176 Science Religion and Reality 



another man, animal, or inanimate thing from the emotion which 

 one feels towards God, it is necessary for the sentiment to be accom- 

 panied by a representation and a concept. While admitting that 

 religious emotion has a different tone and character from the others, 

 something special to itself, we are not thereby authorised to say 

 that (as a pure sentiment without representation or concept) it has, 

 as Schleiermacher maintained, an immediate consciousness of an 

 absolute dependence. 



Dependence implies a relationship between two terms, and 

 cannot be present to consciousness unless these two terms are con- 

 ceived in some way : that is to say, my person, which is dependent, 

 and the spirit, on which it depends. The feeling taken by itself is 

 a modification of my subjective consciousness, which gives me only 

 the experience of itself, and does not tell me anything either of my 

 personality as a whole (which is not indeed exhausted by that par- 

 ticular feeling) or of the Infinite Reality on which it depends. The 

 feeling alone is not sufficient in order to be conscious of this de- 

 pendence. At least three concepts are necessary — that of the 

 finite, that of the infinite, and that of the relation between them. 

 There must also be added the idea that the dependence is not 

 relative (that is, such that we can withdraw from it), but absolute, 

 and for this idea other concepts are necessary. 



Feeling alone is impotent to bring us out of subjectivity, as 

 it easily degenerates into individual choice. Every individual, in 

 fact, will be able to create for himself his own religion, and there 

 are innumerable varieties of religious experience, as the very title 

 of James's book tells us. 



In order to overcome subjectivism, the Pragmatists, the 

 Modernists, and the philosophers of action turn to the criterion of 

 social utility and to the necessity of moral demands, which have 

 a character of universality. But it will be easy to show that that 

 does not serve for the purpose, and if it succeeds, it is because they 

 imply an intellectualist criterion without appearing to do so. It is 

 certainly of no use to bring out of subjectivism the illative sense of 

 Newman, which, as a source of certainty, cannot be considered 

 superior to logical reasoning, since it is even more subject to errors. 

 The instinct is not as infallible as Newman thinks. Inspiration 

 and divination often give fantastic products which correspond to 

 nothing real. The passage from one concrete image to another 

 can be determined by relationships of accidental association. How 



