And remark, also, that if the love of a personal God mystically conceived tends to become dim in modern societies, the same is not true of the love of an ideal God conceived as the practical type of conduct. The ideal God, in effect, in no sense exists in opposition to the world, He surpasses it simply; He is at bottom identical with the progress of human thought which, with its point of departure in brute fact, outstrips the actual and foresees and prepares the way for perpetual progress. In human life the real and the ideal are harmonized, for life as a whole both is and becomes. Whoever says life, says evolution; and evolution is the Jacob’s ladder resting both on heaven and on earth; at the base of it we are brutes, at the summit of it we are gods, so that religious sentiment cannot be said so much to be in opposition to science and philosophy as to complete them; or rather, it is at bottom identical with the spirit that animates them. We have spoken of religion as science,—in its beginnings as unconscious science; in the same way science may be called religion headed back toward reality; headed, that is to say in the normal direction. Religion says to the human race: Bind yourselves together into a single whole; science shows the human race that all mankind are inevitably parts of a single whole already, and the teaching of the two is practically one.
Summary.
In effect there is taking place a certain substitution in our affections; we are coming to love God in man, the future in the present, the ideal in the real. The man of evolution is precisely the man-God of Christianity. And this love of the ideal harmonized with the love of humanity, instead of finding its vent in vain contemplation and ecstasy, will fill the limbs with energy. We shall love God all the more that He will be, so to speak, the work of our own hands. And if there be really at the bottom of the human heart some indestructible element of mysticism, it will be employed as an important factor in the service of evolution; our heart will go out to our ideas, and we shall adore them in proportion as we shall realize them. Religion having become the purest of all things—pure love of the ideal—will at the same time have become the realest and in appearance the humblest of all things—labour.
Mysticism and asceticism.
The natural and practical complement of mysticism is asceticism; and asceticism is another of the elements of religious morality that are becoming daily feebler in the presence of the modern spirit.
Asceticism in the good and the bad sense.
Austerity is of two kinds, the one quite mystical in origin, despising art, beauty, science; the other founded on a certain moral stoicism, a certain respect for one’s self. The latter is in no sense ascetic, it is composed for the most part of the very love for science and art, but it is the highest art only that it loves, and science for science’s sake that it pursues. The excess of austerity, to which religions have so often led, bears the same relation to virtue that avarice does to economy. Austerity alone does not constitute a merit or an element of superiority. Life may be much more gentle, more social, better on many accounts among a people of loose manners like the ancient Greeks, than among a people who regard existence as hard and dry, and who make it so by the brutality of their faith and ignore the lightening of the burden of life that lies in smiles and tears. One would rather live with prodigals than with misers. Avarice, however, which may be regarded in the life of a people or of a family as a state of transition, is economically and morally superior to prodigality. The same may be said of excessive rigour. Excessive rigour and avarice are defects which are rendered tolerable by their consequences, which impoverish life in order subsequently, with a freer hand, to enrich it. It is better for the race if not always so for the individual to be economical to excess than to dissipate its resources intemperately. An impulse held in check gathers force. Austerity, like avarice, is a means of defence and of protection, a weapon. Conquerors have often in the course of history been the sons of misers who have amassed treasure and blood for their benefit. From time to time it is good to regard one’s self as an enemy, and to live and sleep in a coat of mail. For the rest, there are temperaments that can be held in check by nothing lighter than bars of iron, that find no mean between pure water and pure alcohol; between a bed of roses and a crown of thorns; between moral law and military discipline; between a moralist and a corporal. Still, one must not represent such a state of mind at least as ideal. The ascetic hates himself; but one must hate nobody, not even one’s self; one must understand all things and regulate them. Hatred of self springs from feebleness of will; whoever is gifted with self-control need not hate himself. Instead of giving one’s self a bad name one’s duty is to make one’s self worthy of a better. There may well be a certain legitimate element of rigour, of inner discipline, in every system of morality; but this discipline should be reasonable, rationally directed toward an end which explains and justifies it: one’s business is not to break the body but to fashion it, to bend it. The savant, for example, should aim to develop his brain, to refine his nervous system, to reduce his circulatory and nutritive system to their lowest terms. You may call that asceticism if you like, but it is a fertile, a useful asceticism; it is at bottom a moral hygiene simply—which ought to be made a part of physical hygiene. A surgeon knows that he must lead a severe and continent life, or his hand will lose its cunning. The very condition of his being able to aid other people is that he in a measure suffer privation himself; he must choose. And to make this choice he experiences no need of a religious injunction, he requires only the voice of conscience. It suffices for him to know enough of moral hygiene to foresee the distant results of his conduct and to possess a sufficient measure of firmness to be self-consistent. It is after this fashion that, in plotting out one’s life according to scientific laws, one may regulate it, may render it almost as hard as that of the most self-denying monk. Every profession that is freely chosen is in the nature of a self-imposed discipline. As to the choice of no profession, as to voluntary idleness—that is in and of itself immoral and necessarily leads to immorality, whatever may be the religion that one holds.
Asceticism results in a preoccupation with sin.