RELIGION AND THE INTELLECTUALS
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by direct perception or intuition or affect without being manipulated
by the "categories of understanding." The truth is not what is
felt
but what works and is consistent with itself. The result is a split in
consciousness, between the conative and the cognitive, the subjective
and the objective. In the end we fall prey to a kind of collective
schizophrenia.
This schizophrenia is part of the discomfort of our civilization.
It is painful to be unable to assent to the data of immediate aware–
ness and to be compelled to act only upon that which is derived from
the operations upon experience of "objective," detached reason. How
intense by comparison is the comfort of believing what we feel. And
how richer seeming. Romanticism and all the revivals of religion
and religiosity since the eighteenth century are attempts to restore the
validity of the data of feeling. I am not saying anything new here. But
I do think it necessary at this moment to repeat with added emphasis
that latterday revivals of religion are still part of that which, under
the name of Romanticism, is spurned by so many of the revivers
themselves. And that, essentially, Romanticism is a reaction against
the failure of scientific description to confirm what is
"anschaulich"
in
ourselves and the world around us.
It is obvious why poets are restive
in
the presence of the scientific
or naturalist attitude. Our total, our felt sense of reality-which is
what art speaks for and to-has never yet been contained within
the rules of logic and verification. It is therefore of the essence of
art that it should deal with ' inconsistencies, maintaining them un–
resolved (or in suspension, as it were). But it was only with the
real rise of science that the poet became susceptible to the reproach
of intellectual irresponsibility on that account. By now the gap be–
tween poetic practice and actual knowledge has grown too great and
the reconciling formulas outworn. There are, and have been, poets
-Yeats was one-who believe that art as such is its own warrant,
and therefore the warrant of everything necessary to it. But there are
other poets-and the circumstances of our day seem to increase
their number-who cannot feel safe in the practice of their art
unless its lack of logical consistency receive the sanction of some all–
embracing, extra-aesthetic authority, such an authority as would
hold good for more than simply art. This authority is to be found
most conveniently in religions. Among religions Christianity, with its
