Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/52

44, ghost worship to which. . . we may succeed in reducing religious phenomena?" Here is the very question which Mr. Kidd says modern science does not face. "What is Mr. Ellis's answer?—"The supreme expression of the religious consciousness lies always in an intuition of union with the world, under whatever abstract or concrete names the infinite not-self may be hidden. . . . It comes in the guise of a purification of egoism, a complete renunciation of the limits of individuality—of all the desires and aims that seem to converge in the single personality—and a joyous acceptance of what has generally seemed an immense external Will now first dimly or clearly realized. . . . It is this intuition which is the 'emptiness' of Lao-tsze, the freedom from all aims that center in self." When one has been reading things of this kind from day to day for years, it is a little provocative of fatigue to find Mr. Kidd attaching so much importance to formulas of his own devising that are essentially of the same significance.

But possibly Mr. Kidd, it may be suggested, states the function of religious beliefs much more definitely than has ever been done before, and throws new and vivid light upon their origin and rationale. We can not see that there is the least foundation for such a claim. We are told by this author that religion is essentially an "ultra-rational sanction" for actions which, though injurious to the individual, are beneficial to the community. Is any light whatever thrown on the nature of religion by calling it an "ultra-rational sanction"? The term "ultra-rational" is essentially negative. We understand from it that religion is a sanction with which reason has nothing to do. What we want to know is, What has to do with it? Whence is its authority derived? How far are rational beings bound or compelled to recognize and bow to it? Is it something like the law of gravitation that no one can resist, or is it a mere habit of mind that can be outgrown, perverted, or destroyed? If all that Mr. Kidd has to tell us of the nature of religion is that it is a sanction, and that reason has nothing to do with it, or rather that it is contrary to reason, we certainly have not much to thank him for. Far more are our thanks due to Hegel and Feuerbach and Comte, to Spencer and Martineau and Arnold, to Muller and Reville and Caird, who all, from their several points of view, have endeavored to explain what religion is and to define its place in the sum of human powers and faculties. The time is not far distant, Mr. Kidd says, when Science will "look back with shamefacedness to the attitude in which she has addressed herself to one of the highest problems in history"; but we fail to see either what Science has to be shamefaced about, or what Mr. Kidd has himself done to mark out better lines for the action of Science in the future.