Page:The Harvard Classics Vol. 51; Lectures.djvu/454

444 to believe what seems probable, and to believe it not half-heartedly, but with conviction. For if one believes half-heartedly, one cannot proceed according to one's belief, or attain salvation by it. The element of sheer faith may be more or less, according to the degree of critical and philosophical power which the worshiper possesses. But in every case there will be some basis in experienced fact and in inference, and also some "will to believe" or reliance on authority. And we shall consequently find in religious literature a note of dogmatic certainty and of willfulness, which is as inevitable in such a context as it would be intolerable in science.

RELIGION AND MORALITY

There is one further topic to which even so brief an introduction as this must allude. What is the relation between religion and morality? Are we to regard ethical teachings such as those of the Book of Proverbs or the Sayings of Confucius as religious? To answer this question, we have only, I think, to bear clearly in mind the generic meaning of religion. A mode of life becomes religious only when it is pursued under certain auspices; only when it is conceived as sanctioned by the general nature of the cosmos, and as constituting a way of salvation. If justice be prized as a means of social welfare, it is ethical; if it be adopted as a means of winning the favor of God, or as a means of achieving Nirvana, it is religious. The moral life takes on a religious character when it is in some way connected with the cosmic life. In the so-called "ethical religions" the mode of life prescribed by religion tends to coincide with that prescribed by the moral consciousness, and righteousness is conceived as the way of salvation. Needless to say, such a contraction of morality greatly enhances its impressiveness and appeal. In all ethical religions that are inspired with hope, religion adds to a good conscience the sense of ascendency or victory over nature. Right living takes on the aspect of ultimate reality. To sheer duty is added confidence, inspiration, the expectation of limitless and durable achievement. Even in pessimistic religions of the ethical type, morality acquires prestige as having supreme importance for escape from the misery of existence. And from the religious consciousness