SPECULATIONS

THE RELIGIOUS ATTITUDE

IN discussing the religious as contrasted
with the humanist attitude I said above :
" While it tends to find expression in myth
it is independent of myth ; it is, however,
much more intimately connected with dogma."
I want to make this clearer by a more detailed
account of what I mean by " an attitude " in
this context.
The main purpose of these pages is a prac-
tical one. I want to show that certain gener-
ally held "principles" are false. But the
only method of controversy in any such
fundamental matter of dispute is an " ab-
stract,, one; a method which deals with the
abstract conceptions on which opinions really
rest.
You think A is true; I ask why. You
reply, that it follows from B. But Wily is
B true ? because it follows from C, and so on.
You get finally to some very abstract attitude
(b) which you assume to be self-evidently
true. This is the central conception from
which more detailed opinion about political
principles, for example, proceeds. Now if
your opponent reasons correctly, and you
are unable to show that he has falsely deduced
A from B, then you are driven to the abstract
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plane of (h), for it is here that the difference
between you really has its root. And it is
only on this abstract plane that a discussion
on any fundamental divergence of opinion
can usefully be carried on.
Any attempt to change (h), however, should
be prefaced by some account of the nature of
such abstract attitudes, and the process by
which we come to adopt them.
It is possible to trace, in every man's
mind, then, trains leading in various direc-
tions, from his detailed ethical and political
opinions, back to a few of these central
attitudes.
A ...... B ...... C ............ (h)
Instead, of the first concrete statement
"A is true," we might have "A is good" ;
in which case (h) would be an ultimate value ;
the process, however, is the same. Another
metaphor, by which we may describe the place
of (h) in our thought, is to compare it to the
axes, to which W: refer the position of a
moving point, or the framework, on which A
and B are based. This is, perhaps, a better
description, for the framework, inside which
we live, is something we take for granted;
and in ordinary life we are very seldom con-
scious of (h). We are only led up to it by
this dialectical questioning, described above.
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All our " principles " are based on some un-
conscious " framework " of this kind. As a
rule, then, we are quite unconscious of (h),
we are only conscious of the detailed principles
A and B, derived from it. Now while we
probably acquire the opinions A and B con-
sciously, the same is not true of (h). How
do we come to hold it, then ? For we did
not produce it ourselves, but derived it
ready made from society. It came to be an
essential part of our mind without our being
conscious of it, because it was already im-
plicit in all the more detailed opinions, A and
B, society forced upon us. It was thus
embedded in the actual matter of our thought,
and as natural to us as the air ; in fact, it is
the air that all these more concrete beliefs
breathe. We thus have forced upon us,
unconsciously, the whole apparatus of cate-
gories, in terms of which all our thinking
must be done. The result of (h) having in
this way the character of a category, is that
it makes us see (A) not as an opinion, but as
a fact. We never see (h) for we see all things
through (h).
In this way these abstract categories, of
course, limit our thinking; our thought is
compelled to move inside certain limits. We
find, then, in people whose mental apparatus
is based on (h) while ours is not, a certain
obstinacy of intellect, a radical opposition,
and incapacity to see things which, to us, are
simple.
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HUMANISM
Now the limitation imposed on our thinking
by such categories is sometimes quite legiti-
mate. Some categories are objective. We
cannot think of things outside of space and
time, and it is quite right that we are subject
to this limitation.
But (h) often belongs to the large class of
pseudo-categories--categories which are not
objective, and it is these that I wish to deal
with here. They are exceedingly important,
for the difference between the mentality of
one great period of history and another
really depends on the different pseudo-cate-
gories of this kind, which were imposed on
every individual of the period, and in terms
of which his thinking was consequently done.
It is not difficult to find examples of this.
(1) A Brazilian Indian told a missionary
that he was a red parrot. The missionary
endeavoured to give some explanation of this
statement. You mean, he said, that when
you die you will become a red parrot, or that
you are in some way related to this bird.
The Indian rejected both these plausible
attempts to explain away a perfectly simple
fact, and repeated quite coldly that he was
a red parrot. There would seem to be an
impasse here then ; the missionary was
baffled in the same way as the humanist is
by the conception of sin. The explanation
given by Levy-Bruhl, who quotes the story, is
that the Indian has imposed on him by his
group a conception of the nature of an object,
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which differs radically from ours. For him
an object can be something else without
at the same time ceasing to be itself. The
accuracy of this explanation need not detain
us. The point is that it serves as an illustra-
tion of the way in which minds dominated by
different pseudo--categories, may have a very
different of fact.
(2) Again, tt has been recently argued
that the only way to understand early Greek
philosophy is to realise that it continued on
the plane of speculation the categories, the
ways of thinking, that had earlier created
Greek religion ... the conception of M oi,a, to
which even the gods submitted . . . etc.
The difference between the religious attitude
and myth is here quite clear.
The more intimate connection with dogmas
I referred to depends on the fact that dogma
is often a fairly intellectual way of expressing
these fundamental categories-the dogma of
Original Sin, for example. At the Renaiss-
ance, in spite of opinion to the contrary,
the philosophy did not express the categories,
the ways of thinking which had earlier been
expressed in the Christian religion ; it reversed
them.
It is these categories, these abstract con-
ceptions, which all the individuals of a period
have in common, which really serve best to
characterise the period. For most of the
characteristics of such a period, not only in
thought, but in ethics, and through ethics in
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HUMANISM
economics, really depend on these central
abstract attitudes. But while people will
readily acknowledge that this is true of the
Greeks, or of Brazilian Indians, they have
considerable difficulty in realising that it is
also true of the modem humanist period from
the Renaissance to now. The way in which
we instinctively judge things we take to be the
inevitable way of judging things. The pseudo-
categories of the humanist attitude are thought
to be on the same footing as the objective
categories of space and time. It is thought
to be impossible for an emancipated man to
think sincerely in the categories of the
religious attitude.
The reason for this is to be found in the fact
already noticed that we are, as a rule, uncon-
scious of the very abstract conceptions which
underlie our more concrete opinions. What
Ferrier says of real categories, ''Categories
may be operative when their existence is not
consciously recognised. First principles of
every kind have their influence, and, indeed,
operate largely and profoundly long before
they come to the surface of human thought,
and are articulately expounded,'' is true also
of these pseudo-categories. We are only
conscious of A, B . . . and very seldom of
(h). We do not see that, but other things
through it , and, consequently, take what ~
see for facts, and not for what they are-
opinions based on a particular abstract valua-
tion. This is certainly true of the progressive
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ideology founded on the conception of man as
fundamentally good.
It is this unconsciousness of these central
abstract conceptions, leading us to suppose
that the judgments of value founded on them
are natural and inevitable, which makes it so
difficult for anyone in the humanist tradition
to look at the religious attitude as anything
but a sentimental survival.
But I want to emphasise as clearly as I can,
that I attach very little value indeed to the
sentiments attaching to the religious attitude.
I hold, quite coldly and intellectually as it
were, that the way of thinking about the
world and man, the conception of sin, and the
categories which ultimately make up the
religious attitude, are the true categories and
the right way of thinking.
I might incidentally note here, that the way
in which I have explained the action of the
central abstract attitudes and ways of think-
ing, and the use of the word pseudo-categories,
might suggest that I hold relativist views
about their validity. But I don't. I hold
the religious conception of ultimate values to
be right, the humanist wrong. From the
nature of things, these categories are not
inevitable, like the categories of time and
space, but are equally objective. In speaking
of religion, it is to this level of abstraction
that I wish to refer. I have none of the
feelings of nostalgia, the reverence for tradi-
tion, the desire to recapture the sentiment of
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HUMANISM
Fra Angelico, which seems to animate most
modern defenders of religion. All that seems
to me to be bosh. What is important, is
what nobody seems to realise-the dogmas
like that of Original Sin, which are the closest
expression of the categories of the religious
attitude. That man is in no sense perfect,
but a wretched creature, who can yet appre-
hend perfection. It is not, then, that I put
up with the dogma for the sake of the senti-
ment, but that I may possibly swallow the
sentiment for the sake of the dogma. Very
few since the Renaissance have really under-
stood the dogma, certainly very few inside the
Churches of recent years. If they appear c c ~
sionally even fanatical about the very word of
the dogma, that is only a secondary result of
belief really grounded on sentiment. Certainly
no humanist could understand the dogma.
They all chatter about matters which are in
comparison with this, quite secondary notions
-God, Freedom, and Immortality.
The important thing is that this attitude
is not merelv a contrasted attitude, which I
am interested in, as it were, for purpose of
symmetry in historical exposition, but a real
attitude, perfectly possible for us to-day.
To see this is a kind of conversion. It radi-
cally alters our physical perception; so that
the world takes on an entirely different

aspect.
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