SECTION 21. PRECISE NATURE OF PROBLEM TO BE INVESTIGATED. 253 



therefore a true conception of human nature, true insight into 

 what constitutes a satisfactory life, and, furthermore, a moral 

 enlightenment and training which shall render it easy for men 

 and women to live in the light of a high ideal. Granted these, 

 we should possess a basis for the socialist or social State which 

 would resist all onslaughts, and we could, and would, confidently 

 and cheerily labour for its speedy or rather more complete- 

 realisation. Lack of courage to face the problem as such, and 

 an insistence on what is transient, are the undoing of those 

 who seek happiness in wealth and those who work for an era 



"When wealth no more shall rest in mounded heaps, 



But smit with freer light shall slowly melt 



In many streams to fatten lower lands." (Tennyson.) 



These remarks, however, are by no means intended to dis- 

 courage the disinherited from looking forward to a socialised 

 State, and from demanding at present what they abundantly 

 deserve as their due an adequate living wage, shorter hours, 

 full employment, hygienic workplaces, respectful treatment, and 

 better conditions of labour generally. 



116. Finally, there is the engrossingly interesting problem 

 of the nature of religion. Many thinkers not only restrict the 

 meaning of the term to their own creed, but limit it to their 

 particular interpretation of that creed. So, too, the term is 

 said to connote the existence of a supernatural and infinite 

 deity, or at least of deities. On the other hand, there are those 

 who speak of a religion of health, a religion of art, a religion 

 of love, a religion of goodness, or who identify religion with 

 some aspect of some religion or religions worship, devotion 

 to an ideal, and the like. Only a firm resolve to reach the 

 core of the meaning, a desire to be quite definite, to be quit 

 of delusions, can aid us here, as in social problems generally. 



If, in this spirit, we analyse various religions, we discover 

 that he who is religious feels that he needs assistance such as 

 he does not find in himself or in his immediate environment, 

 or requires at least to be reassured concerning the rational and 

 moral constitution of his world. In the earlier religions, even 

 to the time of the Romans, living men, it is true, were also 

 sometimes worshipped, but on the understanding that they 

 were not like other men, whilst in these latter days many 

 individuals, most of them well favoured by the fates, have 

 been satisfied with the existence of a deity who had arranged 

 from eternity everything for the best. In either case self-con- 

 tainedness is excluded. In Judaism, Christianity, and Moham- 

 medanism, the individual regards himself as in a desperate 

 plight but for the support of his deity, and but for the as- 

 surance that his deity watches over mankind. Buddha, it is 

 said, came to save men from themselves and their miseries 

 by means of his discovery that they could rise superior to 



