Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/27

2 religion, but even a belief in God as the highest of beings need not be a religious belief. If La Place had needed what he called “that hypothesis,” the Deity, when introduced into his celestial mechanics, would have been but a mathematical symbol, or a formula like Taylor’s theorem, — no true object of religious veneration. On the other hand, Spinoza’s impersonal Substance, or the Nirvâna of the Buddhists, or any one of many like notions, may have, either as doctrines about the world or as ideals of human conduct, immense religious value. Very much that we associate with religion is therefore non-essential to religion. Yet religion is something unique in human belief and emotion, and must not be dissolved into any lower or more commonplace elements. What then is religion?

So much at all events seems sure about religion. It has to do with action. It is impossible without some appearance of moral purpose. A totally immoral religion may exist; but it is like a totally unseaworthy ship at sea, or like a rotten bank, or like a wildcat mine. It deceives its followers. It pretends to guide them into morality of some sort. If it is blind or wicked, not its error makes it religious, but the faith of its followers in its worth. A religion may teach the men of one tribe to torture and kill men of another tribe. But even such a religion would pretend to teach right conduct. Religion, however, gives us more than a moral code. A moral