Conclusion 381 



under the guidance of its highest part. In my other books I have 

 attempted to show in detail how the spiritual Hfe is or should be a 

 harmonious development of the whole man, passing, as Clement of 

 Alexandria says, from faith to knowledge, and from knowledge to 

 that love which " unifies the knower and the known." In this 

 state of enlightenment there is no more discord between the will, 

 the intellect, and the feelings, and the objects of our reverence — 

 the True, the Beautiful, and the Right — are more and more 

 blended, like a triple star. 



It seems strange that a warning should be necessary to take our 

 religion seriously. But we cannot look about us without noticing 

 the extraordinary frivolity of much which passes for religious 

 interest. In Southern Europe, especially, religion is largely a 

 social diversion, a spectacular performance, an artistic enjoyment. 

 The attitude of our own public towards popular superstitions, half 

 belief and half make-belief, is too common among church-goers. 

 The scientific man cannot understand this playfulness where 

 matters of the highest moment are at stake. Nothing repels him 

 more from the worship of the churches. It is difficult for a student 

 of science to realise how weak the love of truth is in the majority, 

 and how widespread the mistrust of reason. The real sceptic does 

 not write books on agnosticism ; he never thinks at all, which is 

 the only way to be perfectly orthodox. 



It is, I think, a valuable reflection of Otto that much injury 

 is done to the cause of religion by separating the question of human 

 immortality from the truth or falsehood of the religious view of 

 the world generally. It is of the essence of religion, in its higher 

 forms, to distinguish between the transient, unsatisfying flux of 

 things, and the permanent, satisfying reality which lies behind it. 

 This distinction has been embodied in countless mythologies and 

 eschatologies, but the conviction which creates them is funda- 

 mental. So long as we discuss immortality merely as the question 

 whether the individual continues to exist as a conscious being after 

 his death, we have taken it out of its religious context. For religion 

 this question is significant only as a part of the much larger convic- 

 tion that the true nature of things lies behind their visible appear- 

 ances, and beyond time and space. The mere question of survival 

 in time, and for a time, is almost frivolous to the religious mind. 

 What is essential is the conviction that, in the words of Plotinus, 

 *' nothing that really is can ever perish," or, as Goethe puts it, " all 



