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Typos — p. 18: diminshed [= diminished]


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Chapter I
The Source of Religious Belief

If we knew all there is to know about life and the Universe, including their origin, and were as well informed about our own provenance and purpose as we are about those of the cars we drive, it is probable that what we understand by religion would either have much less importance than it has at present, or else would wear so different a mien as hardly to be recognized as religion by any modern churchman.
        For the principal source of all religious belief and of the particular claims of different religions, is the hidden, inexplicable character of both our world and our existence in it. This presents such a formidable barrier to a satisfying grasp of all that we see and feel about us, that the effort to rid ourselves once and for all of the agonizing uncertainty of our knowledge about ourselves, our destiny and our surroundings, drives us — or at least the more thoughtful among us — to clutch, often with undue haste, at any answer to our endless questionings provided that it is tolerably plausible. And it is this plausible and usually provisional answer that gives us the basis of our religion and determines its character.
        Whence do we and the Universe come? Whither are we going? Why are we here? How did life originate? What means the immeasurable vastness in which we are but a negligible speck? Why this infinite multitude of heavenly bodies? What is the purpose of it all? Is the very idea of purpose an illusion? Is everything meaningless, pointless and the sport of chance and accident?
        Every fresh generation of men ask these questions and no progress is made in answering them. Even modern science, despite its many staggering and spectacular advances, cannot help us here. Indeed, when the reading public learn of the latest findings of the astronomers, physicists, geo-physicists and philosophers, their wonderment and mystification are magnified rather than

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diminshed. Compared with the relatively simple account of the origin of life and the Universe, with which our forebears of a hundred years and more ago were content, present-day scientific theories about our origin and our psycho-physical nature are so complex, unbelievably fantastic and, above all, so lacking in unanimity, that those moderns who are too intelligent to take anything for granted, who still retain the power to wonder, and wish to be enlightened concerning the Universe and themselves, may be forgiven if in the end the replies they get to their anxious inquiries leave them more baffled than illuminated.
        As Professor W. McDougall says (R.S.L. Chap. I), "in spite of all the splendid achievements of modern science, we still live surrounded on every hand by mysteries." "Anybody who has any sense," declares Professor A. N. Whitehead, "who writes on philosophy, knows that the world is unfathomable in its complexity" (E.S.P. Pan II, iii); whilst Abel B. Jones (I.S.T. Chap. XIV), says, "Man finds himself in a universe the immensity of which baffles him, and is terrified by the tremendous powers he sees in action. He yearns to know that he is in a friendly universe, that there is a friend behind the phenomena. . . . He wants to believe that there is a hand that guides. Man's sense of awe as he contemplates the universe makes a necessity of belief." Hence John Cowper Powys's remark, "The essence of religion" is "the feeling of wonder and awe in the presence of life and of the unknown powers beyond life" (P.O.L. Chap. on Goethe). This is more or less also Macneile Dixon's view. He defines the "essence of religion" as man's insistence on some transcendental interpretation which lends to nature and to human life a "deeper meaning than bodily senses revealed" (T.H.S. Chap. II).
        It cannot surprise us, therefore, if large numbers of people, tormented by unsatisfied curiosity and impatiently rejecting the conflicting suggestions of the scientists and philosophers, either fall back on the faith of their forefathers, or else adopt some modern and sophisticated form of Occultism, Magic, or other substitute for the old religion of the Western World. (In Modern Substitutes for Traditional Christianity, 1916, Canon E. McClure describes six such substitutes.) At least it gives them rest and peace after incessant and fruitless questioning.
        Even a fantastic, grotesque answer is better than none at all; for, as Pascal aptly observed: "Lorsque dans les choses de la nature . . . il y en a dont on ne sait pas la vérité, il n'est peut-

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être pas mauvais qu'il y ait une erreur commune qui fixe l'esprit des hommes, comme par exemple la lune, à qui on attribue les changements de temps, le progrès des maladies, etc. Car c'est une des principales maladies de l'homme que d'avoir une curiosité inquiète pour les choses qu'il ne peut savoir; et je ne sais si ce ne lui est point un moindre mal d'être dans l'erreur pour les choses de cette nature que d'être dans cette curiosité inutile" (P. Ière Partie, Article X. "When among the phenomena of Nature there are some of which the truth is unknown, it may perhaps not be amiss that a common erroneous belief should settle men's minds, after the manner of their belief in the moon's power to influence the weather and the course of illnesses. For one of man's principal infirmities is his restless curiosity about things he cannot possibly know, and I really do not know whether, as far as he is concerned, it is not a lesser evil to remain in error about matters of that kind than to live in a state of constant and pointless curiosity.").
        The very principles which for centuries supplied the basis of Western man's certainty concerning the divine origin of life and the Universe can no longer be accepted by thinkers who are intellectually upright. For whether they say, "Everything must have a cause; therefore there must have been a First Cause, or Creator"; or, "Time must have had a beginning and at its beginning some awful power must have made and set the spheres in motion", they soon find that reason inevitably points to the absurdity of such assumptions.
        Consider, for example, the notion of Causation. The very suggestion that there must have been a First Cause contradicts the principle which prompts the suggestion. On the other hand, the human intellect faints at the thought of an endless chain of causes and effects leading back into infinity. Thus, rather than resort to this desperate solution, the honest thinker feels constrained in the end to ask whether the whole idea of Causation may not perhaps be as illusory and unnecessary as that of a First Cause itself. If, however, this is so, his mystification, far from being dispelled, is but augmented, and this is more or less the plight of all enlightened and upright thinkers today.
        Thus, Professor G. C. Field, speaking of Modern Proofs of the Existence of God, says, "The argument from the necessity for a first mover or more generally for a first cause, carries very little more conviction to modern thought". (Studies in Philosophy,

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1935, Chap. VI. See also Hastings: Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Article, "Cause: Causality", for an admission that the postulation of a First Cause, or Causa Sui, leads to a contradiction). It is clear from Hume's Dialogues Concerning Religion (1751), that he, too, came to the conclusion that the very words "First Cause" involve a contradiction. In fact, he goes to great pains to show that the notion that everything must have a cause is nothing but the outcome of custom.
        Bertrand Russell, on the other hand, does what I think every thinker must do, when he argues that, "If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there can be no validity in the argument . . . there is no reason why the world could not have come into being without a cause; nor, on the other hand, is there any reason why it should not have always existed. There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination. Therefore, perhaps, I need not waste any more time upon the argument about the First Cause". (W. Chap I).
        Bernard Shaw, although not a rigorous logician, and a less careful thinker than either Professor Field or Bertrand Russell, comes to the same conclusion. "The ultimate problem of existence", he says, "being clearly insoluble and even unthinkable on causation lines, could not be a causation problem". (B.T.M.).
        When, therefore, Professor W. Schmidt says, "Man needs to find a rational cause; this is satisfied by the concept of a Supreme Being who created the world and those that dwell therein" (The Origin and Growth of Religion, 1935, Chap. XVIII), his use of the word "Man" is in this twentieth century too sweeping, and the implication in the words "rational cause" is unjustified; because, as we have seen, it is not man in general now, but only the man who is not too exacting in his demand for an explanation, who can be "satisfied by the concept of a Supreme Being, etc.".
        This is not to imply that the upright thinker of the present day, baffled by the problems of origins, necessarily ceases to wonder at the mysteries and marvels of existence, or that he smugly shelves the problems they suggest as no longer challenging. Indeed, if we seek the kind of people who no longer wonder, or have never in any circumstances felt wonder when contemplating their fellow men and the world about them, we have to

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look much lower in the scale of human beings — among the rustics of our countryside, the illiterate materialists in the proletariate of our cities, and the shallow half-educated hedonists of the middle and lower middle classes everywhere. For, as Joseph Pieper has so well said, "To perceive all that is unusual and exceptional, all that is wonderful, in the midst of the ordinary things of everyday life, is the beginning of philosophy . . . the capacity to wonder is among man's greatest gifts" (The Philosophical Act, 1952, Chap. III). Goethe, well aware of this, said to Eckermann: "Das Höchste, wozu der Mensch gelangen kann ist das Erstaunen, und wenn ihn das Urphänomen in Erstaunen setzt, so sei er zufrieden; ein Höheres kann es ihm nicht gewähren" (G.G. Vol. II, 18.2.1829. "The highest that man can attain in contemplating primordial phenomena is wonder . . . nothing higher can be vouchsafed him").
        But unless they are romantics, men do not allow their wonderment to find fantastic emotional expression. Only if frankly engaged in artistic production do they allow it to partake of fantasy. When they write or speak as plain truth-tellers, framing the articles of their own faith and the behaviour it enjoins, intellectually upright thinkers know how to abstain from the facile and unrealistic extravagances to which wonder too frequently descends.
        Thus, if we look on religion as the means whereby that part of knowledge so far denied to the investigator, is treated as revealed-at least by those whose demands on their reasoning faculties are not too exacting, we can picture it as that portion of the Beach of Truth from which the Sea of Ignorance has not yet receded. The tide has now been falling for centuries, exposing more and more of this beach. But the considerable area still covered by the waters of Nescience leaves all men, including the intellectually upright, inquisitive and expectant. What they cannot yet know they insist on guessing, and the majority are satisfied with results only just plausible. Such results constitute the tenets of the various religions, hence the pertinent observation of the late Bishop of New York, the Right Rev. William Manning, that "religion without mystery ceases to be religion" (Sermon delivered and February 1930). And since, as we have seen, even a pious thinker like Pascal could concede that the guesses need often be no more than just plausible, our conclusion would seem to be neither inaccurate nor unfair. William James certainly

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supports it when he describes religion as our total reaction to life and as "the completest of all our answers to the question, 'What is the character of the universe in which we dwell?'" Hence too his claim that religion "must exert a permanent function"; presumably because there will always be unknown areas concerning which questions will continue to be put. (V.R.E. Lectures II and XX).
        It is conceivable and highly probable that, as in the past a certain elevation of character and intellect was compatible with faith in the guesses hazarded about the mysteries of the Universe, the higher men responsible for these guesses were, in view of the standards of credibility and validity, let alone of scientific method, then prevailing, not necessarily wanting in either intellectual uprightness or ordinary honesty. But in any case we may feel sure that the commonplace folk of any period and any civilization, are unlikely ever to have been themselves responsible for the guesses forming the basis of their religion, and that invariably they have accepted from their higher men, all of whom were by no means necessarily humbugs or hoaxers, the tenets of their faith. These reflections receive some support from Goethe who, in discussing the origin of religions, observed: "that all religions have not been given to man directly by God, but have been the creation of higher men to meet the needs and understanding of the great mass of their fellow-men" ("Dass alle Religionen nicht unmittelbar von Gott selber gegeben worden, sondern dass sie, als das Werk vorzüglicher Menschen für das Bedürfnis und die Fasslichkeit einer grossen Masse ihres gleichens." G.G. Vol. II, 28.2.1831).
        Today, however, these same higher men to whom the commonplace crowd once looked for their beliefs, have suffered a fundamental change. For whilst the small handful of topmost thinkers among them are prevented by their intellectual uprightness from offering the crowd any guesses whatsoever about the inscrutable aspects of the Universe and life, and thereby create a novel and essentially modern form of spiritual distress, the majority among them, who, although appreciably inferior in both intellect and uprightness, are nevertheless sufficiently superior to command some respect and authority, either venture to hand on their own guesses, or eke by precept and example commend the guesses made ages ago which are enshrined in the religions of the West and constitute no innovation. For, although new-fangled beliefs

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like Christian Science and Theosophy, for instance, offer certain new features, their appeal is far from being as general as that of the old religions, and their founders do not hail from the intellectual élite composing our first-mentioned group.
        Thus, it amounts to this, that the vast majority of commonplace folk are left with only those speculations about the Universe, which the higher men of the past believed and handed on to their fellows; and as these speculations conflict with much of current general knowledge, accessible even to the half-educated, a large and growing population in all parts of the West today no longer profess any religious beliefs whatsoever.
        Add to this army of Infidels all the rustics and townsmen who, as we have seen, are too besotted and shallow to feel any wonder or curiosity about anything, except perhaps a sensational mechanical novelty — and the increase of stupidity all over the Western world, caused, among other things by degeneracy, incessantly augments this army — and you have a formidable population. Insensible to the appeal of the old religions and their guesses at cosmic mysteries, and deprived of any chance of receiving fresh religious doctrines from their contemporary superior men, all these people live and die utterly estranged from, and indifferent to, the inexplicable hinterland of everyday life. They neither try to investigate it, nor to speculate upon its nature; and, to judge from their habits of mind and the time they devote to the problems of existence, they seem to be unaware of any mysteries whatsoever behind the everyday scene.
        Above these ungifted non-religionists, our present world has two fairly large contingents who still profess a deep interest in the hinterland in question, though in different ways. The first and probably larger contingent, like the late Bishop Barnes of Birmingham, accept the major part of what the sages of yore taught about the origin and ruler of the Universe; but try to reconcile it, if only approximately, with modern science and thought, by restating and reinterpreting it. Most of the educated, more intelligent and sincere churchgoers and clerics compromise in this way.
        That this policy has grave disadvantages, no one would deny. For, apart from the inconsistencies bound to arise between prelates who try to adjust the faith to modern thought by making individual and independent concessions, and thus give the laity the impression of disunity and doctrinal confusion within the

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Church itself; beliefs which have constantly to be reformulated and modified cannot inspire the same loyalty and confidence as those that remain unaltered throughout the years. As Dr. C. E. M. Joad aptly observes, "A religion which is in constant process of revision to square with science's ever-changing picture of the world, might well be easier of belief, but it is hard to believe that it would be worth believing". (R.O.B. Chap. IX).
        The second and smaller contingent consists of those well informed people who, like Thomas Henry Huxley, are intellectually upright enough to remain rigorously rational and logical and to be on their guard against emotion; and who, having tried to penetrate the mysterious background to everyday life, have concluded that they cannot conscientiously hold any precise views about it. They are therefore constrained to remain in a state of uncertainty which they call "Agnosticism" or "Not-Knowing". This may be a comfortless refuge from the countless riddles that incessantly taunt human curiosity; but, if he can control himself when tempting alternatives occur to him, it is the only course open to the man who, abreast of the latest speculations of science, is scrupulously honest in intellectual matters.
        Apart from the above-mentioned elements in the population, the Western world still contains many people who are satisfied Christians — i.e. believers in the dogmata and doctrines of Christianity, without any of the reservations insisted on by the late Bishop of Birmingham and his like. They comprise all the humble members of the Holy Catholic Church, the Anglican and the Greek Orthodox Churches, and the various Dissenting sects; and they are all alike in this, that they accept the guesses about the world's mysteries, which the higher men of thousands of years ago offered to their humbler brethren. Among them most probably there are countless numbers who for various reasons now only pretend to accept these guesses, and whose duties, whether as statesmen, politicians or lawyers, necessitate at least some lip-service to orthodox belief; whilst even among the clergy of the different denominations there are doubtless many such bogus Christians.
        Considerable evidence, however, points to a marked and steady decline in the number of believers, whether genuine or spurious, even among the clergy themselves; and the recruitment of priests, at least in the Anglican Church, is now proving difficult The fact, moreover, that although the majority of sincere

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worshippers are to be found among the female sex in rural areas, the decline in church and chapel congregations has for several decades been sustained in the countryside, indicates that even where the old religion might be expected to maintain its hold with the greatest ease, the men and women most susceptible to its appeal no longer respond with the same fervour as of old. This might mean that as a temporary expedient, offering a speculative account of the parts on the Beach of Knowledge still uncovered, the form of religion established in the West is proving no longer satisfying even to people of very modest intellectual gifts. In fact, as Professor McDougall declares, "The Churches keep crying aloud their old stories and their old exhortations, but the people heed them less and less". (R.S.L. Chap. XII). Dr. C. E. M. Joad, in a similar vein, speaks of the Church of England parson as "a persistent seller of goods that the public doesn't want" (R.O.B. Chap. IX). Professor A. N. Whitehead also refers to the decline in Christian worshippers in recent years and, writing in 1942, after quoting a few official returns, says: "We may safely conclude that in the whole country far less than one-fifth of the population are in any sense Christians today". (A.I. Chap. XVIII).
        Whether the decline in Christian worshippers is to be ascribed to the slow saturation of the Western atmosphere with the views of science, or to the general and steady loss of intelligence throughout the population, a loss which inevitably blinds increasing numbers of commonplace folk to the challenging problems of the world about them, cannot be determined. But as there can be no doubt about the increase of stupidity in the modern Western world, or about the permeation of this world's atmosphere by the findings of science, popularized in innumerable recent publications, it may well be that both of these factors are today contributing to the diminution of religious fervour and to an increase in popular scepticism. (Recent published estimates suggest that in England at least a serious decline in intelligence is now in progress. See, for instance, The Report of the Royal Commission on Population, 1950; also Human Fertility by Rob. C. Cook, 1951, Chap. 13, where Dr. Raymond Cattell points out that "a rate of decline of more than two I.Q. points per generation" is now taking place. J. B. S. Haldane concurs.)
        Renan, who noticed a corresponding decline in the volume of worshippers in the France of his day, was inclined to ascribe it

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solely to the spread of education. "II n'y a plus de masses croyantes," he wrote to the anti-clerical societies of Rome in 1881. "Qu'on le regrette ou qu'on s'en réjouisse, le peuple des grandes villes ne va plus à l'eglise ni au temple: on ne l'y ramènera point. Les villes secondaires et les campagnes obéissent à la même tendance. Les progrès de l'instruction publique diminueront de plus en plus la somme de virus superstitieux qui est répandu dans l'humanité, et on peut prévoir le jour où la croyance aux faits surnaturels . . . sera dans le monde quelque chose d'aussi peu considérable que l'est aujourd'hui la foi aux sorciers at aux revenants" (Correspondance, 1928, Vol. II. Années 1881–1883. "There are no longer any large bodies of believers. Whether we deplore the fact or rejoice over it, the inhabitants of our large cities no longer go either to church or to chapel; and we shall not get them back there. Smaller urban centres and the countryside show the same tendency. The progress of public education will reduce more and more the potency of the virus of superstition disseminated over humanity, and one can foresee the day when the belief in supernatural agencies will be as rare as the faith in sorcerers and ghosts is today").
        Macneile Dixon takes the same view. He thinks, "the decay of religious faith is due to the increase of our positive knowledge" (T.H.S. Chap. II); whilst Dr. Joad, apparently of the same opinion, maintains that "it is a comparatively rare thing to find an educated man who is also a Christian" (R.O.B. Chap. I). But, as we have seen, there are other contributory factors, and I submit that, in addition to the increase of stupidity, there has been in recent years, especially in the Western world, a marked increase in superficiality and levity. This may represent only one facet of the increase of stupidity, although it may more probably derive from the substantial decline in passion and temperamental vigour which, in itself, is the outcome of the general decline in stamina throughout the populations of the West.

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