THOUGHTS ON THE TESTAAIENT OF JOHN SCOTT HALDANE 



world.^ In the effort to do this, he is perfectly reaHstic. For example, he 

 understands the necessity for making the contacts between men and 

 machinery beneficent, not lethal. This is the kind of ethic appropriate 

 to our civilisation. He has faith also, the faith that infinite capacities 

 for good are resident in man, the faith that the early christians had, 

 that the Regnum Dei can be built on earth. Alone in the world to-day 

 he has noted the apostle's warning: "He that despiseth man, despiseth 

 not man, but God." Finally, his philosophy is precisely dialectical 

 materialism, the view that one original creative event, probably for 

 ever impenetrable to us and therefore hardly worth prolonged dis- 

 cussion, gave rise to a succession in time of dialectical developments, 

 ever higher stages of organisation being reached. The classless state 

 of justice and happiness on earth itself forms part of this succession 

 and belief in it is therefore no mere desperate act of faith, but a part 

 of an eminently rational philosophy and a declaration of unshakeable 

 confidence — "Magna est Veritas, et praevalebit." 



The highest form which religion has yet taken is a form in which 

 it negates itself, and must war with all previous forms of itself. These 

 words require further elucidation. For this purpose I suggest that 

 instead of defining religion, with Haldane, as a kind of theistic 

 philosophy without historical antecedents, we should accept the 

 following propositions. First, that as Otto showed, religion begins 

 in shuddering fear and dread of the numinous, a special category of 

 external nature; and is then later attached to ethical actions with 

 exceedingly powerful psychological means by certain persons, such 

 as Jesus, whose death on the cross epitomises all the guiltless sufferings 

 of the just. Secondly, as would follow from the conceptions of Marx 

 and Engels, this numinous quality was from the beginning also 

 attached to the exploiting lord as opposed to the exploited serf. 

 Hence all organised religion tended to stabilise the exploitation of 

 man by man. In so general a discussion as this, examples will occur 

 to every reader, but mention may be made of the sacredness of the 

 Roman imperium,^ the history of the Papacy, and St. Paul's phrase 

 "the pov/ers that be are ordained of God," to say nothing of such 

 minor phenomena as the deacon's dalmatic placed upon the Kings 



■"^ The numinous shifts as the economic possibilities open out during human social 

 evolution. Those who are ahead of their time are those who visualise the new possibilities 

 and are able to divine the new position of the numinous. 



^ Cf. the extraordinary forms which tliis sacratissimum ministeriutn took in tlie time 

 of the thirteenth century Hohenstaufen Emperors {Frederick the Second^ by E. Kan- 

 torowicz, London, 193 1). 



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