For one thing, gods are conceived to be first things in the way
of being and power. They overarch and envelop, and from them
there is no escape. What relates to them is the first and last
word in the way of truth. Whatever then were most primal and
enveloping and deeply true might at this rate be treated as
godlike, and a man's religion might thus be identified with his
attitude, whatever it might be, toward what he felt to be the
primal truth.
Such a definition as this would in a way be defensible. Religion,
whatever it is, is a man's total reaction upon life, so why not
say that any total reaction upon life is a religion? Total
reactions are different from casual reactions, and total
attitudes are different from usual or professional attitudes. To
get at them you must go behind the foreground of existence and
reach down to that curious sense of the whole residual cosmos as
an everlasting presence, intimate or alien, terrible or amusing,
lovable or odious, which in some degree everyone possesses. This
sense of the world's presence, appealing as it does to our
peculiar individual temperament, makes us either strenuous or
careless, devout or blasphemous, gloomy or exultant, about life
at large; and our reaction, involuntary and inarticulate and
often half unconscious as it is, is the completest of all our
answers to the question, "What is the character of this universe
in which we dwell?" It expresses our individual sense of it in
the most definite way.
Pages:
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83