IT cannot be denied that the doctrine which integrates religion with philosophy by considering religion as a sort of philosophia inferior proves vaguely unsatisfactory at times even to those who hold in general to an immanentist concept of reality. And this uneasiness, if we carefully observe, arises almost always from a failure to find in philosophical thought any trace of the religious life as worship, as awe, as hope, as “fear of God.” This provokes the rejoinder that religion belongs to the sphere of the practical and not to the sphere of thought, at least not purely to the sphere of thought—an answer that leaves the problem just where it was.

But the doubt in question derives from the scant attention that is commonly paid, and from the hasty examination that is usually devoted, to the particular manner in which religion is reduced to philosophy—to that specific “lower philosophy” which the mythological method, or “mythologism,” constitutes.

Now, we must bear in mind, on the one hand, that religion is mythology; and that mythology is a conception of reality where universals are personified, and pure ideas are replaced by a body of imagery, to explain the origins, laws, and purposes of the universe. And on the other hand, we must bear in mind the practical problem of the Supreme Good, of Happiness, of Beatitude. Putting these two propositions together, we are in a position to see how and why the mythological conception of things must carry with it a feeling different from the mood induced by philosophy.

It is well known that, as a combined result of the practical concerns of people and the use of fanciful universals or empirical generalisations, idols or fetiches come into being, and these in turn are taken as sources of good or evil; whence things (or people, if you wish—it makes no difference here) are good and evil, useful or harmful, beautiful or ugly—judgments and criteria of judgment, which ethical thought, no less than aesthetic science, must criticise and demolish, showing that only actions are real, that all the rest is metaphor. Rut these idols that are set up, these metaphors that are corporealised, nevertheless play their part in the life of the Spirit, giving direction to our actions, establishing convenient points of agreement, guide-posts marking the broad lines of human aspiration.

Now in myth-making, considered as a manner of interpreting reality, we find a provisory assembling and systematisation of semi-fanciful and semi-conceptual images, which serve the Spirit, in its practical phase, as objects of attraction or repulsion, of love or terror, of reverence, veneration, or hope—they are subjects for judgments of value, in short. It is for this reason that religion or mythology seems to be not so much a manner of interpreting reality, not so much a “lower philosophy,” as a drama of will and action—not so much thought, as feeling and conduct.

Philosophy, on the other hand, overthrows such idols, such objects of worship. For thing-values it substitutes action-values, and therefore the values of actions taken one by one, and case by case. It seems, accordingly, to breathe a chilling draught upon a world once warmed with the breath of love; though, in point of fact, it is far from abolishing emotion and will, promoting rather a more virile manner of feeling and willing, which draws its vigour from the depths of the Spirit and not from fetiches of any kind.

But we love our idols precisely because they are idols, symbols, that is, of things we love; and in a certain way we love even the idols that stand for the opposite of those we worship for their goodness. This is because the existence of the former is suggested dialectically by the existence of the latter: the Devil is a guaranty of the potency of God, and doubts cast upon the Devil tend to undermine faith in God. So if the criticism that philosophy makes of religion is a torment to our brains, it is a stab that causes our hearts to bleed; and reason is cursed in prose and in verse (especially in verse) by numberless souls who cannot forgive the destruction of their gods, the downfall of their idols; and by wistful people in whom straight thinking and clear thinking never quite compensate for the loss of fancies that are dear to them.

They never quite compensate, because the joys occasioned in the one case are qualitatively different from the joys occasioned in the other; and no joy is ever a perfect substitute for any other joy. The emptiness left in our lives by the death of some one we love may be filled by more energetic application to study or to work or to domestic cares, or even by new affections; but it is not filled as it used to be, and all these new diversions have an undertone of sadness. In the same way, no man, however completely he may have freed himself from religious beliefs he once held dear, can wholly purge his soul of tenderness for his fallen idols.

Illuminating indeed is the analogy commonly established in this connection between religion and love. They are actually identical in that both idealise images and create idols. They are different in that the idols of love, which are sources of joy, or pleasure, or pain, are never endowed with a metaphysical or mythological significance (save as a tour de force by a few poets who put their Beatrices to work as symbols). The so-called “religion of love,” which was one of the strangest products of the era of Romanticism, was not given that name from any intent to found a bona fide religion. Rather it seemed to offer a substitute—as it certainly afforded abundant self-expression—to men and women hopelessly bewildered by the loss of all religion (along with the ethical and practical ideals that go with religion), and unable to rise to a new vision of life or to accept the discipline of a more rigorous code of ethics. The “religion of love” was a counterfeit religion. It rapidly degenerated into morbid sentimentality, exasperated sensualism, and desperate debauchery.

However, the hedonistic (including the ethical) idols of myth-making and religion are all more or less crude interpretations of the universe; and the number and importance of the pure concepts they embrace under mythological forms are the measure of progress in religions and of the progressive approximation of religion to philosophy. But the union can never be perfectly consummated by any gradual process of blending. For that, a spiritual revolution is necessary; a revolution that cleanses the will of every selfish, eudaemonistic and materialistic residuum, and strips religious thoughts and images of all mythological and transcendental attributes. In this process, religion has to lose the charm of the exterior garb that once adorned it. It has to become thought. Not cold thought, as is often supposed, but clear thought, thought limpid and serene and the source of an unclouded joy.