272 Science Religion and Reality 



from him in his way of relating it to the creative element in ex- 

 perience. For Hegel this is reason, as the channel of the universal 

 reason, which thinks in us and through us. Philosophy is the 

 highest and purest manifestation, but religion also is philosophy, 

 even if it be in popular and picture form : and its task, too, is to 

 emancipate the spirit from the merely individaul, and to show, 

 amid the changing shadows of time, the calm and steady sunshine 

 of the eternal light. 



Kant is somewhat less definite in stating this relation of 

 religion to the creative source of experience, but it is quite as deeply 

 embedded in his theory. The necessary forms of the Theoretical 

 Reason, he held, are imposed by itself, and, therefore, may not be 

 valid beyond its own ordering of phenomena. The real world is 

 the world of freedom, which approves itself to us as we deal with 

 it in freedom by obedience to our own moral reason. And to this 

 world of reality, this realm of ir^t moral ends, religion belongs, and 

 indeed its reality is one with the existence of such a realm. 



All these theories, therefore, though ascribing radically contra- 

 dictory origins to religion in the mind, agree in seeking them where 

 reality manifests itself to us. Their views of what religion is 

 also differ with the seat to which they ascribe it, yet all agree that 

 it is, or ought to be, victory and peace through providing for us a 

 right relation to the ultimate reality. For Kant this reality is the 

 moral order, for Schleiermacher the artistic harmony of the 

 universe, for Hegel the cosmic process of reason ; but, for all, it 

 is that which is absolute in its claim, and, for all, religion is the 

 recognition of this claim and, through it, is emancipation from the 

 fluctuating values of sense and victory over all that is changing 

 and accidental. 



These three theories having exhausted the possibility of finding 

 a special aspect of mind which would be the characteristic mark of 

 religion, several more recent writers have maintained the view 

 that the mark of religion is the absence of limit either in the activity 

 of our minds or in our dealing with all reality. 



Thus James defines religion as our total reaction to reality. 

 In a sense this is true, but it is not true in any sense which would 

 mark off religion from other experiences. Each of us rpight be 

 summed up as our total reaction to reality : and from this relation 

 to ourselves our religion does not escape any more than anything 

 else which belongs to us. We may go still farther and say that 



