The Approach to Philosophy

by Ralph Barton Perry

In this faith Judaism merges into Christianity.[94:12] In the whole course of this evolution God is regarded as the friend of his people, but his people learn to find a new significance in his friendship. That which is altered is the conduct which that friendship requires and the expectation which it determines. The practical ideal which the relationship sanctions, changes gradually from that of prudence to that of goodness for its own sake. God, once an instrument relevant to human temporal welfare, has come to be an object of disinterested service.

No such transformation as this was absolutely realized during the period covered by the writings of the Old Testament, nor has it even yet been realized in the development of Christianity. But the evolution of both Judaism and Christianity has taken this direction. The criterion of this evolution is manifestly both ethical and metaphysical. A Christian avows that he rates purity of character above worldly prosperity, so that the former cannot properly be prized for the sake of the latter. Furthermore, he shares more or less unconsciously such philosophical and scientific opinions as deny truth to the conception of special interferences and dispensations from a supernatural agency. Therefore he looks for no fire from heaven to consume his sacrifice. But his religion is nevertheless a practical expectation. He believes that God is good, and that God loves him and sustains him. He believes that there obtains between himself, in so far as good, and the universe sub specie eternitatis, a real sympathy and reciprocal reenforcement. He believes that he secures through the profoundly potent forces of the universe that which he regards as of most worth; and that somewhat is added to these forces by virtue of his consecration. The God of the Christians cannot be defined short of some such account as this, inclusive of an ideal, an attitude, and an expectation. In other words the God of the Christians is to be known only in terms of the Christlike outlook upon life, in which the disciple is taught to emulate the master. When moral and intellectual development shall have discredited either its scale of values, or its conviction that cosmical events are in the end determined in accordance with that scale of values, then Christianity must either be transformed, or be untenable for the wise man. If we have conceived the essence of Christianity too broadly or vaguely, it does not much matter for our present purposes. Its essence is, at any rate, some such inwardness of life resolving ideality and reality into one, and drawing upon objective truth only to the extent required for the confirming of that relation.

The Cognitive Factor in Religion.

§ [34]. We conclude, then, our attempt to emphasize the cognitive factor in religion, with the thesis that every religion centres in a practical secret of the universe. To be religious is to believe that a certain correlation of forces, moral and factual, is in reality operative, and that it determines the propriety and effectiveness of a certain type of living. Whatever demonstrates the futility, vanity, or self-deception of this living, discredits the religion. And, per contra, except as they define or refute such practical truth, religion is not essentially concerned with theoretical judgments.

The Place of Imagination in Religion.

§ [35]. But neither religion nor any other human interest consists in essentials. Such a practical conviction as that which has been defined inevitably flowers into a marvelous complexity, and taps for its nourishment every spontaneity of human nature. If it be said that only the practical conviction is essential, this is not the same as to say that all else is superfluous. There may be no single utterance that my religion could not have spared, and yet were I to be altogether dumb my religion would, indeed, be as nothing. For if I believe, I accept a presence in my world, which as I live will figure in my dreams, or in my thoughts, or in my habits. And each of these expressions of myself will have a truth if it do but bear out my practical acceptance of that presence. The language of religion, like that of daily life, is not the language of science except it take it upon itself to be so. There is scarcely a sentence which I utter in my daily intercourse with men which is not guilty of transgressions against the canons of accurate and definite thinking. Yet if I deceive neither myself nor another, I am held to be truthful, even though my language deal with chance and accident, material purposes and spiritual causes, and though I vow that the sun smiles or the moon lets down her hair into the sea. Science is a special interest in the discovery of unequivocal and fixed conceptions, and employs its terms with an unalterable connotation. But no such algebra of thought is indispensable to life or conversation, and its lack is no proof of error. Such is the case also with that eminently living affair, religion. I may if I choose, and I will if my reasoning powers be at all awakened, be a theologian. But theology, like science, is a special intellectual spontaneity. St. Thomas, the master theologian, did not glide unwittingly from prayer into the quæstiones of the "Summa Theologiæ," but turned to them as to a fresh adventure. Theology is inevitable, because humanly speaking adventure is inevitable. For man, with his intellectual spontaneity, every object is a problem; and did he not seek sooner or later to define salvation, there would be good reason to believe that he did not practically reckon with any. But this is similarly and independently true of the imagination, the most familiar means with which man clothes and vivifies his convictions, the exuberance with which he plays about them and delights to confess them. The imagination of religion, contributing what Matthew Arnold called its "poetry and eloquence," does not submit itself to such canons as are binding upon theology or science, but exists and flourishes in its own right.

The indispensableness to religion of the imagination is due to that faculty's power of realizing what is not perceptually present. Religion is not interested in the apparent, but in the secret essence or the transcendent universal. And yet this interest is a practical one. Imagination may introduce one into the vivid presence of the secret or the transcendent. It is evident that the religious imagination here coincides with poetry. For it is at least one of the interests of poetry to cultivate and satisfy a sense for the universal; to obtain an immediate experience or appreciation that shall have the vividness without the particularism of ordinary perception. And where a poet elects so to view the world, we allow him as a poet the privilege, and judge him by the standards to which he submits himself. That upon which we pass judgment is the fitness of his expression. This expression is not, except in the case of the theoretical mystic, regarded as constituting the most valid form of the idea, but is appreciated expressly for its fulfilment of the condition of immediacy. The same sort of critical attitude is in order with the fruits of the religious imagination. These may or may not fulfil enough of the requirements of that art to be properly denominated poetry; but like poetry they are the translation of ideas into a specific language. They must not, therefore, be judged as though they claimed to excel in point of validity, but only in point of consistency with the context of that language. And the language of religion is the language of the practical life. Such translation is as essential to an idea that is to enter into the religious experience, as translation into terms of immediacy is essential to an idea that is to enter into the appreciative consciousness of the poet. No object can find a place in my religion until it is conjoined with my purposes and hopes; until it is taken for granted and acted upon, like the love of my friends, or the courses of the stars, or the stretches of the sea.

The Special Functions of the Religious Imagination.

§ [36]. The religious imagination, then, is to be understood and justified as that which brings the objects of religion within the range of living. The central religious object, as has been seen, is an attitude of the residuum or totality of things. To be religious one must have a sense for the presence of an attitude, like his sense for the presence of his human fellows, with all the added appreciation that is proper in the case of an object that is unique in its mystery or in its majesty. It follows that the religious imagination fulfils its function in so far as it provides the object of religion with properties similar to those which lend vividness and reality to the normal social relations.

The presence of one's fellows is in part the perceptual experience of their bodies. To this there corresponds in religion some extraordinary or subtle appearance. The gods may in visions or dreams be met with in their own proper embodiments; or, as is more common, they may be regarded as present for practical purposes: in some inanimate object, as in the case of the fetish; in some animal species, as in the case of the totem; in some place, as in the case of the shrine; or even in some human being, as in the case of the inspired prophet and miracle worker. In more refined and highly developed religions the medium of God's presence is less specific. He is perceived with