Chapter VII: Religion (2)

It is true that the acceptance of the second view, which carries with it the complete rejection of the ideas of omnipotence and omniscience, modifies profoundly many of the old and primitive views of God. Renouvier recognises this, and wishes his readers also to grasp this point, for only so is religion to be brought forward in a development harmonious with the growth of man’s mind in other spheres. Man should not profess the results of elaborate culture in science while he professes at the same time doctrines of God which are not above those of a savage or primitive people. This is the chief mischief which the influence of the Hebrew writings of the Old Testament has had upon the Christian religion. The moral conscience now demands their rejection, for to those who value religion they can only appear as being of pure blasphemy. God is neither omnipotent nor omniscient, consequently many things must be unknown to him until they happen. Foreknowledge and predetermination on his part are impossible, according to Renouvier. God is not to be conceived as a consciousness enveloping the entire universe, past, present and future, in a total synthesis. Such a belief is mischievous to humanity because of its fatalism, in spite of the comfortable consolation it offers to pious souls. Moreover, it presents the absurd view of God working often against himself.

The idea of God, Renouvier shows, arises out of the discussions of the nature of the universal laws of the universe and from the progress of personalities. The plausible conceptions of God based on causality and on “necessary essence” have not survived the onslaughts of Criticism. The personality of God seems to us, says Renouvier, indicated as the conclusion and the almost necessary culmination of the consideration of the probabilities laid down by the practical reason or moral law. The primary, though not primitive, evidence for the existence of God is contained in, and results from, the generalisation of the idea of “ends” in the universe. We must not go bevond phenomena or seek evidence in some fictitious sphere outside of our experience. In its most general and abstract sense the idea of God arises from the conception of moral order, immortality, or the accord of happiness and goodness. We cannot deny the existence of a morality in the order and movements of the world, a physical sanction to the moral laws of virtue and of progress, an external reality of good, a supremacy of good, a witness of the Good itself. Renouvier does not think that any man, having sufficiently developed his thought, would refuse to give the name God to the object of this supreme conception, which at first may seem abstract because it is not in any way crude, many of its intrinsic elements remaining undetermined in face of our ignorance, but which, nevertheless, or just for that very reason, is essentially practical and moral, representing the most notable fact of all those included in our belief. This method of approaching the problem of God is, he thinks, both simple and grand. It is a noble contrast to the scholastic edifice built up on the metaphysical perfection of being, called the Absolute. In this conception all attributes of personality are replaced by an accumulation of metaphysical properties, contradictory in themselves and quite incompatible with one another. This Absolute is a pure chimerical abstraction; its pure being and pure essence are equivalent to pure nothing or pure nonsense.

The fetish of pure substance, substantial cause, absolute being, whatever it be called, is vicious at all times, but particularly when we are dealing with the fundamental problems of science. It would be advisable here that the only method of investigation be that of atheism, for scientific investigation should not be tainted by any prejudices or preconceived ideas upon the nature of the divinity.

What really is Atheism? The answer to this query, says Renouvier, is clear. The idea of God is essentially a product of the moral law or conscience. An atheist is, strictly speaking, one who does not admit the reality of this moral order of ends and of persons as valuable in themselves. Verily, he himself may personally lead a much more upright life than the loud champions of theism, but he denies the general moral order, which is God. With the epithet of atheist as commonly used for those who merelv have a conception of God which differs from the orthodox view, we are not here concerned. That may be dismissed as a misuse of the word due to religious bigotry. The fruits of true atheism are materialism, pantheism and fatalism. Indeed any doctrine, even a theological doctrine, which debases and destroys the inherent value of the human consciousness and personality, is rightly to be regarded, whatever it may _say_ about God, however it may repeat his name (and two of these doctrines are very fond of this repetition, but this must not blind us to the real issue)—that doctrine is atheistic. The most resolute materialists, the most high-minded worshippers of Providence and the great philosophers of the Absolute, find themselves united here in atheism. God is not a mere totality of laws operating in the universe. Such a theism is but a form of real atheism. We must, insists Renouvier, abandon views of this type, with all that savours of an Absolute, a Perfect Infinite, and affirm our belief in the existence of an order of Goodness which gives value to human personality and assures ultimate victory to Justice. This is to believe in God. We arrive at this belief rationally and after consideration of the world and of the moral law of persons. Through these we come to God. We do not begin with him and pretend to deduce these from his nature by some incomprehensible _a priori_ propositions. The methods of the old dogmatic theology are reversed. Instead of beginning with a Being of whom we know nothing and can obviously deduce nothing, let us proceed inductively, and by careful consideration of the revelation we have before us in the world and in humanity let us build up our idea of God.

Renouvier is anxious that we should examine the data upon which we may found “rational hypotheses” as to the nature of God. The Critical Philosophy has upset the demonstrations of the existence of God, which were based upon causality and upon necessary existence (the cosmological and ontological proofs). Neo-criticism not only establishes the existence of God as a rational hypothesis, but “this point of view of the divine problem is the most favourable to the notion of the personality of God. The personality of God seems to us to be indicated as the looked-for conclusion and almost necessary consummation of the probabilities of practical reason.”[27]

[27] _Psychologie rationnelle_, vol. 2, p. 300.

The admission of ends, of finality, or purpose in the universe is frequently given as involving a supreme consciousness embracing this teleology. Also it is argued that Good could not exist in its generality save in an external consciousness—that is, a divine mind. By recalling the objections to a total synthesis of phenomena, Renouvier refutes both these arguments which rest upon erroneous methods in ontology and in theology. The explanation of the world by God, as in the cosmological argument, is fanciful, while the ontological argument leads us to erect an unintelligible and illogical absolute. Renouvier regards God as existing as a general consciousness corresponding to the generality of ends which man himself finds before him, finite, limited in power and in knowledge. But in avowing this God, Renouvier points him out to us as the first of all beings, a being like them, not an absolute, but a personality, possessing (and this is important) the perfection of morality, goodness and justice. He is the supreme personality in action, and as a perfect person he respects the personality of others and operates on our world only in the degree which the freedom and individuality of persons who are not himself can permit him, and within the limits of the general laws under which he represents to himself his own enveloped existence. This is the hypothesis of unity rendered intelligible, and as such Renouvier claims that it bridges in a marvellous manner the gap always deemed to exist between monotheism and polytheism—the two great currents of religious thought in humanity. The monotheists have appeared intolerant and fanatical in their religion and in their deity (not in so far as it was manifest in the thoughts of the simple, who professed a faith of the heart, but as shown in the ambitious theology of books and of schools), bearing on their banner the signs of a jealous deity, wishing no other gods but himself, declaring to his awed worshippers: “I am that I am; have no other gods but me!” On the other hand, the polytheistic peoples have been worshippers of beauty and goodness in all things, and where they saw these things they created a deity. They were more concerned with the immortality of good souls than the eternal existence of one supreme being; they were free-thinkers, creators of beauty and seekers after truth, and believers in freedom. The humanism of Greece stands in contrast to the idolatrous theocracy of the Hebrews.

The unity of God previously mentioned does not exclude the possibility of a plurality of divine persons. God the one would be the first and foremost, _rex hominum deorumque_. Some there may be that rise through saintliness to divinity, Sons of God, persons surpassing man in intelligence, power and morality. To take sides in this matter is equivalent to professing a particular religion. We must avoid the absolutist spirit in religion no less than in philosophy. By this Renouvier means that brutal fanaticism which prohibits the Gods of other people by passion and hatred, which aims at establishing and imposing its own God (which is, after all, but its own idea of God) as the imperialist plants his flag, his kind and his customs in new territory, in the spirit of war and conquest. Such a “holy war” is an outrage, based not upon real religion, but on intolerant fanaticism in which freedom and the inherent rights of personality to construct its own particular faith are denied.

Renouvier finds a parallelism between the worship of the State in politics and of the One God in religion. The systems in which unity or plurality of divine personality appears differ from one another in the same way in which monarchal and republican ideas differ. Monarchy in religion offers the same obstacles to progress as it has done in politics. It involves a parallel enslavement of one’s entire self and goods, a conscription which is hateful to freedom and detrimental to personality. To this supreme and regal Providence all is due; it alone in any real sense exists. Persons are shadows, of no reality, serfs less than the dust, to whom a miserable dole is given called grace, for which prayer and sacrifice are to be unceasingly made or chastisements from the Almighty will follow. This notion is the product of monarchy in politics, and with monarchy it will perish. The two are bound up, for “by the grace of God” we are told monarchs hold their thrones, by his favour their sceptre sways and their battalions move on to victory. This monarchal God, this King of kings and Lord of hosts, ruler of heaven and earth, is the last refuge of monarchs on the earth. Confidence in both has been shaken, and both, Renouvier asserts, will disappear and give place to a real democracy, not only to republics on earth, but to the conception of the whole universe as a republic. Men raise up saints and intercessors to bridge the gulf between the divine Monarch and his slaves. They conceive angels as doing his work in heaven; they tolerate priests to bring down grace to them here and now. The doctrine of unity thus gives rise to fanatical religious devotion or philosophical belief in the absolute, which stifles religion and perishes in its own turn. The doctrine of immortality, based on the belief in the value of human personality, leads us away from monarchy to a republic of free spirits. A democratic religion in this sense will display human nature raised to its highest dignity by virtue of an energetic affirmation of personal liberty, tolerance, mutual respect and liberty of faith—a free religion without priests or clericalism, not in conflict with science and philosophy, but encouraging these pursuits and in turn encouraged by them.[28]

[28] The fullest treatment of this is the large section in the conclusion to the _Philosophie analytique de l’Histoire_ (tome iv.). _Cf_. also the discussion of the influence of religious beliefs on societies in the last chapter of _La Nouvelle Monadologie_.

III

Ravaisson, in founding the new spiritual philosophy, professed certain doctrines which were a blending of Hellenism and Christianity. In the midst of thought which was dominated by positivism, naturalism or materialism, or by a shallow eclecticism, wherein religious ideas were rather held in contempt, he issued a challenge on behalf of spiritual values and ideals. Beauty, love and goodness, he declared, were divine. God himself is these things, said Ravaisson, and the divinity is “not far from any of us.” In so far as we manifest these qualities we approach the perfect personality of God himself. In the infinite, in God, will is identical with love, which itself is not distinguished from the absolutely good and the absolutely beautiful. This love can govern our wills; the love of the beautiful and the good can operate in our lives. In so far as this is so, we participate in the love and the life of God.

Boutroux agrees substantially with Ravaisson, but he lays more stress upon the free creative power of the deity as immanent. “God,” he remarks in his thesis, “is not only the creator of the world, he is also its Providence, and watches over the details as well as over the whole.”[29] God is thus an immanent and creative power in his world as well as the perfect being of supreme goodness and beauty. Boutroux here finds this problem of divine immanence and transcendence as important as does Blondel, and his attitude is like that of Blondel, midway between that of Ravaisson and Bergson.

[29] _La Contingence des Lois de la Nature_, p. 150.

Religion, Boutroux urges, must show man that the supreme ideal for him is to realise in his own nature this idea of God. There is an obligation upon man to pursue after these things-goodness, truth, beauty and love—for they are his good, they are the Good; they are, indeed, God. In them is a harmony which satisfies his whole nature, and which does not neglect or crush any aspect of character, as narrow conceptions of religion inevitably do. Boutroux insists upon the necessity for intellectual satisfaction, and opposes the “philosophy of action” in ils doctrine of “faith for faith’s sake.” At the same time he conceives Reason as a harmony, not merely a coldly logical thing. Feeling and will must be satisfied also.[30]

[30] Boutroux has in his volume, _Science et Religion dans la Philosophie contemporaine_, contributed a luminous and penetrating discussion of various religious doctrines from Comte to William James. This was published in 1908.

We have observed already how Fouillée claimed that the ethics of his _idées-forces_ contained the gist of what was valuable in the world religions. He claims that philosophy includes under the form of rational belief or thought what the religions include as instinctive belief. In religion he sees a spontaneous type of metaphysic, while metaphysic or philosophy is a rationalised religion.

Nothing in this connection is more important than a rational and harmonious view of God. This he insists upon in his thesis and in his _Sketch of the Future of a Metaphysic founded on Experience_. The old idea of God was that of a monarch governing the world as a despot governs his subjects. The government of the universe may still be held to be a monarchy, but modern science is careful to assure us that it must be regarded as an absolutely constitutional monarchy. The monarch, if there be one, acts in accordance with the laws and respects the established constitution. Reason obliges us to conceive of the sovereign: experience enlightens us as to the constitution.

There can be little doubt that one of the world’s greatest books upon religion is the work of Guyau, which appeared in 1886, bearing the arresting title, _L’Irreligion de l’Avenir_. Its sub-title describes it as an Etude sociologique, and it is this treatment of the subject from the standpoint of sociology which is such a distinctive feature of the book. The notion of a _social bond_ between man and the powers superior to him, but resembling him, is, claims Guyau, a point of unity in which all religions are at one. The foundation of the religious sentiment lies in sociality, and the religious man is just the man who is disposed to be sociable, not only with all living beings whom he meets, but with those whom he imaginatively creates as gods. Guyau’s thesis, briefly put, is that religion is a manifestation of life (again he insists on “Life,” as in his Ethics, as a central conception), becoming self-conscious and seeking the explanation of things by analogies drawn from human society. Religion is “sociomorphic” rather than merely anthropomorphic; it is, indeed, a universal sociological hypothesis, mythical in form.

The religious sentiment expresses a consciousness of dependence, and in addition, adds Guyau, it expresses the need of affection, tenderness and love—that is to say, the “social” side of man’s nature. In the conception of the Great Companion or Loving Father, humanity finds consolation and hope. Children and women readily turn to such an ideal, and primitive peoples, who are just like children, conceive of the deity as severe and all- powerful. To this conception moral attributes were subsequently added, as man’s own moral conscience developed, and it now issues in a doctrine of God as Love. All this development is, together with that of esthetics and ethics, a manifestation of life in its individual and more especially social manifestations.

It is the purpose of Guyau’s book not only to present a study of the evolution of religion in this manner, from a sociological point of view, but to indicate a further development of which the beginnings are already manifest—namely, a decomposition of all systems of dogmatic religion. It is primarily the decay of dogma and ecclesiasticism which he intends to indicate by the French term _irréligion_. The English translation of his work bears the title _The Non-religion of the Future_. Had Guyau been writing and living in another country it is undoubtedly true that his work would probably have been entitled _The Religion of the Future_. Owing to the Roman Catholic environment and the conception of religion in his own land, he was, however, obliged to abandon the use of the word religion altogether. In order to avoid misunderstanding, we must examine the sense he gives to this word, and shall see then that his title is not meant to convey the impression of being anti-religious in the widest sense, nor is it irreligious in the English meaning of that word.

Guyau considers every positive and historical religion to present three distinct and essential elements:

An attempt at a mythical and non-scientific explanation of (_a_) natural phenomena—_e.g._, intervention, miracles, efficacious prayer; (_b_) historical facts—_e.g._, incarnation of Buddha or Jesus. A system of dogmas—that is to say, symbolic ideas or imaginative beliefs—forcibly imposed upon one’s faith as absolute verities, even though they are susceptible to no scientific demonstration or philosophical justification. A cult and a system of rites or of worship, made up of more or less immutable practices which are looked upon as possessing a marvellous efficacy upon the course of things, a propitiatory virtue.[31]

[31] _L’Irréligion de l’Avenir_, p. xiii; Eng. trans., p. 10.

By these three different and really organic elements, religion is clearly marked off from philosophy. Owing to the stability of these elements religion is apt to be centuries behind science and philosophy, and consequently reconciliation is only effected by a subtle process which, while maintaining the traditional dogmas and phrases, evolves a new interpretation of them sufficiently modern to harmonise a little more with the advance in thought, but which presents a false appearance of stability and consistency, disguising the real change of meaning, of view-point and of doctrine. Of this effort we shall see the most notable instance is that of the “Modernists” or Neo-Catholics in France and Italy, and the Liberal Christians in England and America.

Guyau claims that these newer interpretations, subtle and useful as they are, and frequently the assertions of minds who desire sincerely to adapt the ancient traditions to modern needs, are in themselves hypocritical, and the Church in a sense does right to oppose them. Guyau cannot see any satisfactoriness in these compromises and adaptations which lack the clearness of the old teaching, which they in a sense betray, while they do not sufficiently satisfy the demands of modern thought.

With the decay of the dogmatic religion of Christendom which is supremely stated in the faith of the Roman Catholic Church, there must follow the non-religion of the future, which may well preserve, he points out, all that is pure in the religious sentiment and carry with it an admiration for the cosmos and for the infinite powers which are there displayed. It will be a search for, and a belief in, an ideal not only individual, but social and even cosmic, which shall pass the limits of actual reality. Hence it appears that “non-religion” or “a-religion,” which is for Guyau simply “the negation of all dogma, of all traditional and supernatural authority, of all revelation, of all miracle, of all myth, of all rite erected into a duty,” is most certainly not a synonym for irreligion or impiety, nor does it involve any contempt for the moral and metaphysical doctrines expressed by the ancient religions of the world. The non-religious man in Guyau’s sense of the term is simply the man without a religion, as he has defined it above, and he may quite well admire and sympathise with the great founders of religion, not only in that they were thinkers, metaphysicians, moralists and philanthropists, but in that they were reformers of established belief, more or less avowed enemies of religious authority and of every affirmation laid down by an ecclesiastical body in order to bind the intellectual freedom of individuals. Guyau’s remarks in this connection agree with the tone in which Renan spoke of his leaving the Church because of a feeling of respect and loyalty to its Founder. Guyau points out that there exists in the bosom of every great religion a dissolving force—namely, the very force which in the beginning served to constitute it and to establish its triumphant revolt over its predecessor. That force is the absolute right of private judgment, the free factor of the personal conscience, which no external authority can succeed, ultimately, in coercing or silencing. The Roman Church, and almost every other organised branch of the Christian religion, forgets, when faced with a spirit which will not conform, that it is precisely to this spirit that it owes its own foundation and also the best years of its existence. Guyau has little difficulty in pressing the conclusions which follow from the recognition of this vital point.

Briefly, it follows that the hope of a world-religion is an illusion, whether it be the dream of a perfect and world-wide Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, or Mohammedanism. The sole authority in religious matters, that of the individual conscience, prevents any such consummation, which, even if it could be achieved, would be mischievous. The future will display a variety of beliefs and religions, as it does now. This need not discourage us, for therein is a sign of vitality or spiritual life, of which the world-religions are examples, marred, however, by their profession of universality, an ideal which they do not and never will realise.

The notion of a Catholic Church or a great world- religion is really contrary to the duty of personal thought and reflection, which must inevitably (unless they give way to mere lazy repetition of other people’s thoughts) lead to differences. The tendency is for humanity to move away from dogmatic religion, with its pretensions to universality, catholicity, and monarchy (of which, says Guyau, the most curious type has just recently been achieved in our own day, by the Pope’s proclamation of the dogma of papal infallibility), towards religious individualism and to a plurality of religions. There may, of course, be religious associations or federations, but these will be free, and will not demand the adherence to any dogma as such.

With the decay of dogmatic religion the best elements of religious life will have freer scope to develop themselves, and will grow both in intensity and in extent. “He alone is religious, in the philosophical sense of the word, who researches for, who thinks about, who loves, truth.” Such inquiry or search involves freedom, it involves conflict, but the conflict of ideas, which is perfectly compatible with toleration in a political sense, and is the essence of the spirit of the great world teachers. This is what Jesus foresaw when he remarked: “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” More fully, he might have put it, Guyau suggests: “I came not to bring peace into human thought, but an incessant battle of ideas; not repose, but movement and progress of spirit; not universal dogma, but liberty of belief, which is the first condition of growth.” Well might Renan remark that it was loyalty to such a spirit which caused him to break with the Church.

While attacking religious orthodoxy in this manner, Guyau is careful to point out that if religious fanaticism ls bad, anti-religious fanaticism is equally mischievous, wicked and foolish.[32] While the eighteenth century could only scoff at religion, the nineteenth realised the absurdity of such raillery. We have come to see that even although a belief may be irrational and even erroneous, it may still survive, and it may console multitudes whose minds would be lost on the stormy sea of life without such an anchor. While dogmatic or positive religions do exist they will do so, Guyau reminds us, for quite definite and adequate reasons, chiefly because there are people who believe them, to whom they mean something and often a great deal. These reasons certainly do diminish daily, and the number of adherents, too, but we must refrain from all that savours of anti- religious fanaticism.[33] He himself speaks with great respect of a Christian missionary. Are we not, he asks, both brothers and humble collaborators in the work and advance of humanity? He sees no real inconsistency between his own dislike of orthodoxy and dogma and the missionary’s work of raising the ignorant to a better life by those very dogmas. It is a case of relative advance and mental progress.

[32] He cites a curious case of anti-religious fanaticism at Marseilles in 1885, when all texts and scripture pictures were removed fromthe schools.

[33] Guyau’s book abounds in illustrations. He mentions here Huss’s approval of the sincerity of one man who brought straw from his own house to burn him. Huss admired this act of a man in whom he saw a brother in sincerity.

It is with great wealth of discussion that Guyau recounts the genesis of religions in primitive societies to indicate the sociological basis of religion. More important are his chapters on the dissolution of religions in existing societies, in which he shows the unsatisfactoriness of the dogmas of orthodox Protestantism equally with those of the Catholic Church. As mischievous as the notion of an infallible Church is that of an infallible book, literally—that is to say, foolishly-interpreted. He recognises that for a literal explanation of the Bible must be substituted, and is, indeed, being substituted, a literary explanation. Like Renan, he criticises the vulgar conception of prayer and of religious morality which promotes goodness by promise of paradise or fear of hell. He urges in this connection the futility of the effort made by Michelet, Quinet and, more especially, by Renouvier and Pillon to “Protestantise” France. While admitting a certain intellectual, moral and political superiority to it, Guyau claims that for the promotion of morality there is little use in substituting Protestantism for Catholicism. He forecasts the limitation of the power of priests and other religious teachers over the minds of young children. Protestant clergymen in England and America he considers to be no more tolerant in regard to the educational problem than the priests. Guyau urges the importance of an elementary education being free from religious propaganda. He was writing in 1886, some years after the secular education law had been carried. There is, however, more to be done, and he points out “how strange it is that a society should not do its best to form those whose function it is to form it.”[34] In higher education some attention should be given to the comparative study of religions. “Even from the point of view of philosophy, Buddha and Jesus are more important than Anaximander or Thales.”[35] It is a pity, he thinks, that there is not a little more done to acquaint the young with the ideas for which the great world-teachers, Confucius, Zoroaster, Buddha, Socrates, Mohammed, stood, instead of cramming a few additional obscure names from early national history. It would give children at least a notion that history had a wider range than their own country, a realisation of the fact that humanity was already old when Christ appeared, and that there are great religions other than Christianity, religions whose followers are not poor ignorant savages or heathen, but intelligent beings, from whom even Christians may learn much. It is thoroughly mischievous, he aptly adds, to bring up children in such a narrow mental atmosphere that the rest of their life is one long disillusionment.

[34] _L’Irréligion de l’Avenir_, p. 232; Eng. trans., p. 278.

[35] _Ibid_., p. 236; Eng. trans., p. 283.

With particular reference to his own country, Guyau criticises the religious education of women, the question of “mixed marriages,” the celibacy of the Roman Catholic clergy, and the influence of religious beliefs upon the limitation or increase of the family.

After having summed up the tendency of dogmatic religion to decay, he asks if any unification of the great religions is to-day possible, or whether any new religion may be expected? The answer he gives to both these questions is negative, and he produces a wealth of very valid reasons in support of his finding. He is, of course, here using the term religion as he has himself defined it. The claim to universality by all world-religions, the insistence by each that it alone is the really best or true religion, precludes any question of unity. As well might we imagine unity between Protestantism and the Roman Catholic Church.

In the “non-religious” state, dogma will be replaced by individual constructions. Religion will be a free, personal affair, in which the great philosophical hypotheses (_e.g._, Theism and Pantheism) will be to a large extent utilised. They will, however, be regarded as such by all, as rational hypotheses, which some individuals will accept, others will reject. Certain doctrines will appeal to some, not to others. The evidence for a certain type of theism will seem adequate to some, not to others. There will be no endeavour to impose corporately or singly the acceptance of any creed upon others.

With Guyau’s conception of the future of religion or non-religion, whichever we care to call it, we may well close this survey of the religious ideas in modern France. In the Roman Church on the one hand, and, on the other, in the thought of Renan, Renouvier and Guyau, together with the multitude of thinking men and women they represent, may be seen the two tendencies—one conservative, strengthening its internal organisation and authority, in defiance of all the influences of modern thought, the other a free and personal effort, issuing in a genuine humanising of religion and freeing it from ecclesiasticism and dogma.

A word may be said here, however, with reference to the “Modernists.” The Modernist movement is a French product, the result of the interaction of modern philosophical and scientific ideas upon the teaching of the Roman Church. It has produced a philosophical religion which owes much to Ollé-Laprune and Blondel, and is in reality modern science with a veneer of religious idealism or platonism. It is a theological compromise, and has no affinities with the efforts of Lamennais. As a compromise it was really opposed to the traditions of the French, to whose love of sharp and clear thinking such general and rather vague syntheses are unacceptable. It must be admitted, however, that there is a concreteness, a nearness to reality and life, which separates it profoundly from the highly abstract theology of Germany, as seen in Ritschl and Harnack.

The Abbé Marat of the Theological School at the Sorbonne and Father Gratry of the Ecole Normale were the initiators of this movement, as far back as the Second Empire. “Modernism” was never a school of thought, philosophical or religious, and it showed itself in a freedom and life, a spirit rather than in any formula;. As Sorel’s syndicalism is an application of the Bergsonian and kindred doctrines to the left wings, and issues in a social theory of “action,” so Modernism is an attempt to apply them to the right and issues in a religion founded on action rather than theology. The writings of the Modernists are extensive, but we mention the names of the chief thinkers. There is the noted exegetist Loisy, who was dismissed in 1894 from the Catholic Institute of Paris and now holds the chair of the History of Religions at the College de France. His friend, the Abbé Bourier, maintained the doctrine, “ Where Christ is there is the Church,” with a view to insisting upon the importance of being a Christian rather than a Catholic or a Protestant.

The importance of the Catholic thinker, Blondel, both for religion and for philosophy, has already been indicated at an earlier stage in this book. His work inspires most.Modernist thought. Blondel preaches, with great wealth of philosophical and psychological argument, the great Catholic doctrine of the collaboration of God with man and of man with God. Man at one with himself realises his highest aspirations. Divine transcendence and divine immanence in man are reconciled. God and man, in this teaching, are brought together, and the stern realism of every-day life and the idealism of religion unite in a sacramental union. The supreme principle in this union Laberthonnière shows to be Love. He is at pains to make clear, however, that belief in Love as the ultimate reality is no mere sentimentality, no mere assertion of the will-to-believe. For him the intellect must play its part in the religious life and in the expression of faith. No profounder intellectual judgment exists than just the one which asserts “God is Love,” when this statement is properly apprehended and its momentous significance clearly realised. We cannot but lament, with Laberthonnière, the abuse of this proposition and its subsequent loss of both appeal and meaning through a shallow familiarity. The reiteration of great conceptions, which is the method by which the great dogmas have been handed down from generations, tends to blurr their real significance. They become stereotyped and empty of life. It is for this reason that Le Roy in _Dogme et Critique_ (1907) insisted upon the advisability of regarding all dogmas as expressions of practical value in and for action, rather than as intellectual propositions of a purely “religious” or ecclesiastical type, belonging solely to the creeds.

To Blondel, Laberthonnière, and Le Roy can be added the names of Fonsegrive, Sertillanges, Loyson and Houtin, the last two of whom ultimately left the Church, for the Church made up its mind to crush Modernism. The Pope had intimated in 1879 that the thirteenth-century philosophy of Aquinas was to be recognised as the only official philosophy.[36] Finally, Modernism was condemned in a Vatican encyclical (_Pascendi Dominici Gregis_) in 1907, as was also the social and educational effort, _Le Sillon_.

[36] This led to revival of the study of the _Summa Theologiæ_ and to the commencement of the review of Catholic philosophy, _Revue Thomiste_.

Such has been Rome’s last word, and it is not surprising, therefore, that France is the most ardent home of free thought upon religious matters, that the French people display a spirit which is unable to stop at Protestantism, but which heralds the religion or the _non-religion_ of the future to which Guyau has so powerfully indicated the tendencies and has by so doing helped, in conjunction with Renan and Renouvier, to hasten its realisation.

A parallel to the “modernist” theology of the Catholic thinkers was indicated on the Protestant side by the theology of Auguste Sabatier, whose _Esquisse d’une Philosophie de la Religion d’après la Psychologie et l’Histoire_ appeared in 1897[37] and of Menegoz,[38] whose _Publications diverges sur le Fidéisme et son Application a l’Enseignement chrétien traditionnel_ were issued in 1900. Sabatier assigns the beginning of religion to man’s trouble and distress of heart caused by his aspirations, his belief in ideals and higher values, being at variance with his actual condition. Religion arises from this conflict of real and ideal in the soul of man. This is the essence of religion which finds its expression in the life of faith rather than in the formation of beliefs which are themselves accidental and transitory, arising from environment and education, changing in form from aee to age both in the individual and the race. While LeRoy on the Catholic side, maintained that dogmas were valuable for their practical significance, Sabatier and Ménégoz claimed that all religious knowledge is symbolical. Dogmas are but symbols, which inadequately attempt to reveal their object. That object can only be grasped by “faith” as distinct from “belief”—that is to say, by an attitude in which passion, instinct and intuition blend and not by an attitude which is purely one of intellectual conviction. This doctrine of “salvation by faith independently of beliefs” has a marked relationship not only to pragmatism and the philosophy of action, but to the philosophy of intuition. A similar anti-intellectualism colours the “symbolo-fidéist” currents within Catholicism, which manifest a more extreme character. A plea voiced against all such tendencies is to be found in Bois’ book, _De la Connaissance religieuse_ (1894), where an endeavour is made to retain a more intellectual attitude, and it again found expression in the volume by Boutroux, written as late as 1908, which deals with the religious problem in our period.

[37] It was followed after his death in 1901 by the volume _Les Religions d’Authorité et la Religion de l’Esprit_, 1904.

[38] This is the late Eugene Ménégoz, Professor of Theology in Paris, not Ferdinand Ménégoz, his nephew, who is also a Professor of Theology now at Strasbourg.

Quoting Boehme in the interesting conclusion to this book on _Science and Religion in Contemporary Philosophy_ (1908) Boutroux sums up in the words of the old German mystic his attitude to the diversity of religious opinions. “Consider the birds in our forests, they praise God each in his own way, in diverse tones and fashions. Think you God is vexed by this diversity and desires to silence discordant voices? All the forms of being are dear to the infinite Being himself!”[39]

[39] It is interesting to compare with the above the sentiments expressed in Matthew Arnold’s poem, entitled Progress:

“Children of men! the unseen Power, whose eye For ever doth accompany mankind, Hath look’d on no religion scornfully That men did ever find.

This survey of the general attitude adopted towards religion and the problems which it presents only serves to emphasise more clearly those tendencies which we have already denoted in previous chapters. As the discussion of progress was radically altered by the admission of the principle of freedom, and the discussion of ethics passes bevond rigid formulae to a freer conception of morality, so here in religion the insistence upon freedom and that recognition of personality which accompanies it, colours the whole religious outlook. Renan, Renouvier and Guyau, the three thinkers who have most fully discussed religion in our period, join in proclaiming the importance of the personal factor in religious belief, and in valiant opposition to that Church which is the declared enemy of freedom, they urge that in freedom of thought lies the course of all religious development in the future, for only thus can be expressed the noblest and highest aspirations of man’s spirit.