, and by virtue of the difficult considerations upon which, as a philosophical thesis, it rests, a highly technical character. This technical aspect of the teaching in question forbids, in these lectures. {124} any adequate exposition, or criticism, or defence of its problems and of its merits as a basis for a system of philosophy. And you will surely not find unnatural the fact that a study of the function of the reason should indeed involve such technical and complex issues. I mention these issues only to say at once how and how far, in the present lectures, we are concerned with them.

We are seeking a way of salvation. And in these discussions we are mainly concerned with the sources of insight into what that way is. I am not attempting to work out, in your presence, a systematic philosophy. Why, then, have I introduced this mere sketch of philosophical idealism into our inevitably crowded programme? I answer: I have done so because I have wanted to ill.u.s.trate the office of reason by telling you in my own way how I view the matter. The reason is, in fact, a source of religious insight to many people who do not reflect upon its deliverances as philosophers seek to reflect, and who may not agree with me in what little I have time to expound of my own philosophical opinions. My effort has been to tell in philosophical terms what such people really mean.

In such people reason very often shows itself indirectly and concretely, by its fruits, through their deeds, through their purpose, in a word, through their will. We shall ere long see how this can be and is the case. Reason is present in such lives and inspires them. A genuine relation to some {125} spirit of all truth, a perfectly sincere touch with an articulate and universal insight, a translation of the lesson and the meaning of the synthetic reason into a definite practical postulate that life shall be and is an essentially reasonable and therefore an essentially divine enterprise--such I find to be the essence of the religious insight of many serious minds.

Beside the earnest devotion of such people to the business which life a.s.signs to them, the mere theories of a philosopher may seem shadowy enough. And if such people comment upon what they hear of my philosophy by saying that they do not understand it, and doubt whether they agree with it, I am not on that account at all disposed to complain of them, or to a.s.sert that reason is to them no source of religious insight. I take pleasure, however, in observing that, in my opinion, they agree with my doctrine in the concrete, and express it in their religious life far better than I can express it in my technical terms, however much these people may fail to grasp what my terms mean or to accept my formulations. The best expression of your reason is your life, if you live as one enlightened from above ought to live. You are not obliged to accept a technical formula in order to embody the spirit of that formula in your daily work. I know many men who are far more the servants and ministers of the true rational insight than, in my present human life, I shall ever succeed in becoming, and who, nevertheless, either are impatient of every {126} philosophical theory, or, if philosophically trained, are opposed to me in my philosophy.

Nevertheless, I need to express, in my own way, what is the insight that is really at the heart of the lives of just such people. What I am first interested in emphasising is of course this, that, in my opinion, my interpretation of the insight of which reason is the source, actually expresses one important aspect of the spirit in which those live whom I regard as the true servants of the divine reason.

But my interest in the matter does not cease here. I can, of course, express my opinions only in the terms that appeal to me. But whatever you think of my formulas, I am very anxious to have you see that, as the life of such people convincingly shows, reason has been, and is, a source of religious insight to them, and that our philosophical differences relate simply to the way in which we formulate our interpretation of the meaning of this source.

Reason has been such a source of insight. That is true as an historical fact. If you can find anything in the Platonic dialogues which appeals to you as involving an insight that has religious value, you must recognise this truth. It is a mere matter of history that Christian doctrine as it has come down to us is, in one aspect, profoundly affected by Plato's influence. The myth of the men in the cave, in the "Platonic Republic," the myth in Plato's "Phaedrus,"

which tells about the banishment of the soul from its heavenly life and from its intercourse with the {127} ideal world, and which interprets all our loftier human loves as a longing of the soul for its divine home land--these myths are allegories which Plato intended to ill.u.s.trate his own view of what reason teaches us. These myths express in figurative speech a philosophy that actually affects to-day your own religious interests. For instance, this philosophy influences your traditional conception of G.o.d, and your ideas about the immortal life of the soul. And if the prologue of the Fourth Gospel seems to you to contain any truth, your religious ideas are again moulded by a form of ancient philosophy which dealt with the nature and with the insight of the reason. My own sketch of modern philosophy is but a reinterpretation of the very truth which that ancient doctrine attempted to portray. Historically, then, some of your religious opinions are actually due to the work of the reason. My philosophy simply tries to interpret to you this work.

And reason not only has been, but now is, such a source of insight.

And this is the case whenever you try to apply the "rule of reason" to any problem of your life, and hereby gain a confidence that, by being as reasonable and fair as you can, you are learning to conform your life to the view which, as you suppose, an all-wise G.o.d takes of its meaning. My philosophy simply tries to tell you why you have a right to hold that an all-wise being is real.

I am anxious, I say, to have such facts about the {128} office of reason recognised, whatever you may think of my philosophy. And this is my purpose when I use my philosophy merely to ill.u.s.trate the office of reason. For indispensable as individual religious experience is, in all the capriciousness of its feelings--indispensable also as social religious experience is, with all its insistence upon human love and also upon human religious convention--the synthetic use of the reason, that is, the systematic effort "to see life steadily and see it whole," is also indispensable. The recent efforts to make light of the work of reason--efforts to which, at the last lecture, I directed your attention, would tend, if taken by themselves, to result in basing religion upon an inarticulate occultism, upon a sort of psychical research that would regard whatever witch may peep and mutter, whatever mystic may be unable to tell what he means, whatever dumb cry of the soul may remain stubbornly inarticulate, as a _more_ promising religious guide than is any form of serious and far-seeing devotion to the wider insight, which ought to survey life and to light our path.

Let my own appeal to philosophy, then, even if you do not agree with my formulas, stand as my protest against occultism and against the exclusive devotion to the inarticulate sources of religious insight.

That I also prize the perfectly indispensable office of the more child-like intuitions, when they occupy their true place, you already know from my first two lectures. We cannot in our present life {129} do without these child-like intuitions. We cannot be just to them without aiming to live beyond them and to put away childish things.

II

If my interpretation of the reason thus gets its worth from the fact that it attempts by a formula simply to ill.u.s.trate the view which the servants of the divine reason actually and practically translate into life, and express through their spirit and through their deeds, you may hereupon object that my view of the reason as a source of religious insight still seems to you to be one which it is not easy to translate into life at all. What does it profit a man, you will say, to view the whole world as the object present to an all-embracing and divine insight? How does such a view give a man the power to live more reasonably than he otherwise would live? Is a world-embracing reason that sees all things in their unity really that master of life whom our simpler religious intuitions call upon us to seek as our Deliverer from our natural chaos of desires? I have just a.s.serted that there are people who devote their lives to the service of such a divine reason.

But if the divine reason is eternal and perfect, and if it sees all reality as an unity, and if this is its only function, how can any one serve it at all? The eternal needs no help, you may insist, and apparently has no concern for us. We need, for our {130} salvation, something, or some personal deliverer, that can teach us not merely to utter true a.s.sertions, but to live worthy lives. How does the insight of the reason enlighten us in this respect? What would one do for a divine Logos, for an all-observant and all-comprehending seer? Could one love such a being, or devoutly commune with his perfect but motionless wisdom? Is it true then, as I have just maintained it to be true, that the insight of the reason, as I have expounded it in my sketch of a philosophy, does really inspire the earnest and devoted souls whose spirit I have attempted to express? Whatever they may think of my philosophy, have I been just to their practical fervour and to their energetic devotion? Do they merely say: G.o.d is omniscient, therefore our life has its purpose defined, and we are saved?

In brief, the insight of the reason, as I have been stating its dicta, may seem to you, at best, to show us a sort of heaven which, as I said, overarches our unwisdom with its starry clearness, but which as you may now add we can neither reach, nor use, nor regard as a rational inspiration of our active life. If it is real, it can observe us, as it observes all reality. But can it save us? It can rise above us. But can it enter into our will and give us a plan of life?

Granting the validity of the argument sketched in our last lecture, what has the all-wise knower of truth to do with our salvation?

These are familiar objections to such a view as {131} mine. James repeatedly urged them in his comment upon what he regarded as not merely the fallibility, but the futility, or, as he said, the "thinness" of the idealistic interpretation of the world of the reason. Similar objections have been urged by many of the critics of any doctrine similar to mine. Are these objections just?

III

I can answer such questions only through a certain gradual approach to their complications. I want to show you how the insight of the reason not only points out a heaven that overarches us, but also reveals an influence that can inwardly transform us. To this end I shall next ill.u.s.trate, by instances taken from life, how some people actually view their own personal relations to what they take to be the divine reason. I shall thus indicate in what way such people connect this divine reason with personal needs of their own which they regard as vital. Then I shall show why this not only is so in the lives of some people, but ought to be so for all of us. As a result we shall soon find that, just as our first statement of the insight of reason, if indeed it is a true statement, transforms our view of the sense in which the world is real, so a deeper study of the relations of insight to action transforms our first cruder notion of the reason itself, of its office in life, and of the truth that it reveals.

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I begin with ill.u.s.trations taken from life. A former college student of mine, some of whose papers upon his own religious experience I was not very long ago privileged to read, undertook, in one of these papers, to explain how, at the time, he viewed the place of prayer in his own life. He was a man capable, upon the one hand, of deep emotion and of rich inner life, but on the other hand highly self-critical and disposed to doubt. After a somewhat plentiful early interest in religion, the result of home training and of personal experience, he had come, as he studied more, and looked about his world more critically, to part company almost altogether with positive faiths about religious matters. His childhood beliefs had dropped away.

Doubts and disbeliefs had taken their place. In opinion, when he wrote his papers for me, he was mainly disposed to a pure naturalism. The G.o.ds of the past had vanished from his life almost altogether.

"But," said he, in his account (I follow not his exact words but their general sense), "one old religious exercise I have never quite given up. That was and is prayer. A good while ago I dropped all conventional forms of prayer. I did not say my prayers in the old way.

And when I prayed I no longer fancied that the course of nature or of my luck was going to be altered for my sake, or that my prayers would help me to avoid any consequences of my folly or my ignorance. I did not pray to get anybody to mix in my affairs, so as to get me things {133} that I wanted. But this was, and is, my feeling about prayer: When things are too much for me, and I am down on my luck, and everything is dark, I go alone by myself, and I bury my head in my hands, and I think hard that G.o.d must know it all and will see how matters really are, and understands me, and in just that way alone, by understanding me, will help me. And so I try to get myself together.

And that, for me, is prayer."