Outlines of a Philosophy of Religion based on Psychology and History

by Auguste Sabatier

There is another consequence of this psychological observation. The consciousness of the ego is one; neither the idea of cause nor the idea of end, by itself, would suffice to explain the whole universe to me. It is easy to see at a glance that the objective science of phenomena is not and never can be completed. The chain into which it introduces each particular phenomenon as a new link is indefinitely lengthened by scientific progress, in time and space, but without the power to hang on anywhere. Outside space and time, the principle of causation only engenders insoluble antinomies. Besides, to explain one phenomenon by another is to explain it by a cause which itself needs explanation. The mechanical reason of things is therefore never a sufficient reason. It is an indefinite series of insufficient particular reasons. The network of science, however fine and firm it be, does not cover, and cannot cover all reality. The Cosmos that science builds is like the globe; it floats in immensity. "Where, O Lord, goes the earth through the heavens?"

To this question teleology alone responds. But every teleological affirmation respecting the universe is a religious affirmation. Science, studying only accomplished facts, never establishes anything but phenomena and their antecedent or concomitant conditions. Once the phenomenon is integrated in the causal series, the task of science is accomplished. To ask it to go further is to ask it to go beyond its limits and to denaturalise itself. You can only put teleology into the universe by affirming the sovereignty of spirit. To say that there is reason, that there is thought, in things—that they move towards an end or realise an order, a harmony, a good: this is to say that matter is subordinate to spirit. Now, to affirm this sovereignty of spirit is to commit that act of initial religious faith of which I spoke at the beginning; it is to feel in one's self and in the world something besides matter, the mysterious energy of spirit. This act of faith—legitimate because inevitable—belongs to the subjective order of religious life, not to the objective order of science. Teleology and the theory of final causes have been compromised because their specific character has been mistaken; they have sometimes been assimilated to, and sometimes substituted for, mechanical causes in the explanation of phenomena. For an unknown scientific explanation has been substituted an appeal to a supernatural intention or volition of God. The savants rightly protested against this. God, who is the final reason of everything, is the scientific explanation of nothing. The object of science is to search for second causes; where these do not appear there is no science. It is faith which replaces it. To say that God created the world, or that the world tends toward the sovereign good, is not to advance positive science a single step. On the other hand, to explain the phenomena of rain, or thunder, or the fall of bodies, is to dissipate some mythological conceptions; but it is not to suppress the religious affirmation of spirit that the mechanism of the universe has an end, and that the laws of gravitation and the material forces serve some purpose of which they are ignorant, and which is of more value than themselves.

Between the discoveries of science and the postulates of the religious and moral life there is always necessarily formed a synthesis which is destroyed at each step, but which rises again higher and larger than before. Mechanism itself, in order to be intelligible, calls for teleology. The text of the material world awaits the interpretation that spirit gives of it. By its discoveries positive science establishes the text. Without this rigorous establishment of the text, the exegesis of consciousness remains a phantasy. But, without that exegesis, the text itself signifies nothing; it is almost as if it did not exist.

There is another reason, a practical reason, which makes of teleology the very essence of the religious consciousness. We must never lose sight of the fact that what we seek in and by religion is the key to the enigma of life. The enigma of the universe only torments us, at the religious point of view, because we believe that in this is the secret of that. We are embarked in the vessel, and we see clearly enough that our destiny depends upon its own. That is why religious faith, perfectly indifferent to the architecture and to the ways and means of the construction of the vessel, regards above all the direction in which the sails are set, and seeks to discover the route which is being followed. Has it a compass? And is there some one at the helm?

In other words, the religious instinct is the pressing need that spirit has to guarantee itself against the perpetual menaces of Nature. Faith judges everything from the point of view of the sovereign good, and the sovereign good, for spirit, can only be the final and complete expansion of the life of the spirit. Therefore, in every religious notion there will never, at bottom, be anything but a teleological judgment. It is not the essence of things—it is their reciprocal value and their hierarchy which interest religious faith. In the religious notion of God it is not the metaphysical nature—it is the will of God in regard to men—which is of most concern; and in the religious notion of the world it is not the mechanical cause of phenomena—it is to know which way the world is going, and whether it has any other end to serve than as the theatre and the organ of spirit. What does faith itself desire to say when it defines God as the Eternal and Almighty Spirit, except that man needs to affirm that his own individual spirit does not depend on any but a spiritual power like himself? It is true that to determine this final cause of the world is also to determine its first cause. It is the same thing in other terms; and indeed it is to make metaphysics in the etymological sense of the word. The important point is to know that this decisive step beyond the chain of visible phenomena, whether it be taken by the philosopher or the theologian, is always an act of subjective life, an affirmation of spirit, an act of faith, and not a demonstration of science.

6. Symbolism

Thirdly, and lastly, religious knowledge is symbolical. All the notions it forms and organises, from the first metaphor created by religious feeling to the most abstract theological speculation, are necessarily inadequate to their object. They are never equivalent, as in the case of the exact sciences.

The reason is easy to discover. The object of religion is transcendent; it is not a phenomenon. Now, in order to express that object, our imagination has nothing at its disposal but phenomenal images, and our understanding, logical categories, which do not go beyond space and time. Religious knowledge is therefore obliged to express the invisible by the visible, the eternal by the temporary, spiritual realities by sensible images. It can only speak in parables. The theory of religious knowledge requires for its completion a theory of symbols and symbolism.

What is a symbol? To express the invisible and spiritual by the sensible and material—such is its principal characteristic and its essential function. It is a living organism, in which we must distinguish between appearance and substance. It is a soul in a body. The body is the manifestation of the soul, although it is not like it; it makes the soul active and present. The most perfect example of symbolism, in this respect, is found in language and writing—two incarnations of thought. Neither the characters formed by my pen, nor the sound made by the air in my larynx, have a positive resemblance to my thought. But these letters and sounds become signs to those who have the key to them. They express the intangible thought; they make it present and living in the minds of those who read or hear.

This is still truer of the creations of art. They also are mere symbols. Art might be defined as the effort to enshrine the ideal in the real, and by a material form to express the inexpressible. This is clearly taught by the word poesy, which means creation. The works of great artists really live; for they have a soul, a rich and intense life, which the material form at once conceals and reveals. From architecture to music there is not an art that is not symbolical. Ethics, religion, all the disciplines relating to the subjective life of spirit, have only this means of expression. It is their peculiarity to become exterior and objective, and to dominate the external things that science studies. Symbols, much better than science, attest the victory and the royalty of spirit. If science reveals Nature, symbols make of Nature, of its transformations and its laws, the glorified image of the inner life of spirit.