284 



SCIENCE. 



divorce among savages we have an example in certain 

 Australian tribes, who are said to have a theology so 

 definite as to believe in the existence of one Gcd, the 

 omnipotent Creator of heaven and of earth, and yet to be 

 absolutely destitute of any worship. 5 Both of these, 

 however, are aberrant phenomena — conditions of mind 

 which are anomalous, and in all probability essentially 

 transitional. It has been shown in the preceding pages 

 how impossible it is to regard Australian or any other 

 savages of the present time as representing the probable 

 condition of Primeval man. It needs no argument to 

 prove that it is equally impossible to regard speculative 

 philosophers of any school as representing the mind of 

 the earliest progenitors of our race. But neither of sav- 

 ages nor of philosophers who believe in a God but do not 

 pray to Him, would it be proper to say that they have no 

 Religion. They may be on the way to having none, or 

 they may be on the way to having more. But men who 

 believe in the existence of any Personal or Living Agency 

 in Nature superior to our own, are in possession of the 

 one essential element of all Religion. This belief is 

 almost universally associated with practices which are in 

 the nature of worship — with sentiments of awe, or of 

 reverence, or of fear. 



It is not inconsistent with this definition to admit that 

 sects or individuals, who have come to reject all definite 

 theological conceptions and to deny the existence of a 

 living God have nevertheless been able to retain feelings 

 and sentiments which may justly claim to be called re- 

 ligious. In the first place, with many men of this kind, 

 their denial of a God is not in reality a complete denial, 

 What they deny is very often only some particular con- 

 ception of the Godhead, which is involved, or which they 

 think is involved, in the popular theology. They are re- 

 pelled, perhaps, by the familiarity with which the least 

 elevated of human passions are sometimes attributed to 

 the Divine Being. Or they may be puzzled by the anom- 

 alies of Nature, and find it impossible to reconcile them 

 intellectually with any definite conception of a Being who 

 is both all-powerful and all-good. But in faltering under 

 this difficulty, or under other difficulties of the same kind, 

 and in denying the possibility of forming any clear or 

 definite conception of the Godhead, they do not necessarily 

 renounce other conceptions which, though vague and 

 indefinite, are nevertheless sufficient to form the nucleus 

 of a hazy atmosphere of religious feeling and emotion. 

 Such men may or may not recognize the fact that these 

 feelings and emotions have been inherited from ancestors 

 whose beliefs were purely theological, and that it is in the 

 highest degree doubtful how long these feelings can be 

 retained as mere survivals. It is remarkable that 

 such feelings are even now artificially propped up 

 and supported by a system of investing abstract 

 terms with all the elements of personality. When men 

 who profess to have rejected the idea of a God declare, 

 nevertheless, as Strauss has declared, that "the world is 

 to them the workshop of the Rational and the Good,'* 

 — when they explain that " that on which they feel them- 

 selves to be absolutely dependent is by no means a brute 

 power, but that it is Order and Law, Reason and Good- 

 ness, to which they surrender themselves with loving con- 

 fidence," we cannot be mistaken that the whole of this 

 language, and the whole conceptions which underlie it, 

 are language and conceptions appropriate to Agencies 

 and Powers which are possessed of all the characteristics 

 of Mind and Will. Order and Law are, indeed, in some 

 minds associated with nothing except matter and 

 material forces. But neither Reason nor Goodness 

 can be thus dissociated from the idea of Person- 

 ality. All other definitions which have been given of 

 Religion will be found on analysis to borrow whatever 

 strength they have from involving, either expressly or 

 implicitly, this one conception. Morality, for example, 



J " Hibbert Lectures," by Maa Mu'ler, 1878, pp. 16, 17. 



becomes Religion in proportion as all duty and all obli- 

 gation is regarded as resting on the sanctions of a Divine 

 authority. In like manner, Knowledge may be identified 

 with Religion in proportion as all knowledge is summed 

 up and comprehended in the perfect knowledge of One 

 who is All in All. Nor is there any real escape from this 

 one primary and fundamental element of Religion in the 

 attempt made by Comte to set up Man himself — Human- 

 ity — as the object of religious worship. It is the Human 

 Mind and Will abstracted and personified that is the ob- 

 ject of this worship. Accordingly, in the system of 

 Comte, it is the language of Chiistian and even of Cath- 

 olic adoration that is borrowed as the best and fullest 

 expression of its aspirations and desires. Such an im- 

 personation of the Human Mind and Will, considered as 

 an aggregate of the past and ot the future, and separated 

 ftom the individual who is required to worship it, does 

 contain the one element, or at least some faint outline 

 and shadow of the one element, which has been here 

 represented as essential to Religion — the element, 

 namely, of some Power in Nature other than mere brute 

 matter or mere physical force — which Power is thought 

 of and conceived as invested with the higher attributes 

 of the Human Personality. 



Like methods of analysis are sufficient to detect the 

 same element in other definitions of Religion, which are 

 much more common. When, for example, it is said that 

 " the Supernatural " or " the Infinite " are the objects of 

 religious thought, the same fundamental conception is 

 involved, and is more or less consciously intended. The 

 first of these two abstract expressions, " the Supernat- 

 ural," is avowedly an expression for the existence and the 

 agency of superhuman Personalities. It is objectionable 

 only in so far as it seems to imply that such agency is no 

 part of " Nature." This is in one sense a mere question 

 of definition. We may choose to look upon our own 

 human agency as an agency which is outside of Nature. 

 If we do so, then, of course, it is natural to think of the 

 agency of other Beings as outside of Nature also. But, 

 on the o'her hand, if we choose to understand by 

 "Nature " the whole system of things in which we live 

 and of which we form a part, then the belief in the 

 agency of other Beings of greater power does not neces- 

 sarily involve any belief whatever that they are outside 

 of that system. On the contrary, ihe belief in such an 

 agency may be identified with all our conceptions of what 

 that system, as a whole, is, and especially of its order 

 and of its intelligibility. Whilst, therefore, "the Super- 

 natural," as commonly understood, gives a true indication 

 of the only real objects of religious thought, it compli- 

 cates that indication by coupling the idea of Living 

 Agencies above our own with a description of them 

 which at the best is irrelevant, and is very apt to be mis- 

 leading. The question of the existence of Living Beings 

 superior to Man, and having more or less power over him 

 and over his destinies, is quite a separate question from 

 the relation in which those beings may stand to what is 

 commonly but variously understood by " Nature." 



The other phrase, now often used to express the ob- 

 jects of religious thought and feeling, " the Infinite," is a 

 phiase open to objection of a vety different kind. It is 

 ambiguous, not merely as "the Supernatural " is ambig- 

 uous, by reason of its involving a separate and adventi- 

 tious meaning besides the meaning which is prominent 

 and essential ; but it is ambiguous by reason of not nec- 

 essarily containing at all the one meaning which is es- 

 sential to Religion. "The Infinite" is a pure and bare 

 abstraction, which may or may not include the one only 

 object of religious consciousness and thought. An In- 

 finite Being, if that be the meaning ot "the Infinite," is 

 indeed the highest and most peifect object of Religion. 

 But an infinite space is no object of religious feeling. 

 An infinite number of material units is no object of re- 

 ligious thought. Infinite time is no object of religious 

 thought. On the other hand, infinite power not only 



