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PARTISAN REVIEW
For what these God-seeking intellectuals are looking for is not
so much a theology but a theodicy, not merely, or even primarily,
truth but justification and comfort.
Here
is
located the perennial and most powerful source of re–
ligious belief, not only for these intellectuals but for most men, espec–
ially in times of social crisis but also in periods of personal crisis.
Naturalism as a philosophy
is
sufficient to gratify all the legitimate
needs of the understanding without yielding to the conceit that
human intelligence is omnipotent and that all problems will be solved.
But in recognizing the reality of the evil and the horrible in human
experience, in accepting the finitude not only of man but of every
other creature and power, in refusing to swallow the crude or subtle
efforts to picture the cosmic order as a moral order, it cannot provide
the consolation which the tender-minded must have, if they are to
find their existence meaningful and tolerable.
It
is not that the be–
liever lacks the tough-mindedness to recognize the existence of evil,
but that, if he is not to choke to death on it like Ivan Karamazov,
he must blunt its sharp edge and learn to believe on no rational
grounds that it fulfils a "higher" purpose he does not see.
An
intelligent naturalism, no matter how Promethean, will recog–
nize that
in
addition to the suffering that flows from social inequalities
and injustice, there are major experiences of frustration, grief, and loss
from which sensitive human beings cannot escape. In the best of so–
cieties death may be conquered, but not tragedy. It
is
not the poor we
will always have with us, but the "Underground Man." Scientific
knowledge increases human power at the same time as it brings home
to us the fundamental precariousness of human existence. Bertrand
Russell to the contrary, the growth of science does not make for cosmic
impiety or a decline in intellectual humility. Why should the world
appear less wonderful or awesome if some day we step from one
planet to another, synthesize protoplasm, or lift the darkness from
the minds of the insane?
A seasoned naturalism is not Utopian. It realizes that knowledge
and wisdom do not guarantee happiness, that they can do little or
nothing to lessen the pangs of the mediocre, of the ugly, of those
bereft of love or friendship. It cannot promise total security, even when
it understands the needs of those who seek it.
Max Weber somewhere suggests that the great religions are in-
