RELIGION AND THE INTELLECTUALS
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restlessness, and scepticism of the "big city" that has opened up
wider areas of consciousness against the provincial obstinacy and
depressed faith of "the village." True enough, what we know and
the values we live by come from many sources, from Hellenism, from
the humanist tradition, from science, from Judaism, and from
Christianity as well. But while we have been shaped, in different
ways, by all these forces, we are also called upon to revaluate and
reshape ourselves and the world we live in, and I am sure we cannot
do so by retreat into faith and mystery.
A long time ago when I knew I was no longer a boy and
wondered whether I would ever be a man, I found myself literally
flooded by what I can best describe as religious feelings rather than
religious beliefs, which I could not understand and which I was
content not to understand. Though I had little interest in theology,
I felt the existence of God as I felt my own existence, but what was
more important I was both elated and pained by the feeling that I
was intimately connected with some larger order: elated because I
was not completely adrift, pained because my sins and failures were
subjected to eternal scrutiny. Above all, I felt both responsible and
resigned, which, I take it, is the way man finds his potentialities
and limitations through religion. The youthful elements of the
experience I have recalled are obvious; still I find myself cherishing it,
perhaps for no better reason than that I share a common weakness
for cherishing everything that happens to me, though I might con–
fess I sometimes think it is one of the few bonds I had at the time
with my fervently religious father. But what I would like to emphasize
is that I was not disposed in any way to connect my religious ex–
perience in the years that followed with my explorations of literature,
science, politics, or even with all my observations of the world about
me. I am also immodestly reluctant to attribute any moral achieve–
ments of mine to a divine order, nor can I honestly make some
principle of evil the scapegoat for my own moral failings.
