CHAPTER ELEVEN RELIGION AND MORALITY
WE ARE now ready to apply the conclusions which have been reached regarding the real system of values and the community of intelligence it presupposes, to the subject of religion, and to ask whether they do not point the way to a type of religion which is supported by the facts of experience and susceptible of experimental testing and verification.
As a preliminary to this final step, we shall , find it helpful to consider very briefly the relation of religion to morality. For these two major departments of human conduct and culture, while having much in common, have also instructive points of
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difference,which bear directly upon the solution of our problem.
Morality like religion is interested in the values which existing objects and situations may possess. Indeed morality, as it is generally understood, means that sort of conduct which aims to realize the more inclusive and enduring goods of social life and personal intelligence rather than the more limited and fleeting satisfactions of natural appetite and individual desire. Moral reflection cannot accept unquestioningly, however, the hard and fast distinctions which are made by popular morality between higher and lower goods. For morality inevitably becomes conventionalized: men are dominated by the compelling sanctions of the moral tradition in,which they have been reared, in their judgments of right and wrong. Hence we shall avoid confusion if from the start we think of morality as the effort to
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realize through appropriate courses of action the greatest values of human life, to attain what is sometimes called the highest human good. A difference between morality and religion at once appears. Morality consists in the practical pursuit of objects of great value and their progressive realization by dint of strenuous effort, usually prolonged, arduous, and exacting. Its interest is practical in a way religion's is not; it is concerned with the motives which are incentives to right action, and with the practical ways and means whereby these motives can be made effective in the realization of the greatest good. Its temper is strenuous, resolute, heroic.
Evidently if moral intelligence is to succeed in this practical enterprise it must undertake some comparison of the different sorts of objects as a preliminary to grading or organizing them in order of their enlarging scope and increasing importance. Some values, as we
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know, are entirely subjective and relative. Ice cream has value to me if I like it (which not all persons do); its value is relative to my individual taste. Other values are obviously relative to the customs and. culture of particular social groups. Holding solemn and ceremonial family festival yearly in honor of family ancestors has positive and decided value to one brought up in a society where ancestor-worship flourishes. Money has great value as providing the material means for the
liberation and fulfillment of personal powers under the guidance of socially-responsible intelligence, but used as a means for escaping social responsibility, securing bodily ease and comfort, and enjoying a continual round of private pleasure it has much less value. Bodily health and vigor have a very high value as the indispensable condition of personal activity and satisfaction. This value like that of money is relative and subordinate,
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however; not many would purchase life and health at any price of social dishonor, betrayal of friends, or loss of family affection.
In contrast with these subjective and relative values, we have found that there are certain values which are objective because acknowledged by personal intelligence in its universal outlook and capacity. These are the values of rational insight and mutual understanding, of fellowship in constructive achievement, and of the perception of beauty with its suggestions of ultimate harmony and social fulfillment.
But such objective values cannot even be pursued, much less realized, by isolated human individuals. They are essentially common goods which can be sought only by co-operation and enjoyed only in community. Their realization calls for the participation of individuals in a common stock of knowledge, in the discharge of a common social
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task, and in the sympathetic perception of the significant features of our common human lot. And such participation in its turn depends upon intercommunication1 between human individuals. Hence we must allow that the actual realization of these personal goods which moral duty recommends to human individuals is accomplished as much (or more) by intercommunication between the individual and his fellow-men as by his own original initiative and activity. As a matter of fact, this antithesis between what is individually produced and what is socially acquired in the moral attainments of the human being is an unreal one. Have we not seen that those activities by which the
{ 1 The importance of intercommunication as a means, in fact taking human life in the large and mankind as a whole, the principal means, of realizing the values of personal life and association is explained in my book, The Moral Standards of Democracy (Appleton, 1925). 1 have there shown that the fundamental forms of human association are modes of intercommunication. }
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real value of existing objects is discovered and appreciated, ie., intellectual insight, practical invention, and aesthetic perception, involve bodily responses by which their results are socially communicated? I refer of course to articulate speech, spoken and written, to manual contrivance and technical skill and to emotional expression and artistic production. Through these bodily agencies of communication, intelligible experiences of the real truth of things, of their adaptability to rational uses, and of their intrinsic and expressive harmonies are exchanged, and so made the property of social intelligence, available to all individuals who wish to share in their realization.
The forms of articulate speech serve to stereotype and signalize by means of conventional vocal sounds and visible characters what kinds of objects and connections of situations and events it is advantageous
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for us with the vital and social interests of human beings to take notice and cognizance of. So the individual who learns to utilize the resources of language in interpreting the objects and events of his world and the results of his dealings with them, is really sharing in the social experience of intelligible meaning. His world has become the world of rational discourse, of experience translated into terms of our common human intelligence. He is participating in the interpretations and appreciations of mankind, given objective expression in the external medium of articulate speech. Once any one of us has
learned in this way to give external and intelligible expression to his experience in dealing with actual things, he is in a, position to communicate these experiences to others and to check them by the results of others' observation, action, and enjoyment. He can of course understand and appreciate the experiences of
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others when they are told, described, or explained. The inevitable and constant interchange and comparison of experiences which follow tend to correct the deficiencies and distortions due to subjective ignorance and prejudice. Through such discussion the ideas of individuals are rectified and illuminated and their estimates criticized and confirmed.
The resources of speech are not limited to the spoken word, however. The written record gives permanent embodiment and enduring expression to what successive generations of men from the dawning of civilization have found to be intelligible and significant in the existing world. The individual who is capable of reading with understanding and appreciation this literature is introduced to the experience of humanity. He is given a share in the interests and insights, the revelations and disappointments of his fellows in all
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to his own the vicissitudes of life upon this planet. And one who thus widens his intellectual horizons to include the significant experiences of humanity gains a new perspective for interpreting his own experience. He looks at the world of nature and of social life from the standpoint of humanity and the progressive stages in man's long and often painful struggle upward from the brute; he reviews in his own consciousness the course of cosmic evolution and world history. The second agency of intercommunication is another bodily mechanism peculiar to man: the hand with its opposed thumb, the flexible wrist, and correlated muscles of the arm and shoulder and back. Its function is the manipulation of physical objects, the fashioning and fabrication of mechanical instruments, the combining of materials, and the adjustment and control of natural forces and tendencies with a view to the production of desirable
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results. The field of its exercise is the physical and the social environment. In the former its activity consists in the contrivance and use of tools, appliances and machines, and the devising of technical methods and processes. In the social field its work is the invention of methods of social procedure, organization, and control. Such for example are the modes and methods of government, the forms of social intercourse and amusement2 the customs and usages of courtship, marriage and family life. These tools, methods, and appliances invented and employed in the industrial field, these social rites, procedures and ceremonies, are all of them objective expressions of the power of man's practical intelligence to realize in outward performance the values he finds in existing things. In one case it is the materials and forces of the physical world, in the other it is the psycho-physical tendencies and aptitudes of the
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human organism, which the intelligence of man adapts to its own rational uses.
Through the intelligent use of these practical methods and devices, the individual shares in the power which the rational will of man has gained over the agencies of his physical and social environment. Thus he is enabled to realize more fully than he could do by his own unaided efforts the practical values of his situation, its promise and potency of further adaptation and transformation. Thus the child who is reared in a modern home is at once introduced by early training to the practical values realized by the equipment and appliances of the house and the customs and
observances of family life. He is taught to use knife and fork at the table and to observe the decorum and amenities of the family meal. He is trained to use the telephone. He is taught the forms of polite greeting and grateful acknowledgment. He learns by
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instruction and example how to welcome callers and to see that they are comfortably seated. Now all this may seem to be a matter of outward performance, the acquisition of skill in making certain bodily movements. But with a normally intelligent and well-disposed child it is much more. It means, at the very least, the beginning of a realization of the practical value of a modem house as the center of family life and community intercourse. As his own outlook broadens, he finds himself sharing with increasing satisfaction in the varied activities, social and economic, of the home, family life, and the circle of family acquaintances. In a like manner but on a larger scale the machinery of economic production, distribution and exchange, the methods and procedures of government, the technique of education, sanitation and relief, all embody the practical values which the intelligence of man has discovered in his
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physical and social environment. The individual who uses them efficiently and with an understanding of their social purpose increases his own power and scope of action by allying himself in co-operative endeavor with countless numbers of his fellows who in all ages have labored effectively to adapt the materials and forces of nature to the welfare of mankind.
The bodily structures involved in aesthetic expression and artistic production constitute a third agency by which experiences of meaning and value are communicated. As means of aesthetic expression the fine arts have developed: dancing, music, poetry, drawing, painting, sculpture, and architecture. Products of fine art give objective embodiment to that meaning which the artist feels to be present in the thing or situation, the meaning which stirred his emotion and kindled his fancy. This meaning is often vague and
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defies articulate expression. Like all meanings it is generalized; it resides in a certain harmony of character and unity of pattern which the object is felt to possess. Through the emotion it has aroused the object appears to signify pervasive and typical, apparently commonplace but nevertheless fundamental, features of human experience. This significance the artist seeks to express in his medium while his fellows, through an acquaintance with, and appreciation of, his poem, picture, or song, share in the emotional experiences which inspired it. Thus they increase their own capacity for appreciating the emotional and imaginative values of objects and situations which they themselves experience. We now understand how as individuals we enlarge our experiences by activities of inter-communication, and thereby come to participate in the realization of those objective values of personal and social community
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which we as moral agents feel it our duty to realize. Even with the help of this embodied system of social culture, however, it is impossible for us as individuals to go far in moral attainment or to realize the rational good in all its interdependent aspects, intellectual practical, and aesthetic: Attainment in a single field must be purchased at the expense of neglect of others; if one has attained any ,depth of insight into the nature of the world and the character of his fellowman, or played any effective part in the work of industrial amelioration or social improvement, or given
artistic expression to the beauty inherent in nature and in human life, he must be content with his life's opportunity. Yet practical attainrnent is the essence of morality and moral ideals are objectives or aims of action to be progressively realized in the succeeding acts or series of acts of everyday life. It is not surprising that men should from sheer discouragement
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periodically lose their moral nerve, and times occur like the present when all talk of pursuing and realizing absolute or universal moral values is regarded as extravagant and visionary and the mere mention of a Summum Bonum, is apt to provoke a derisive smile.
Religion (if we now return to the original subject of our thought) in contrast with morality is not satisfied, even provisionally, with the realization of any one aspect or component part of the system of objective values. It is concerned and solely concerned with the realization of the system of values in its entirety, with its realization not in part but as a whole. Nor is it content like morality to pursue and to realize these values gradually by the slow and difficult path of practical endeavor. Religion seeks, or proposes, the present realization of the entire system of values. Confidence in the real universe means,
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as we have seen, faith in the objective reality and controlling influence of the highest values of personal life and association. But this faith means more than intellectual assent to the real existence of these values. It means, when we identify it with religion, a realizing sense of the objective existence of personal and social values in their interdependence and unity. Unwilling to wait until in the slow course of time action shall have wrought its utmost in practical attainment, religion proposes to avail itself of all the resources of human thought and motor adjustment in a supreme effort at present realization of the system of objective values.
But if it is impossible to realize any one of these values, either truth, or practical power and organization, or beauty, even partially except through intercommunication, it is still less possible to realize the whole system of objective values except through
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inter-communication. To what source shall we look, however, for such communication? The system of values in its entirety has been realized by no human individual, nor by any group of intercommunicating individuals. Obviously there is just one direction in which to look. All the possibilities inherent in the actual world of contributing to the life of personal-social community are envisaged only by the Cosmic Intelligence, in which all the personal and social values realized by humanity are comprehended and conserved in their interdependence and unity. Now this is just the quarter to which religion does look. It proposes the present realization of the system of personal and social values through inter-communication with the Supreme Intelligence. In all ages, communion with God, however crudely conceived, has been the primary concern of religion. And communion with God as the method and the sole
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method of realizing the true meaning and enduring value of the changing events of the natural world and the fleeting prospects of human life.
It is one thing to propose such communication with the Divine Intelligence and to rhapsodize over the benefits it may confer on mankind, and it is another thing to say how within the limits of observed fact it may be carried on, and how the fruits of such communication or pretended communication may be experimentally tested and verified. What means has man of communicating with the Cosmic Intelligence? He has the three psycho-physical agencies of communication which have been referred to: articulate speech, practical contrivance and invention, and aesthetic-emotional expression. How religion would employ these agencies for purpose of communication with God will be discussed in the concluding chapter.
