The Collected Works of Theodore Parker/Volume 01/Book 1/Chapter 1
BOOK I.
“Who is there almost that has not opinions planted in him by education time out of mind; which by that means came to be as the municipal laws of the country, which must not be questioned, but are then looked on with reverence, as the standard of right and wrong, truth and falsehood, when perhaps these so sacred opinions are but the oracles of the nursery, or the traditional grave talk of those who pretend to inform our childhood; who receive them from hand to hand without ever examining them? . . . . These ancient pre-occupations of our minds, these several and almost sacred opinions, are to be examined if we will make way for truth, and put our minds in that freedom which belongs and is necessary to them. A mistake is not the less so, and will never grow into a truth, because we have believed it a long time, though perhaps it be the harder to part with; and an error is not the less dangerous, nor the less contrary to truth, because it is cried up and had in veneration by any party.”—Locke, in King's Life of him, second edition. Vol. I. p. 188, 192.
BOOK I.
OF RELIGION IN GENERAL; OR A DISCOURSE OF THE RELIGIOUS ELEMENT AND ITS MANIFESTATIONS.
CHAPTER I.
EXAMINATION OF THE RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN MAN, AND THE EXISTENCE OF ITS OBJECT.
As we look on the world which Man has added to that which came from the hand of its Maker, we are struck with the variety of its objects, and the contradiction between them. There are institutions to prevent crime; institutions that of necessity perpetuate crime. This is built on Selfishness; would stand by the downfall of Justice and Truth. Side by side therewith is another, whose broad foundation is universal Love,—love for all that are of woman born. Thus we see palaces and hovels, jails and asylums for the weak, arsenals and churches, huddled together in the strangest and most intricate confusion. How shall we bring order out of this chaos; account for the existence of these contradictions? It is serious work to decompose these phenomena, so various and conflicting; to detect the one cause in the many results. But in doing this, we find the root of all in Man himself. In him is the same perplexing antithesis which we meet in all his works. These conflicting things existed as ideas in him before they took their present and concrete shape. Discordant causes have produced effects not harmonious. Out of Man these institutions have grown; out of his passions, or his judgement; his senses, or his soul. Taken together they are the exponent which indicates the character and degree of development the race has now attained; they are both the result of the Past and the prophecy of the Future.
From a survey of Society, and an examination of human nature, we come at once to the conclusion, that for every institution out of Man except that of Religion, there is a cause within him, either fleeting or permanent; that the natural wants of the body, the desire of food and raiment, comfort and shelter, have organized themselves, and instituted agriculture and the mechanic arts; that the more delicate principles of our nature, love of the Beautiful, the True, the Good, have their organization also; that the passions have their artillery, and all the gentler emotions somewhat external to represent themselves, and reflect their image. Thus the institution of Laws, with their concomitants, the Court-house and the Jail, we refer to the Moral Sense of mankind, combining with the despotic selfishness of the strong, whose might often usurps the place of Justice. Factories and Commerce, Railroads and Banks, Schools and Shops, Armies and Newspapers, are quite easily referred to something analogous in the wants of Man; to a lasting principle, or a transient desire which has projected them out of itself. Thus we see that these institutions out of Man are but the exhibitions of what is in him, and must be referred either to eternal principles, or momentary passions. Society is the work of Man. There is nothing in society which is not also in him.
Now there is one vast institution, which extends more widely than human statutes; claims the larger place in human affairs; takes a deeper hold on men than the terrible pomp of War, the machinery of Science, the panoply of Comfort. This is the institution of Religion, coeval and co-extensive with the human race. Whence comes this? Is there an eternal principle in us all, which legitimately and of necessity leads to this; or does it come, like Piracy, War, the Slave-trade, and so much other business of Society, from the abuse, misdirection, and disease of human nature? Shall we refer this vast institution to a passing passion which the advancing race will outgrow, or does it come from a principle in us deep and lasting as Man?
To this question, for many ages, two answers have been given—one foolish and one wise. The foolish answer, which may be read in Lucretius and elsewhere, is, that Religion is not a necessity of Man's nature, which comes from the action of eternal demands within him, but is the result of spiritual disease, so to say; the effect of fear, of ignorance, combining with selfishness; that hypocritical Priests and knavish Kings, practising on the ignorance, the credulity, the passions, and the fears of men, invented for their own sake, and got up a religion, in which they put no belief and felt no spiritual concern. But judging from a superficial view, it might as well be said that food and comfort were not necessities of our nature, but only cunning devices of butchers, mechanics, and artists, to gain wealth and power. Besides, it is not given to hypocrites under the mitre, nor over the throne, to lay hold on the world and move it. Honest conviction and living faith are needed for that work. To move the world of men firm footing is needed. The hypocrite deceives few but himself, as the attempts at pious frauds, in ancient and modern times, abundantly prove.
The wise answer is, that this institution of Religion, like Society, Friendship, and Marriage, comes out of a principle deep and permanent in the constitution of man; that as humble, and transient, and partial institutions come out of humble, transient, and partial wants, and are to be traced to the senses and the phenomena of life; so this sublime, permanent, and universal institution came out from sublime, permanent, and universal wants, and must be referred to the Soul, the religious Faculty, and so belongs among the unchanging realities of life. Looking, even superficially, but with earnestness, upon human affairs, we are driven to confess, that there is in us a spiritual nature, which directly and legitimately leads to Religion; that as Man's body is connected with the world of Matter; rooted in it; has bodily wants, bodily senses to minister thereto, and a fund of external materials wherewith to gratify these senses and appease these wants; so Man's soul is connected with the world of Spirit; rooted in God; has spiritual wants, and spiritual senses, and a fund of materials wherewith to gratify these spiritual senses and appease these spiritual wants. If this be so, then do not religious institutions come equally from Man? Must it not be that there is nothing in Religion, more than in Society, which is not implied in him?
Now the existence of a religious element in us, is not a matter of hazardous and random conjecture, nor attested only by a superficial glance at the history of Man, but this principle is found out, and its existence demonstrated in several legitimate ways.
We see the phenomena of worship and religious observances; of religious wants and actions to supply those wants. Work implies a hand that did, and a head that planned it. A sound induction from these facts carries us back to a religious principle in Man, though the induction does not determine the nature of this principle, except that it is the cause of these phenomena. This common and notorious fact of religious phenomena being found everywhere, can be explained only on the supposition that man is, by the necessity of his nature, inclined to Religion; that worship, in some form, gross or refined, in act, or word, or thought, or life, is natural and quite indispensable to the race. If the opposite view be taken, that there is no religious principle in Man, then there are permanent and universal phenomena without a corresponding cause, and the fact remains unexplained and unaccountable.
Again, we feel conscious of this element within us. We are not sufficient for ourselves; not self-originated; not self-sustained. A few years ago, and we were not; a few years hence, and our bodies shall not be. A mystery is gathered about our little life. We have but small control over things around us; are limited and hemmed in on all sides. Our schemes fail. Our plans miscarry. One after another our lights go out. Our realities prove dreams. Our hopes waste away. We are not where we would be, nor what we would be. After much experience, men powerful as Napoleon, victorious as Cæsar, confess, what simpler men knew by instinct long before, that it is not in Man that walketh to direct his steps. We find our circumference very near the centre, everywhere. An exceedingly short radius measures all our strength. We can know little of material things; nothing but their phenomena. As the circle of our knowledge widens its ring, we feel our ignorance on more numerous points, and the Unknown seems greater than before. At the end of a toilsome life, we confess, with a great man of modern times, that we have wandered on the shore, and gathered here a bright pebble, and there a shining shell—but an ocean of Truth, boundless and unfathomed, lies before us, and all unknown. The wisest Ancient knew only this, that he knew nothing. We feel an irresistible tendency to refer all outward things, and ourselves with them, to a Power beyond us, sublime and mysterious, which we cannot measure, nor even comprehend. We are filled with reverence at the thought of this power. Outward matters give us the occasion which awakens consciousness, and spontaneous nature leads us to something higher than ourselves, and greater than all the eyes behold. We are bowed down at the thought. Thus the sentiment of something superhuman comes natural as breath. This primitive spiritual sensation comes over the soul, when a sudden calamity throws us from our habitual state; when joy fills our cup to its brim; at "a wedding or a funeral, a mourning or a festival;" when we stand beside a great work of nature, a mountain, a waterfall; when the twilight gloom of a primitive forest sends awe into the heart; when we sit alone with ourselves, and turn in the eye, and ask, What am I? Whence came I? Whither shall I go? There is no man who has not felt this sensation; this mysterious sentiment of something unbounded.
Still further, we arrive at the same result from a philosophical analysis of Man's nature. We set aside the Body with its senses as the man's house, having doors and windows; we examine the Understanding, which is his handmaid; we separate the Affections, which unite man with man; we discover the Moral Sense, by which we can discern between right and wrong, as by the body's eye between black and white, or night and day; and behind all these, and deeper down, beneath all the shifting phenomena of life, we discover the religious element of man. Looking carefully at this element; separating this as a cause from its actions, and these from their effects; stripping this faculty of all accidental circumstances peculiar to the age, nation, sect, or individual, and pursuing a sharp and final analysis till the subject and predicate can no longer be separated; we find as the ultimate fact, that the religious element first manifests itself in our consciousness by a feeling of need, of want; in one word, by a sense of dependence.[1] This primitive feeling does not itself disclose the character, and still less the nature and essence, of the Object on which it depends; no more than the senses disclose the nature of their objects; no more than the eye or ear discovers the essence of light or sound. Like them, it acts spontaneously and unconsciously, soon as the outward occasion offers, with no effort of will, forethought, or making up the mind.
Thus, then, it appears that induction from notorious facts, consciousness spontaneously active, and a philosophical analysis of our nature, all lead equally to some religious element or principle as an essential part of Man's constitution. Now, when it is stated thus nakedly and abstractedly that Man has in his nature a permanent religious element, it is not easy to see on what grounds this primary faculty can be denied by any thinking man, who will notice the religious phenomena in history, trust his own consciousness, or examine and analyze the combined elements of his own being. It is true, men do not often say to themselves, “Go to now. Lo, I have a religious element in the bottom of my heart.” But neither do they often say, “Behold, I have hands and feet, and am the same being that I was last night or forty years ago.” In a natural and healthy state of mind, men rarely speak or think of what is felt unconsciously to be most true, and the basis of all spiritual action. It is, indeed, most abundantly established, that there is a religious element in Man.
- ↑ The religious and moral elements mutually involve each other in practice; neither can attain a perfect development without the other; but they are yet as distinct from one another as the faculties of sight and hearing, or memory and imagination. Perhaps all will not agree with that analysis which makes a sense of dependence the ultimate fact of consciousness in the case. This is the statement of Schleiermacher, not to mention more ancient authorities. See his Christliche Glaube nach der Grundsatzen der ev. Kirche, B. I. § 4, p. 15, et seq. in his Works, 1 Abt. B. III., Berlin, 1835. Of course a sense of infinite as well as finite dependence is intended. Others may call it a consciousness of the Infinite; I contend more for the fact of a religious element in man than for the above analysis of that element. This theory has been assailed by several philosophers, amongst others by Hegel. See his Philosophie der Religion, 2nd improved edition, B. I. p. 87, et seq., in B. XI. of his Works, Berlin, 1840, B. XVII. p. 279, et seq.; Rosenkrantz, Leben Hegels, Berlin, 1844, p. 341, et seq. See also Bretschneider, Handbuch der Dogmatik, Leip. 1838, Vol I., §, 12, 6. See Studien und Kritiken, für Oct. 1846, p. 845, et seq. for a defence of the opinion of Schleiermacher.