Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Sermons Prayers volume 2.djvu/106

90 The mind may work without a corresponding action of the conscience or the heart. You can comprehend the worth of a man all head, with no sense of right, no love of men, with nothing but a demon-brain. Conscience may- act with no corresponding life of the affections and the mind. You can understand the value of a man all con- science and will,—nothing but an incarnate moral law, the "categorical Imperative" exhibited in the flesh, with no wisdom and no love. A life domineered over by con- science is unsatisfying, melancholy, and grim. The affections may also have a development without the moral and the mental powers. But what is a man domineered over by his heart; with no justice, no wisdom, nothing but a lump of good-nature, partial and silly ? It is only the rareness of such phenomena that makes them bearable. Truth, justice, love,—it is not good for them to be alone; each loses two-thirds of the human power when it expels the sister virtues from it. What God has joined must not be put asunder.

The religious faculty may be perverted, severed from the rest and made to act alone, with no corresponding action of the mind, the conscience, and the heart. Attempts are often made to produce this independent development of the soul. It is no new thing to seek to develop e piety while you omit its several elements, the intellectual love of truth, the moral love of justice, and the affectional love of men. But in such a case what is the value of the "piety" thus produced? The soul acting without the mind goes to superstition and bigotry. It has its conception of God, but of a God that is foolish and silly. Reason will be thought carnal, science dangerous, and a doubt an impiety; the greatest absurdities will be taught in the name of religion; the philosophy of some half-civilized, but God-fearing people, will be put upon the minds of men as the word of God; the priest will hate the philosopher, and the philosopher the priest; men of able intellect will flee off and loathe ecclesiastical piety. If the churches will have a religion without philosophy, scholars will have a philosophy without religion. The Roman Church forbid science, burnt Jordano Bruno, and reduced Galileo to silence and his knees. So much the worse for the Church. The French philosophy