Belief system

“ The fact, however, that we have almost to cast about in certain cases for an explanation of the established belief in the sacredness of human life, shows how deeply rooted that belief is unless where some counter-belief interferes with it. ”

“ Wherever the facts to be formulated contain such a contribution, we may logically, legitimately, and inexpugnably believe what we desire. The belief creates its verification. The thought becomes literally father to the fact, as the wish was father to the thought. [4]
Let us now turn to the radical question of life,—the question whether this be at bottom a moral or an unmoral universe,—and see whether the method of faith may legitimately have a place there. ”

“ Though at first glance they might seem to belong to a different sphere, that of the soul rather than the intellect, and to possess a different function, explaining duties rather than discovering truth; yet in deep problems of physical or moral history, such as Providence, Sin, Reconciliation, they supply materials for limiting belief in the very class of subjects which is embraced in the compass of human philosophy. ”

“ The preceding analysis of the relations of the moral and intellectual facilities in the formation of religious opinions might enable us to criticise the ethical inferences drawn in reference to man's responsibility for his belief. ”

“ Sixthly, That God did not put this Idea of himself into the Mind of Man, but the subtiler sort of Politicians, that have alwaies used Religion as a mere Engine of State.
Seventhly, That Fear and Hopes of Natural Conscience are nothing indeed but these Passions rais'd upon a belief of a God which men have had by Tradition or Education. ”

“ Therefore, as generations and centuries roll on, let the understanding, knowledge, and wisdom of each and every one, of individuals and of the whole Church, grow apace and increase exceedingly, yet only in its kind; that is to say retaining pure and inviolate the sense and meaning and belief of the same doctrine. ”

“ What shall we say of that authority, more venerable and august than any individual witness, the time-honoured tradition of the human race? An atmosphere of beliefs and conceptions has been formed by the labours and struggles of our forefathers, which enables us to breathe amid the various and complex circumstances of our life. It is around and about us and within us; we cannot think except in the forms and processes of thought which it supplies. ”

“ Finally, religion and ethics, which may be fitly called,—the practice of ideas, or the introduction of ideas into life,—have an analogous effect with all lower culture, in degrading nature and suggesting its dependence on spirit. Ethics and religion differ herein; that the one is the system of human duties commencing from man ”

“ And this logical virtue becomes recognizable in the ability to guide action and belief by reference to fundamental principles; it requires the quality of mind that easily holds the impress of an argument, whose beliefs are deep-rooted in the soil of human experience critically interpreted. ”

“ Then, as we advance still higher in the world of letters, we find metaphysicians and philosophers assuming that a belief in certain truths is implanted in all rational minds by the Creator as a necessary part of their constitution, and that these truths are the foundation of most of our acquired knowledge. The truths or principles of mind thus recognized are called by various names, such as reason, the principles of reason, the primary truths, the intuitions, the intuitive truths, the fundamental truths, the principles of common sense, the categories, etc. ”

“ Within the limits of philosophical religion thus broadly defined there is yet provision for almost endless variety of belief. Religions may still differ in tradition, symbolism, and ritual. They may differ as moral codes and sentiments differ, and reflect all shades of opinion as this is determined by discovery and criticism. ”

“ And therefore it is easy to substitute drilling for arguing, and to take up a belief as you accept admission to a society, as a matter of taste and feeling, with which abstract logic has nothing to do. The common dilemma—you must be a Catholic or an atheist—means, that theology is only tenable if you drill people into belief by a vast organisation appealing to other than logical motives. ”

“ When public consideration is invited to a system of philosophy so extended as to comprehend the entire scheme of nature and humanity, and so bold as to deal with them in the ripest spirit of science, it is natural that many should ask at the outset how the author stands related to the problem of Religion. ”

“ Had the christian religion commenced and continued by the mere force of reasoning and persuasion, by its self-evident excellence and fitness, the preceding analogy would be inadmissible. We should never speculate upon the future obsoleteness of a system perfectly conformable to nature and reason. ”

“ We have merely to collect things together without any special a priori theological system, and out of an aggregate of piecemeal judgments as to the value of this and that experience—judgments in which our general philosophic prejudices, our instincts, and our common sense are our only guides—decide that on the whole one type of religion is approved by its fruits, and another type condemned. ”

“ For present-day purposes we may consider belief as characteristically of this type—complex in structure, subject to endlessly varying influences, modifiable by diverse factors and circumstances, responsive to social, hereditary, educational, and transitory as well as to more permanent, natural, and logical influences. ”

“ His varied experience in contact with all classes of society, of every shade of opinion, and all creeds of religious faith, had taught him to search farther than mere professions for the true life of the soul; and he learned to regard every human being, however degraded in person or erroneous in theory, as a spark of the divine intelligence, whose absolute sovereignty in all matters of thought none can question. ”

“ Surely only omniscience and omnipotence can dispense with the moral and religious venture of our inspired common sense and its implied theistic faith, as the root of reason in man—in his intermediate place and office, between perfect knowledge and total ignorance. ”

“ Since religion is a belief concerning the overruling control of human interests, it involves on the one hand a summing up of these interests, a conception of what the believer has at stake, in short, an ethical judgment ”

“ Since the realm of Cause has failed to give us foothold, we must fall back upon the realm of Law—social, moral, and mental law, and not merely physical. Religion consists, not in answering certain questions, but in making men of a certain quality. ”

“ But what classes of things are right or wrong, we learn by the exercise of our logical intelligence, in connection with experiences of utility, influences of society and tradition, and positive divine revelation. Thus our moral reason, through a combination of intuition and education, of internal and external information as to general principles of right and wrong, furnishes the standard according to which conscience may judge the particular cases which come before it. ”

“ Hence the ideas of matter and force, and also the ordinary theological idea of God, must give place to that of universal spirit as the ‘actuality’ of things. Accordingly he names his system ‘actualism’ as opposed to idealism and materialism. ”

“ This he calls laying aside our senses and our reason, to believe by a blind and implicit faith, the doctrines and opinions of a certain number of men, pretending to be divinely inspired; and not only so, but believing doctrines diametrically opposite to our reason, and the common sense and experience of the whole world. ”

“ The whole influence of the belief in a God upon society and civilization, depends on the powerful human sentiments which are ready to attach themselves to the belief; and yet the sentiments are only a social force at all, through the definite direction given to them by that or some other intellectual conviction ”

“ Whether we scrutinize internal consciousness or external phenomena, or trace to their root the faiths of mankind, we reach that common ground where all antagonisms disappear—that highest and most abstract of all truths, which is affirmed with equal certainty by both religion and science, and in which may be found their full and final reconciliation. ”

“ This, put into accurate language, means, that when the ideas are connected in conformity with the connexions of things, the belief is right belief; when the ideas are connected not in conformity with the connexions of things, the belief is wrong belief. ”

“ Having once deviated from the directions of reason, distrusting it, and believing what others proclaimed as the truth, men accumulate and accept by faith—for the most part in the form of laws, revelations, dogmas—such intricate, unnatural, and contradictory propositions, that, in order to express them and adapt them to life, great acuteness of mind and special qualities are indeed required. ”

“ Hence they are curious to study our ideas of natural law, of moral freedom, of time, of space, of causation, of self. They pry into the concerns of faith as if these were theirs by divine right. They are not only prying, they are on one side of their activity merciless, skeptical, paradoxical, inconsiderate. ”

“ Action will furnish belief,—but will that belief be the true one?
This is the point, you know. ”

“ The discussions have certified the immovable foundations and essential features of the moral system. The fresh light from the advance of knowledge has proved, as it always does, not destructive, but corrective and confirmatory. ”

“ The movement from morality and religion to moral philosophy and the philosophy of religion, is thus a movement from reason to reason, from the implicit to the explicit, from the germ to the developed fulness of life and structure. ”

“ Every man will have his own views as to the issue of the conflict: for the present it is sufficient for him, if he can be fully satisfied in his own mind.
2. The predisposition in men's minds in favor, whether of Religion or Rationalism, will be created and sustained solely by moral means. This is the conclusion toward which I have been steadily working from the beginning of this paper to the end of it. The intellect of both Christian and Rationalist will have its part to play; but that part will consist in presenting, teaching, and enforcing each its own morality upon the minds of men. ”

“ I shall thus be led, in the second place, to the mention of that source of religious insight to which, at the close of the former lecture, I directed your attention, namely, to our social experience. Society, in a certain sense, both includes and transcends the individual man. Perhaps, then, something can be done toward solving the problem of the religious paradox, and toward harmonising the varieties of religious opinion, by considering the religious meaning of our social consciousness. ”

“ He is born into an order of reason which, by obedience to the law and light of reason within him, he has developed into the stately fabric of organised, social, political, intellectual, in a word, civilised life. ”

“ But then, faith is required to accept the answer or solution, and alas! faith is not implanted in every soul. It is useless, therefore, to wish that it might be the gift of those who, to the authority of tradition and long-established dogmas, prefer the liberty of discussion and the axioms of science. ”

“ The theory of the state, or the science of politics, discusses these questions; it bears the same relation to sociology that ethics bears to psychology. The philosophy of religion investigates those inner facts of human experience which we call religious facts, and is, in so far as it does this, a branch of psychology. But it also studies their external expression, the different forms, and traces the development of positive religions in order to discover from the material thus presented the principles common to all religions. ”

“ Natural religion--the principles which nature reveals, and the lessons which nature teaches--he thus makes a test of the truth and authority of revealed religion. So far was he, as a teacher, from shrinking from the clearest and most piercing rays of reason--from calling off the attention of those around him from the import, bearings, and practical application of general principle. ”

“ For him just this is God, or truth, and it is worth far more than anybody's religion or than anybody's rational formulæ. It must stand, too, both as the universal authority which both religion and reason have over the lives of men and as the motive or living principle, or spirit, by which particular religions and particular formulæ, however serviceable, are forever unstable. ”

“ Every such opinion then, whether true or false, is an effort to adjust your will and your conduct to the intents of a supreme will which decides values, establishes the rule of life, estimates purposes in the light of complete insight. ”

“ These theorists, who are in other respects people of intelligence, have a very simple process; they apply to the past a glazing which they call social order, divine right, morality, family, the respect of elders, antique authority, sacred tradition, legitimacy, religion ”

“ And if any Man will profess so little Knowledge of Human Nature, and so mean and unjust an Opinion of the Christianity, I might say the Humanity, of his Country, as to affect a contrary Opinion, notwithstanding all I have said, let him answer the following Instance, which may be called an Argument à posteriori, for the Truth of my Assertion. ”

“ We must have faith, so we implied, that if we attained so much of the ideal social condition, the way from that point onward would become clear. But now we see why the way would of necessity become clear to one whose knowledge of life were broad enough and deep enough. ”