RELIGION AND THE INTELLECTUALS
327
and a deep awakening to the values of contemplation are on the
way, and will one day flower forth.
HENRY BAMFORD PARKES
The primary reason for the growth of interest in religion
is probably the feeling that a non-religious view of life does not
satisfy certain legitimate psychological needs or provide adequate
support for values and ideals. Few intellectuals appear to display
any strong belief in the objective reality of any particular system
of dogmas (even Eliot once spoke of awaiting the great genius who
would succeed in believing something ) ; their most frequent argument
(presented on both personal and social grounds) is that we must
act
as if
such dogmas were true. This argument, however, may
have more validity than is often ascribed to it.
The essence of religion, I would suggest, is the feeling that
the individual is a part of some larger whole which gives meaning
to his existence and overcomes his isolation and from which values
are derived. Religious experience consists primarily in a sense of
self-surrender and self-transcendence. Modern naturalism (expressed
in Freud's
Future of an Illusion,
for example) has been inclined to
interpret this feeling as essentially infantile and devoid of objective
meaning. It seems to me, on the contrary, that a desire for some
kind of transcendence is an inherent element in human nature, that
all
idealism depends upon it, and that if it did not exist, civilization
would never have begun. And obviously this desire requires some kind
of belief; one cannot merge oneself in a larger whole unless one
believes that this whole is, in some form, objectively real.
In recent generations this emotional need has mostly found
expression in non-religious activities. Men have given meaning to
their lives through membership in a political organism (the nation)
or a political movement, or through the sense of participation in
the evolutionary struggle of the human race. According to a natural–
istic philosophy these may be valid modes of emotional fulfilment,
while the demand for any cosmic, transcendent or superhuman mean–
ing appears as due to political defeatism and failure of nerve.
This
is,
of course, the crucial question. My own conviction is that the need
for self-transcendence can never genuinely be satisfied by wholly
