What Is and What Might Be: A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in ParticularHolmes, Edmond
Philosophy
What Is and What Might Be: A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular
Holmes, Edmond
Education
But there is a sense which is larger and more "massive" even than
these. When the environment is all-embracing, when it covers the
whole circle of which the soul is or can be the centre, the growth
made in response to it is the growth of the soul as such, and the
knowledge which rewards that growth is the knowledge of supreme
reality, or, in the language of religion, the knowledge of God. The
highest of all senses is the religious sense, the sense which gives
us knowledge of God. But the religious sense is not, as we are apt
to imagine, one of many senses. No one individual sense, however
"massive" or subtle it might be, could enable its possessor to get
on terms, so to speak, with the totality of things, with the
all-vitalising Life, with the all-embracing Whole. _The religious
sense is the well-being of the soul._ For the soul as such grows in
and through the growth of its various senses,--its own growth being
reinforced by the growth of each of these when Nature's balance is
kept, and retarded by the growth of one or more of them when Nature's
balance is lost,--and in proportion as its own vital, central growth
is vigorous and healthy, its power of apprehending reality unfolds
itself little by little. That power is of its inmost essence. When
reality, in the full sense of the word, is its object, it sees with
the whole of its being; it is itself, when it is at the centre of
its universe, its own supreme perceptive faculty, its own religious
sense.
If this is so, if the soul in its totality, the soul acting through
its whole "apperceptive mass," is its own religious sense, it is
abundantly clear that the path of self-realisation is the only path
which leads to knowledge of God, and through knowledge of God to
salvation. For self-realisation is the only scheme of life which
provides for the growth of the soul in its totality, for the
harmonious, many-sided development of the soul as such. I have often
dwelt on this point. If we have never before realised its importance
we must surely do so now. A one-sided training, even when its
one-sidedness takes the form of specialising in theology, is a
non-religious, and may well become an irreligious training, for it
does not lead to, and may well lead away from, knowledge of God.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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