order of being can intervene to modify the natural development of a lower order. From the animals’ standpoint, man himself is a supernatural being whose action governs their life in a mysterious way and who even creates, as it were, new creatures like the setter and the racehorse, and admits them to a certain participation in his own life. And why, then, is it irrational to believe that, as Plato says, mankind is ” the flock of the Gods,” that human life is susceptible to the influence of a higher power which fosters in it those new capacities and modes of being which we call spiritual and metabiological ?
Such a belief may seem to us incredible, but it is not really irrational. It would indeed be strange if reality did not transcend man’s comprehension qualitatively as well as quanti¬
tively. The refusal to admit this possibility rests not so much on reason as on the humanist prejudice which insists that the human mind is the highest of all possible forms of existence and the only standard of reality. It is this prejudice which prevents Mr. Murry from developing the full implications of his religious experience. He has recognised one truth that is vital for religion—that the path of human development must lie in the spiritual, not the physical, world, and that his nature is not wholly earthbound—that it has a window that 56
HUMANISM AND RELIGIOUS E X P E R I E N C E
is open to the infinite. But, on the other hand, he rejects the other truth that is equally vital— the transcendence and absoluteness of spiritual reality. The religious attitude is only possible in the presence of the eternal and the transcendent. Any object that falls short of this fails to inspire the sense of awe and self-surrender, which is essential to true religion. Man cannot worship himself, nor can he adore a Time God that is the creation of his own mind. As soon as he recognises its fictitious character such an idea loses all its religious power. And for the same reason every attempt to create a new religion on purely rational and human foundations is inevitably doomed to failure.
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I I I . THE CLAIM OF CHRISTIANITY
IF we accept the necessity of an absolute and metaphysical foundation for religion and religious experience, we still have to face the other aspect of the problem—namely, how this spiritual experience is to be brought into living relation with human life and with the social order. The ecstasy of the solitary mind in the presence of absolute reality seems to offer no solution to the actual sufferings and perplexities of humanity. And yet the religious mind cannot dissociate itself from this need, for it can never rest content with a purely individual and self-regarding ideal of deliverance. The more religious a man is, the more is he sensitive to the common need of humanity. All the founders of the world religions—even those, like Buddha, who were the most uncompromising in their religious absolutism—were concerned not merely with their private religious experience, but with the common need of humanity. They aspired to be the saviours and path-finders—ford-makers, as the Indians termed them—who should rescue their people 58