Secondly, it emphasizes the need for tolerance and enlightenment. The
scientific view asserts not that its knowledge is absolute or complete,
but that, although relative and partial, it will indubitably continue
to grow harmoniously along the general lines already laid down.
Another change wrought by the inclusion of all phenomena under one head
and the banishment of the supernatural is the inestimable advantage
that we thereby find the possibility of constructing a single general
view of the universe for civilization. At present there are two that
matter--the orthodox religious and the scientific. The religious starts
from the top, the scientific from the bottom; but the scientific has
been creeping up, and now that it has begun to attack the problem
of mind it will be able to drown the other out. Since the current
religious formulation is only symbolic, it cannot become scientific;
but since the scientific is based on the closest possible analysis
of reality, it can become religious so far as it investigates the
realities of religious experience.
Once it has done this, we shall be able to construct a _Weltanschauung_
such as never before, with roots in the ordered reactions of inorganic
matter, trunk strong with the steady progress of evolving life, and
branches reaching up into the highest realities of the spirit. Union is
strength; and it is one of the prime duties of educated men and women
to see that the present duality and antagonism at the heart of what
should be the central unity of civilization--of its most fundamental
idea, its conception of the universe--should be terminated.
The new outlook will also interlock with the youthful science of
psychology to produce great results. Much of what now is interpreted,
by all save the few experts, in supernatural terms of the old theology
will become intelligible as a product of the natural workings of that
amazing thing, the human mind. We shall not have sects trying to
exploit the normal dissatisfactions and disharmonies of adolescence
in order to secure “conversions”; repressed tendencies will not be
thought to be the voice of a personal Devil, nor neglected ideals the
voice of a personal God. Irrational fear, to-day still the greatest
enemy of mankind and most potent annihilator of happiness, will, by
comprehension of its curious mechanism and its persistence, often
transformed, from childhood to adult life, become amenable to treatment
and be made more and more to disappear. Proper analysis of mental
processes such as repression, suppression, and sublimation will enable
us to make better use of our faculties, and deliberately to build up
treasures of spiritual experience now attainable only by the lucky few
in whom temperament and circumstances accidentally conspire.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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