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relation to God, would prevent "totalitarianism" I am not intelligent
enough to know. But it seems to me only cOrnInon sense to suppose
that personal free-will and individual responsibility for one's con–
duct must always be powerful deterrents to statism anywhere, at all
times. Abstract religion as a "deterrent" would deter nothing but
religion.
I come to the first part of this question last. You use the term
positive religion. I would rather begin with a lower category:
positive culture. In what sense is a positive culture, that is, a culture
which affirms certain standards without too much probing; dependent
upon an institutional religion? There is no time here to define either
culture or religion. We know that at a certain stage of social develop–
ment culture and religion are identical: everything that men do is
"religious," and their way of doing: it is "culture." But when this
identity breaks up, we do not lose all culture; our culture simply
ceases to be positive and becomes habitual and heterogeneous.
It
depends upon what kind of culture you want.
4.
If
there is a revival of religion, i.e., of Christianity, it is
more noticeable in the literary world perhaps because writers have to
write; bankers do not. The revival of interest in myth seems to me
to have very little to do with a religious revival; it is a strategic
retreat of naturalism to a plane where the idea of transcendence can
be entertained as a pleasant rhetorical diversion. The literary myth
has its naturalistic origins: Cassirer, the father of the school, was a
naturalist whose "supernaturalism" was a little like the shell game at
the county fair: it was a trick of the eye.
5. The religious consciousness seems to me not very conscious
if it lacks something to be conscious of; i.e., a definite religion. The
religious consciousness has committed most of the crimes of our time;
there is a fake religion around every corner. National Socialism and
Sovietism rest upon a religious consciousness. Here we get natural
man performing supernaturally-man as God. Just any belief in the
supernatural would not necessarily sustain desirable values. I assume
that the way this can be done is the Christian way.
If
there is an–
other way, and if it is now coming on, most "cultivated" men of our
time will probably look at it, like Pater's Marius, with a refined
detachment; or with dislike.
