Now, the clearest way to get before us the religious view of the world
and the law which issues from it is to contrast it with the other two.
In the first place, the religious temperament takes a very different
view of nature than either romantic, or to a less degree
scientific, naturalism. Naturalism is subrational on the one hand or
non-imaginative on the other, in that it emphasizes the _continuity_
between man and the physical universe. The religious man is
superrational and nobly imaginative as he emphasizes the _difference_
between man and nature. He does not forget man's biological kinship to
the brute, his intimate structural and even psychological relation to
the primates, but he is aware that it is not in dwelling upon these
facts that his spirit discovers what is distinctive to man as man.
That he believes will be found by accenting the _chasm_ between man
and nature. He does not know how to conceive of a personal being
except by thinking of him as proceeding by other, though not
conflicting, laws and by moving toward different secondary ends from
those laws and ends which govern the impersonal external world. This
sense of the difference between man and nature he shares with the
humanist, only the humanist does not carry it as far as he does and
hence may not draw from it his ultimate conclusions.
The religious view, then, begins with the perception of man's
isolation in the natural order; his difference from his surroundings.
That sense of separateness is fundamental to the religious nature. The
false sentiment and partial science of the pagan which stresses the
identification of man and beast is the first quarrel that religionist
and humanist alike have with him. Neither of them sanctions
this perversion of thought and feeling which either projects the
impressionistic self so absurdly and perilously into the natural
order, or else minimizes man's imaginative and intellectual power,
leveling him down to the amoral instinct of the brute. "How much
more," said Jesus, "is a man better than a sheep!" One of the greatest
of English humanists was Matthew Arnold. You remember his sonnet,
entitled, alas! "To a Preacher," which runs as follows:
"In harmony with Nature? Restless fool,
Who with such heat doth preach what were to thee,
When true, the last impossibility--
To be like Nature strong, like Nature cool!
Know, man hath all which Nature hath, but more,
And in that more lie all his hopes of good,
Nature is cruel, man is sick of blood;
Nature is stubborn, man would fain adore;
Nature is fickle, man hath need of rest;
Nature forgives no debt and fears no grave;
Man would be mild, and with safe conscience blest.
Man must begin; know this, where Nature ends;
Nature and man can never be fast friends.
Fool, if thou canst not pass her, rest her slave!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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