The Moral Economy

by Ralph Barton Perry

II

In the first place, let me mention briefly a test which it is customary to apply, but which is not so much an estimate as it is a measure. I refer to the various respects in which an individual or community may be said to be more or less religious. Thus, for example, certain religious phenomena surpass others in acuteness or intensity. This is peculiarly true of the phenomena manifested in conversion and in revivals. In this respect the mysteries of the ancients exceeded {219} their regular public worship. Individuals and communities vary in the degree to which they are capable of enthusiasm, excitement, or ecstasy.

Or a religion may be measured extensively. He whose religion is constant and uniform is more religious than he whose observance is confined to the Sabbath day, or he whose concern in the matter appears only in time of trouble or at the approach of death. This test may best be summed up in terms of consistency. Religion may vary in the degree to which it pervades the various activities of life. That religion is confined and small which manifests itself only in words or public deeds or emotions exclusively. If it is to be effective it must be systematic, so thoroughly adopted as to be cumulative and progressive. It must engage every activity, qualify all thought and imagination, in short, infuse the whole of life with its saving grace.

It is clear, however, that a measure of religion does not constitute either proof or disproof. If a religion be good or true, or on like grounds accredited, then the more of it the better. But differences of degree appear in all religions. Indeed, the quantitative test has been most adequately met by forms of religion the warrant of which is generally held to be highly questionable. We may, therefore, dismiss this test without further consideration. The application of it must be {220} based upon a prior and more fundamental justification.

There is one test of religion which has been universally applied by believers and critics alike, a test which, I think, will shortly appear to deserve precedence over all others. I refer to the test of truth. Every religion has been justified to its believers and recommended to unbelievers on grounds of evidence. It has been verified in its working, or attested by either observation, reflection, revelation, or authority.

In spite of the general assent which this proposition will doubtless command, it is deserving of special emphasis at the present time. Students of religion have latterly shifted attention from its claims to truth to its utility and subjective form. This pragmatic and psychological study of religion has created no little confusion of mind concerning its real meaning, and obscured that which is after all its essential claim—the claim, namely, to offer an illumination of life. Religious belief, like all belief, is reducible to judgments. These judgments are not, it is true, explicit and theoretically formulated; but they are none the less answerable to evidence from that context of experience to which they refer. It is true that the believer's assurance is not consciously rational, but it is none the less liable before the court of reason. Cardinal Newman {221} fairly expressed the difference between the method of religion and the method of science when he said that "ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt," that "difficulty and doubt are incommensurate." [3] Nevertheless, the difficulties are in each case germane; and the fact that every article of faith has its besetting doubt is proof that the thorough justification of faith requires the settlement of theoretical difficulties.

No religion can survive the demonstration of its untruth; for salvation, whether present or eternal, depends on processes actually operative in the environment. Religion must reveal the undeniable situation and prepare man for it. It must charge the unbeliever with being guilty of folly, with deceiving himself through failing to see and take heed. Every religious propaganda is a cry of warning, putting men on their guard against invisible dangers; or a promise of succor, bringing glad tidings of great joy. And its prophecy is empty and trivial if the danger or the succor can be shown to be unreal. The one unfailing bias in life is the bias for disillusionment, springing from the organic instinct for that real environment to which, whether friendly or hostile, it must adapt itself. Every man knows in his heart that he can not be saved through being deceived. Illusions can not endure, and those who lightly perpetrate them are fortunate {222} if they escape the resentment and swift vengeance which overtook the prophets of Baal.

The grounds of religious truth will require prolonged consideration; but before discussing them further let me first mention a test of religion which belongs to the class of psychological and pragmatic tests to which I have just alluded, but which has latterly assumed special prominence. Though realizing that I use a somewhat disparaging term, I suggest that we call this the "therapeutic test." It has been proved that the state of piety possesses a direct curative value through its capacity to exhilarate or pacify, according to the needs of a disordered mind. As a potent form of suggestion, it lends itself to the uses of psychiatry; it may be medicinally employed as a tonic, stimulant, or sedative.

Now we can afford to remind ourselves that, at least from the point of view of the patient, this use of religion bears a striking resemblance to certain primitive practices in which God was conceived as a glorified medicine-man, and the healing of the body strangely confused with spiritual regeneration. Bishop Gregory of Tours once addressed the following apostrophe to the worshipful St. Martin: "O unspeakable theriac! ineffable pigment! admirable antidote! celestial purgative! superior to all the skill of physicians, more fragrant than aromatic drugs, stronger than {223} all ointments combined! thou cleanest the bowels as well as scammony, and the lungs as well as hyssop; thou cleanest the head as well as camomile!" [4]

It is true that religion is in these days recommended for more subtle disorders; but even religious ecstasy may be virtually equivalent to a mere state of emotional exhilaration, or piety to a condition of mental and moral stupor. What does it profit a man to be content with his lot, or to experience the rapture of the saints, if he has lost his soul? The saving of a soul is a much more serious matter than the cessation of worry or the curing of insomnia, or even than the acquiring of a habit of delirious joy. Tranquillity and happiness are, it is true, the legitimate fruits of religion, but only provided they be infused with goodness and truth. If religion is to be a spiritual tonic, and not merely a physical tonic, it must be based on moral organization and intellectual enlightenment. I do not doubt that religion has in all times recommended itself to men mainly through its contributing to their lives a certain peculiar buoyancy and peace. There is such a generic value in religion, which can not be attributed wholly to any of its component parts. But, like the intensity or extent of religion, this may manifest itself upon all levels of development. Sound piety, a tranquillity and happiness {224} which mark the soul's real salvation, must be founded on truth, on an interpretation of life which expresses the fullest light. Again, then, we are referred to the test of truth for the fundamental justification of religion. There is a generic value which is deserving of the last word, but that word can be said only after a rigorous examination of the more fundamental values from which it is derived.

Religious truth is divisible into two judgments, involved in every religious belief, and answerable respectively to ethical and cosmological evidence. Since religion is a belief concerning the overruling control of human interests, it involves on the one hand a summing up of these interests, a conception of what the believer has at stake, in short, an ethical judgment; and on the other hand, an interpretation of the environment at large, in other words, a cosmological judgment. Religion construes the practical situation in its totality; which means that it generalizes concerning the content of fortune, or the good, and the sources of fortune, or nature. Both factors are invariably present, and no religion can escape criticism on this twofold ground.

The ethical implications of religion are peculiarly far-reaching, since they determine not only its conception of man, but also, in part, its conception of God. This is due to the fact that {225} the term "God" signifies not the environment in its inherent nature, but the environment in its bearing on the worshipper's interests. It follows that whether God be construed as favorable or hostile will depend upon the worshipper's conception of these interests. Thus, for example, if worldly success or long life be regarded as the values most eagerly to be conserved, God must be feared as cruel or capricious; whereas, if the lesson of discipline and humility be conceived as the highest good, it may be reasonable to trust the providence of God without any change in its manifestation.

Furthermore, as we shall shortly have occasion to remark, it is characteristic of religion to insist, so far as possible, upon the favorableness of the environment. But this favorableness must be construed in terms of what are held to be man's highest interests. Consequently, the disposition and motive of God always reflect human purposes. This is the main source of the inevitable anthropomorphism of religion.

Conceptions of nature, on the other hand, define the degree to which the environment is morally determined, and the unity or plurality of its causes. Animism, for example, reflects the general opinion that the causes of natural events are wilful rather than mechanical. Such an opinion obtained at the time when no sharp {226} distinction was made between inorganic and organic phenomena, the action of the environment being conceived as a play of impulses.

Religion is corrected, then, by light obtained from these sources: man's knowledge of his highest interests, and his knowledge of nature. As a rule, one or the other of these two methods of criticism tends to predominate, in accordance with the genius of the race or period. Thus, the evolution of Greek religion is determined mainly by the development of science. Xenophanes attacks the religion of his times on the ground of its crude anthropomorphism. "Mortals," he says, "think that the gods are born as they are, and have perception like theirs, and voice and form." But this naïve opinion Xenophanes corrects because it is not consistent with the new enlightenment concerning the archê, or first principle of nature. "And he [God] abideth ever in the same place, moving not at all; nor doth it befit him to go about, now hither, now thither." [5]

In a later age Lucretius criticised the whole system of Greek religion in terms of the atomistic and mechanical cosmology of Epicurus:

For verily not by design did the first-beginnings of things station themselves each in its right place guided by keen intelligence, nor did they bargain sooth to say what motions each should assume; but because many in number and shifting about in many ways throughout the universe they are driven and {227} tormented by blows during infinite time past, after trying motions and unions of every kind at length they fall into arrangements such as those out of which this our sum of things has been formed.[6]

In the light of such principles Lucretius demonstrates the absurdity of hoping or fearing anything from a world beyond or a life to come. In this case, as in the case above, the religion of enlightenment does not differ essentially from the religion of the average man in its conception of the interests at stake, but only in its conception of the methods of worship or forms of imagery which it is reasonable to employ in view of the actual nature of the environment.

If, on the other hand, we turn to the early development of the Hebrew religion, we find that it is corrected to meet the demands not of cosmological but of ethical enlightenment. No question arises as to the existence or power of God, but only as to what he requires of those who serve him. The prophets represent the moral genius of the race, its acute discernment of the causes of social integrity or decay. "And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil: learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve {228} the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow." [7]

But whichever of these two methods of criticism predominates, it is clear that they both draw upon bodies of truth which grow independently of religion. The history of Christianity affords a most remarkable record of the continual adjustment of religious belief to secular rationality. The offices of religion have availed no more to justify cruelty, intolerance, and bigotry than to establish the Ptolemaic astronomy or the Scriptural account of creation. This is more readily admitted in the case of natural science than in the case of ethics, but only because teachers of religion have commonly had a more expert acquaintance with moral matters than with the orbits of the planets or the natural history of the earth.

For the principles of conduct, like the principles of nature, must be derived from a study of the field to which they are applied. They require nothing more for their establishment than the analysis and generalization of the moral situation. If two or more persons conduct themselves with reference to one another and to an external object, their action either possesses or lacks, in some degree, that specific value which we call moral goodness. And by the principles of ethics we mean the principles which truly define and explicate this value. Now neither the truth nor {229} the falsity of any religion affects these fundamental and essential conditions. If the teachings of religion be accepted as true, then certain factors may be added to the concrete practical situation; but if so, these fall within the field of morality and must be submitted to ethical principles. Thus, if there be a God whose personality permits of reciprocal social relations with man, then man ought, in the moral sense, to be prudent with reference to him, and may reasonably demand justice or good-will at his hands.

But the mere existence of a God, whatever be his nature, can neither invalidate nor establish the ethical principles of prudence, justice, and good-will. Were a God whose existence is proved, to recommend injustice, this would not affect in the slightest degree the moral obligation to be just. Moral revelation stands upon precisely the same footing as revelation in the sphere of theoretical truth: its acceptance can be justified only through its being confirmed by experience or reason. In other words, it is the office of revelation to reveal truth, but not to establish it. In consequence of this fact it may even be necessary that a man should redeem the truth in defiance of what he takes to be the disposition of God. Neither individual conscience nor the moral judgment of mankind can be superseded or modified save through a higher insight which these may {230} themselves be brought to confirm. Whatever a man may think of God, if he continues to live in the midst of his fellows, he places himself within the jurisdiction of the laws which obtain there. Morality is the method of reconciling and fulfilling the interests of beings having the capacity to conduct themselves rationally, and ethics is the formulation of the general principles which underlie this method. The attempt to live rationally—and, humanly speaking, there is no alternative save the total abnegation of life—brings one within the jurisdiction of these principles, precisely as thinking brings one within the jurisdiction of the principles of logic, or as the moving of one's body brings one within the jurisdiction of the principles of mechanics.

Religion, then, mediates an enlightenment which it does not of itself originate. In religious belief the truth which is derived from a studious observation of nature and the cumulative experience of life, is heightened and vivified. Like all belief religion is conservative, and rightly so. But in the long run, steadily and inevitably, it responds to every forward step which man is enabled to take through the exercise of his natural cognitive powers. Only so does religion serve its real purpose of benefiting life by expanding its horizon and defining its course.

I have hitherto left out of account a certain {231} stress or insistence that must now be recognized as fundamental in religious development. This I shall call the optimistic bias. This bias is not accidental or arbitrary, but significant of the fact that religion, like morality, springs from the same motive as life itself, and makes towards the same goal of fruition and abundance. Life is essentially interest, and interest is essentially positive or provident; fear is incidental to hope, and hate to love. Man seeks to know the worst only in order that he may avoid or counterwork it in the furtherance of his interests. Religion is the result of man's search for support in the last extremity. This is true, even when men are largely preoccupied with the mere struggle for existence. It appears more and more plainly as life becomes aggressive, and is engaged in the constructive enterprise of civilization. Religion expresses man's highest hope of attainment, whether this be conceived as the efficacy of a fetich or the kingdom of God.

Such, then, are the general facts of religion, and the fundamental critical principles which justify and define its development. Religion is man's belief in salvation, his confident appeal to the overruling control of his ultimate fortunes. The reconstruction of religious belief is made necessary whenever it fails to express the last verified truth, cosmological or ethical. The {232} direction of religious development is thus a resultant of two forces: the optimistic bias, or the saving hope of life; and rational criticism, or the progressive revelation of the principles which define life and its environment.

I shall proceed now to the consideration of types of religion which illustrate this critical reconstruction. The types which I shall select represent certain forms of inadequacy which I think it important to distinguish. They are only roughly historical, as is necessarily the case, since all religions represent different types in the various stages of their development, and in the different interpretations which are put on them in any given time by various classes of believers. I shall consider in turn, using the terms in a manner to be precisely indicated as we proceed, superstition, tutelary religion, and two forms of philosophical religion, the one metaphysical idealism, and the other moral idealism.