The Moral Economy

by Ralph Barton Perry

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.