Why then not call these reactions our
religion, no matter what specific character they may have?
Non-religious as some of these reactions may be, in one sense of
the word "religious," they yet belong to THE GENERAL SPHERE OF
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE, and so should generically be classed as
religious reactions. "He believes in No-God, and he worships
him," said a colleague of mine of a student who was manifesting a
fine atheistic ardor; and the more fervent opponents of Christian
doctrine have often enough shown a temper which, psychologically
considered, is indistinguishable from religious zeal.
But so very broad a use of the word "religion" would be
inconvenient, however defensible it might remain on logical
grounds. There are trifling, sneering attitudes even toward the
whole of life; and in some men these attitudes are final and
systematic. It would strain the ordinary use of language too
much to call such attitudes religious, even though, from the
point of view of an unbiased critical philosophy, they might
conceivably be perfectly reasonable ways of looking upon life.
Voltaire, for example, writes thus to a friend, at the age of
seventy-three: "As for myself," he says, "weak as I am, I carry
on the war to the last moment, I get a hundred pike-thrusts, I
return two hundred, and I laugh.
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