324
PARTISAN REVIEW
tk,us road to freedom, but a deceptive way to
_ rvient
idol~try?
And religion is not a dead "force
of
the ,.."
ed in the cemetery of social science text-books?
With
the
fall of these two illusions, we have had two "obstacles"
J"Cfi'l9Ved.
But how could religion, as the questionnaire suggests,
em to
supply a remedy-say,
a heavenly substitute-for "the
worldwide failure of a real radical movement in politics" or for
"a
renunciation of hopes for any fundamental social improvement"?
I would rather say that people are becoming aware of the fact that
no real radical movement in politics and no fundamental social
improvement are to be brought about without the spiritual energies
and the basic humanist tenets inseparable from the Judeo-Christian
religious tradition, and that democracy can only live on Christianity.
And this new awareness does not proceed from any passive register–
ing of historical events, or failures,-on the contrary, it has to over–
come the obstacle created by the factual attitude of various reaction–
ary social strata which appeal to religion; this new awareness is a
positive and active ferment in history.
Credibility.-You
are perfectly right, in my opinion, in wonder–
ing what the deuce could have happened to make religion more
credible than it formerly was to the modern mind. Religion is just
as credible (or consonant with reason) and as incredible (or scandal–
izing reason) as it has ever been.
When it comes to religious matters, a change in
convictions
simply caused by a change in historical conjunctures would be of
small value, and grounded on sand. For intellectuals and non-intel–
lectuals who adhere anew to religious convictions the question has es–
sentially been a question of personal relationship between their own
selves and the divine Self- a question which transcends history, and
which summons them indeed to take their stand against what is
spurious and easy-going
in
any historical current.
Here again an obstacle is being removed: namely the artificial
link which in the last century tied together science and materialism.
For all that, the scientific attitude of mind is neither forsaken nor
disregarded. Science is freeing itself of prejudices inherited from
metaphysical systematizations of science. It is for the advantage of
science itself, as well as of philosophy, that the limits of the scientific
(empirico-mathematical) explanation of phenomena are being recog-
