A MONTHLY MAGAZINE

Devoted to the Science of Religion, the Religion of Science, ana the Extension of the Religious Parliament Idea.

S the practice of the art of religion, as it has been understood

to become fused with the practice of the other branches of the art of life? Will religion survive the ordeal of modern criticism and arise to new power and greater utility? That the group of activities which we have been accustomed to include under the name of the religious life must submit themselves to the scientific method of investigation is evident, for this method has been introduced into philosophy itself-the same philosophy whose function it is to survey the whole field of life, to reveal the various elements which constitute the field, and to organize these elements into some kind of unity-in fact, to give us wisdom.

If religious activities are a necessary element in the full life a critical philosophy cannot eliminate them; it can but clarify them, and assign to them their right and proper sphere. If they are there, and are ignored, they will inflict upon philosophy a gaping wound: they will be the goal against which philosophy, to its own hurt, must kick, until it sees fit to repent and take the missing element into itself.

If the "goods" of religion exist as facts of experience, and if by science we mean all that can ever enter into the knowledge of men, then there can be no conflict between true science and true religion. But all that religion claims to possess may not be there, and, too, the philosopher, even when provided with the scientific method, is not, of necessity, endowed with all knowledge. Here is ground for conflict.

Between the scientific philosopher and religion there is a conflict, and it is foolish for us to shut our eyes to the fact. Be

tween the different branches of natural science-atomic physics, astronomy, chemistry, etc.-and religion there is no conflict; they are concerned with different activities of the human spirit. But when the scientific method is introduced into philosophy, and the philosopher, armed with a weapon which modern science has made keen and ready for his hand, claims to reveal all the relationships, given in experience, of the different activities of life, then, and there, the possibilities of conflict loom up before us.

What are the elements of the conflict as we can visualize them today? On the scientific, naturalistic side we have presented to us a world of "experience"-the only world we know, or can ever know. This world is all-inclusive nature, the world in which we live and move and have our being, and, too, man's inner world of thoughts, ideas, hopes and fears the world of matter and of mind. Man is in nature and of nature. Individuals are particularized centers of nature's initiation and energy.

This philosophy is not without its mysteries. Every fact, every event presents an aspect which is unique and ineffable. To the fundamental mysteries of energy and the primitive "stuff" of things are added all the new qualitative existences which arise through the ever-increasing complication of relationships in organized centers of energy-awareness, memory, foresight, love, hate, etc. The question of the ultimate nature of a fact-an existence the naturalistic philosopher may be willing to leave for ever open; it is part of the mystery of life, something to be pointed at but never known. The question for him is the question of the scientist: how does existence manifest itself, and how can man know the manifestations in such a way as to be able to make use of them in the furtherance of the interests of human life?

In this philosophy all dualism of mind and nature, soul and body, is gotten rid of-all is a development of nature. Mind, consciousness, reason, are tools-the latest and greatest toolswhich nature has produced for the furtherance of its ends, its every-day ends; for nature has no final ends. God and the soul are equally banished from the field as unnecessary encumbrances, myths taken as objective existences and falsely tacked on to the scheme of things. It is, indeed, a fact that all the activities of nature do show recurrent groupings, significant characters, notable qualities, and that these characters can be pointed at, ordered and utilized in consciousness. In idealistic philosophy these same re

current qualities, when abstracted and torn from the conditions which gave them birth, become the "eternal laws", the "universals", the "cause", the "living soul" of the very events to which they owe their own life!

All natural events-and there are none supernatural-from the dance of electrons to the conscious, willed direction of human energies, show a certain tendency. This tendency, which manifests itself in the human sphere as a desire for the satisfaction of felt needs-needs of every-increasing degrees of complexity and difficulty of satisfaction as it is in the nature of things, may be said to be the "purpose" of nature. But this purpose must not be interpreted as originating in a will outside of nature, or of a conscious will in nature. In the place of a universal mind or soul we are presented with a natural grouping of events exhibiting a tendency to eliminate from the mixed texture of existence the accidental, irritating, destructive elements and to select, organize and perpetuate those that are recurrent, more stable, and more comforting. In man alone this purpose becomes conscious of itself and manifests itself as desire for pleasure, order, peace and joy.

Is this a revival of the ancient philosophy of pleasure? Perhaps it is. But, with the modern school, pleasure is expressly carried far enough to include the joy in the search for and the ever more full finding and expression of the highest values of human life-wisdom and knowledge, truth and beauty, harmony and peace, fellowship and love. Although there is no place here for the hope of individual immortality, still, man, freed from the tyranny of fate and all the terrors of false gods, inspired with the consciousness of the creative power of his own thought and abiding in loving fellowship with his neighbors, can find fulfilment of "desire" in the execution of the humble tasks of daily life "with all his strength, with all his heart, with all his mind". It may be hedonism; but it is not the hedonism of "Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die". The new hedonism would call its followers to the feast with the bidding: Let us work and think for tomorrow, and to the end of time, we live: our work and our thoughts do follow us forever.

This, surely, is no mean philosophy. It is not proof against all criticism; but it cannot be dismissed by any shallow, fundamentalist oratory. That it is superficially attractive is suggested by the fact that the majority of the students entering our colleges

would seem to have given up Christianity, and do not think it necessary to take God into account in their plans of life. To the careless the prophets of this philosophy may seem to say: We are here today and gone tomorrow. We are our own masters, free. There is no God and no hereafter. Let us be happy whilst we can! Whereas their message is: Yes, we are free. Life is ours. The future is in the hands of men and our time is short. Therefore let us put our heart and mind into every passing moment, and so make events give up their meaning and minister to a rational, stable, and progressive life; for a life which is not both rational and progressive can never be stable, joyous

and free.

"Let us cherish our ideals until we have converted them into intelligence. Let us throw in our lot with the universe. Though it slay us we may trust, for we are one with it. Only thought and effort can better things."

In these words of John Dewey there is an echo of the words of Jesus:

"Consider the lilies, how they grow!"

"Seek and ye shall find."

"Knock and it shall be opened unto you." "Strive to enter in at the strait gate.'

Scientists and Christians alike have only to look around them and within to see how very narrow is the gate, and how very difficult is the way that leads to wisdom-the Kingdom of Heaven.

II

Are we then any further advanced, by the scientific method, on the road to wisdom, when we arrive at a definition of "soul" as a group of natural activities "organized into unity" and are left in utter darkness as to the nature of the binding force which organizes and unifies this bundle of activities? Here it would. appear that the philosopher has taken the leap which we are all tempted to take: has, by an act of inverted faith-a will to disbelieve jumped from the solid ground of his own experience to an unjustifiable denial of possibile fact which does not fit in with the position which he is anxious to maintain-a leap which no scientific philosopher should ever take.

Again, we may ask, are we any nearer the truth of things when we regard "thoughts" as histories-reconstructions of the world of things and events-which come to us laden with quali

ties, the qualities we call memories, feelings, meanings, and upon thinking as a disposition of living activities which need no thinker?

In the assumption that because all man's highest activities arise in and from the ever-changing course of events in the world of physics therefore the spirit of man is hopelessly entangled in the meshes of the body, and that with the break-up of this organism, as we know it, all capacity for reorganization is lost and the spirit is no more, the philosopher, against all his own reasoning, lands us at final and beyond which nature cannot go. The tragedy of this hopeless situation-the final extinction of all meanings which the spirit of man has, through the ages, wrested from the stubborn field of nature has been very forcibly expressed for us by Bertrand Russell:

"Brief and powerless is man's life, on him and on his race the slow sure doom falls pitiless and dark. Blind to good and evil, reckless of destruction, omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless way; for man, condemned today to lose his dearest, tomorrow to pass through the gates of darkness, it remains only to cherish the lofty thoughts that ennoble his little day."

But is the evolutionary process of necessity a circular process -out of the sun yesterday, here today, back into the sun tomorrow? Is it not rather an eternal process carrying along with it, in every step, an element of freedom?

The fact that in the comparatively recent history of the earth nature has developed centers of consciousness which are able, by taking thought of meanings and using them in art, to share in the direction of the evolutionary process should humble us and make us hesitate before we put limits to the activities of nature. If in our little selves we find consciousness, reason, selfdirecting power, all of which can, on rare occasions, be fused into a unity of living love, can we safely deny to infinite nature at least this much? As well might the cells which circulate in our blood and have a limited freedom of their own, were they endowed with consciousness, deny the existence of the organism in which they have their meaning and their life.

Surely one of life's greatest mysteries is the tendency of some natural events to show meanings, and at the same time of other events to develop centers "organized into unity" in such a way as to be able to interpret these meanings, and to make use of them in the furtherence of the highest aspirations of the