What is religion? In any philosophy of religion this is the first question that must be asked. It is disturbing to find that there is no commonly accepted answer. Those who have meditated on the subject have the most varied, and indeed opposing, views.

Thus Professor Whitehead tells us that religion is ‘what the individual does with his own solitariness’. To Professor Macmurray it seems to be concerned rather with what the individual does in his social relations: ‘The field of religion’, he says, ‘is the whole field of common experience organized in relation to the central fact of personal relationship’. Matthew Arnold, we all know, defines religion as ‘morality touched with emotion’; but Hegel holds it essential to a genuine religion that it should be revealed, and revealed by God. Kant, again, declares religion—or at least religion within the bounds of reason by itself—to be ‘the recognition of all our duties as divine commands’. To say this is to reject that very mysticism which is thought by Giovanni Gentile—and by many others—to be the essence of religion as such.

So we might go on indefinitely. For any serious view of religion it is always possible to find another, equally serious, which seems to be its precise opposite. It looks as if the internal conflicts for which religion is unhappily notorious were mirrored in our dispassionate thinking about it. Nor would these surprising contradictions diminish—they would rather increase—if we turned from neutral definitions to estimates of value. This is so obvious that it needs no illustration.

It may be said that religion is not the only subject on which philosophers contradict one another: such contradictions merely bring out the amiable weakness of this eccentric class of men. But in spite of the painful truth in this contention it remains a fact that in the eyes of philosophers, to say nothing of ordinary men, religion occupies a peculiarly ambiguous position. Wildly as philosophers may differ in their theories about art or science or morals, they are, broadly speaking agreed—no doubt with some striking exceptions—about the kind of activities characteristic of the artist, the scientist, and the good man. They would for the most part admit that Shakespeare had made some contribution to literature and Einstein to physics. Even on the more disputable topic of morals few of them would be anxious to deny that David Livingstone was a better man than Jack the Ripper. Furthermore, nearly all philosophers, perhaps all serious philosophers, would ascribe at least some value to art, to science, and to morality. It is far otherwise with religion. What some regard as religion would be condemned by others as mere superstition. There are many who regard all religion as superstition and hold that the only thing to do is to get rid of it. Art and science and morality may resemble religion in the devotion they receive from their followers; but religion can arouse an odium that is peculiarly its own.

If we begin by considering religion, perhaps superficially, as something that men do, we seem to get stuck at the very outset; for there appears to be no activity which is specifically religious. The whole of human experience or human life is taken up by other activities, and there is no space left free. It may help us in our enquiry if we look for a little at what religion is not.

In the first place, religion does not seem to be a kind of thinking or knowing. It is certainly not science; it is not history; it is not philosophy; it is not even theology. From the point of view of religion I may have knowledge of all the mysteries and yet be nothing.

In the second place, religion is not morality, and still less is it prudence. Perhaps morality in some ways comes closest to religion, and a religion indifferent to morals is valueless—if indeed it can be called religion, and not magic or superstition. Nevertheless religious men are usually the first to insist that religion, whatever else it is, is something more than ‘mere’ morality.

In the third place, religion is not emotion. If it were simply one form of emotional indulgence, it could never have played the part it has played in the history of the world. Furthermore, if we look for the highest expression of emotion, we find this in art; and the religious man will never admit that his religion is merely a form of art. In some ways art, like morality, does come close to religion, yet —perhaps because of this—the artistic and religious attitude seem at times to be almost diametrically opposed.

Some may think that to speak in these terms is to apply a distinction now outmoded—the distinction between knowing, willing, and feeling as the three main strands of human experience. That there are dangers in this use of language, as in any other, may be admitted. It is the whole man who knows and wills and feels, and he is always doing all three: we describe him as doing one or the other according to the factor that is most prominent at any given time. But to speak in this way is not to split up man's total personality, nor does the use of abstract terms such as ‘willing’, or even as ‘the will’, commit us to some absurd doctrine of separate and independent faculties. The use of this tripartite distinction is essential if we are to understand the working of the human mind. Those who abandon the distinction usually reduce willing to the level of feeling, and by this ingenuous device they are able to assume without discussion that willing—like feeling, but unlike thinking—is totally non-rational so far as it can be said to occur at all. To take such a view for granted is to beg the most fundamental of questions and may lead to endless error and confusion. The correct analysis of the terms employed in the traditional tripartite distinction may be a troublesome business—it would demand, for example, a discussion of the difference between activities and dispositions; but, in spite of this, no other division is nearly as illuminating, not even the modern division into the unholy trinity of three rather unpleasant persons—the Ego, the super-Ego, and the Id.

This last reference suggests there may be a danger of forgetting about the primitive and the unconscious—that deep sea of which all our knowing and willing and feeling is said to be merely the surface froth. Can religion perhaps be regarded as a welling up of the primitive and unconscious? Theories of this kind are certainly put forward, though it is hard to make them precise. In this, as in other matters, we are confused by a multitude of voices. Freud condemns religion as an illusion, while Jung speaks of it as ‘a source of life, meaning and beauty’ and as giving ‘a new splendour to the world and to mankind’. It is true that even Jung speaks of it as ‘a real illusion’; but he is able to give the assurance—in the accommodating spirit of modern verbalism—that the difference between a real illusion and a healing religious experience is merely a matter of words.

If we do not trouble too much about the meaning of our terms, there is clearly some truth in the view which connects religious emotion—like other emotions and indeed like the spontaneous and creative element in aesthetic expression and even in all our thinking and acting—with the subconscious. It may be desirable to explore this connexion in detail, if such exploration is feasible—although much that has been written on this subject appears not to be very illuminating, at least to a casual reader. But in any case it would be a mistake to identify religion with the merely primitive. There is a marked distinction between primitive and developed religion, and one task of philosophy is to examine the principles on which one religion is regarded as higher or better than another.

There is one other thing that religion is not. Although it may be tempting to find the specifically religious activity in some sort of mystical experience, religion is not mysticism, unless we choose to alter the meaning of one or other of these words. In common usage the experience of the mystic is a very special form of religious awareness reserved for the gifted and favoured few; and even for them it is far from being the whole of religion. There have been many religious men who would not ordinarily be described as mystics, and it is a pity to blur the meaning of a word which marks an important difference. Even if we hold that there is an element, or at least a fore-shadowing, of mysticism in all religion, it would still be a mistake to identify the two.

It looks as if religion cannot be identified with any of the main conscious—or even unconscious—activities of the human spirit. What is there left? We may not be prepared to say that religion is just nothing or that it has to find its place among the chinks and interstices of our mundane occupations. The only alternative—and we may suspect this to be the truth—is that religion is concerned, not with some special aspect or manifestation of life, but with the whole of life or with life as a whole. For religion it is always a case of all or nothing.

Thus religion certainly claims to embrace the truth. Whatever else it gives, it offers us a view of ourselves and of the world in which we live. It is this that brings it into collision with science and philosophy. Religion may be worlds away from a creed, a dogma, a theology; but it always makes certain assumptions; and unless these assumptions can be formulated and defended theoretically, there is a danger that it may sink into a welter of vague emotion and false belief. In at least some religions we are also asked to believe in the occurrence of certain historical events. Hence religion is in a peculiar position, not because it gives rise to philosophical problems—every spiritual activity does that—but because, although it is far more than thinking, it nevertheless appears to have some kind of thinking or believing, or even knowing, as part of its very essence.

We find the same kind of interconnexion when we turn to morality, for no man is religious unless he is seeking to lead a good life. He may assent to all the articles of a creed; he may enjoy the most edifying of emotions; he may be scrupulous in the performance of ritual actions; but if he is deliberately cruel, consistently treacherous, completely selfish, and entirely unrepentant, then his religion is a sham.

Some may think that this is not true at a primitive level; but where religion is primitive, the distinction between religion and morality may not yet have emerged. On the whole, the evidence appears to suggest that this distinction does emerge very early, and it would be interesting to know whether the primitive religious man is, or is not, expected to live up to the moral standards of his community, however different these may be from our own. But, whatever the answer, we can at least say that morality is a necessary element in a developed religion. A religion which does not flower into moral goodness is apt to be an emotional indulgence, if it is not merely a convention to be followed out of inertia or prudence.

As for feeling, it is clear that religious experience is emotional, and the emotion may be of great intensity. This is borne out by the fact that it is often expressed in the language of love. If we consider religious emotion without reference to its object, it is commonly described on the humbler levels as consolation. In the mystic experience it rises to the pitch of ecstasy. Yet emotionally religion has also its darker side. The most religious man must expect at times to be deprived of consolation; and at least for some unhappy spirits the approach to religion is by way of anxiety and even despair.

The emotional side of religion has to find its expression in art, and much of the greatest art has been religious. There is beauty even in the religions which are most distrustful of beauty. Some men may refuse to adorn their temples with graven images; they may even be doubtful of so pure an art as music; but there always remains the beauty of the language in which the religion itself is expressed.

Like every other spiritual activity, including science itself, religion has developed historically out of something very primitive, and it may well have roots in the strange twilight region of the subconscious and the unconscious. The emotion of religious awe before what Otto has called the ‘numinous’ may be continuous with the primitive shudder at the presence of something felt to be eerie and uncanny. It is hard to see whether this is to its credit or discredit; but it may be taken as fitting into the view that religion is for the whole man and offers some satisfaction even to his unconscious needs. It would certainly be a fact of great practical importance if it could be shown, as is maintained by Jung, that religion with its creeds and dogmas, its ritual and symbols, is able to offer healing for the neuroses which spring from the depths of the unconscious mind.

All this raises questions about the relation of soul and body; for emotions, and primitive emotions in particular, are bound up with the bodily structure we have inherited from our ancestors. Every religion has its ritual—the bodily expression of an inward attitude and at the same time the means of its evocation; and it has been said that for primitive man religion is a thing which has to be, not thought out, but danced out. Here too it seems to be concerned with the whole man, and so with the body as the instrument or partner of the soul.

Thus it looks as if religious men were somehow seeking to become whole, or healthy, and this is borne out by the use of the word ‘holy’, which is perhaps the key-word in religious language. Religion appears to aim at a whole in which our intellectual ideals, our moral aspirations, our emotional needs, and even our sense of beauty, may all alike find their satisfaction. If this is so, religion cannot be a matter of negligible interest, and we may reasonably demand of it that it should be sound or sane.

There are many reasons why the account so far given is bound to seem inadequate and incomplete. Religion may possibly aim at some sort of integrated personality—if this modern jargon may be forgiven—but surely a man can be an integrated personality without being religious, and he can also be religious without being an integrated personality.

It certainly seems as if a man might be a whole man, and might lead a balanced intellectual, moral, and emotional life, without being in any way religious. Perhaps some may think that religion is more likely to upset such a balance than to create it. Yet from the religious point of view it would have to be said, not only that without religion a balance of this kind is precarious, but that the wholeness or harmony of a non-religious life is imperfect. There would still be something lacking; and the reason why we have failed to see this, the reason why our analysis has gone astray, is that we have been regarding the religious life merely as the activity of isolated and finite individuals. If the finite individual is to become whole, he cannot do so either by himself or even in his relation to other finite beings: he must somehow in some sense become at one with the Whole—the ultimate whole beyond which there is nothing else. Such seems to be the minimum claim of developed religion. And perhaps we should add that—at least in the West—the Whole is taken to be no mere object of our contemplation, but something like a subject in its own right. To express this in the language of Martin Buber—there is always in religion some relation of self to the Other, to what is sometimes spoken of as ‘the Absolute Thou.’

Our account was not merely theoretically inadequate: it was also morally misleading, being altogether too self-centred and egoistic. Every ideal can be degraded by man in practice, and it is only too true that for many men religion becomes one form of selfishness, a prudent effort to avoid eternal punishment or at best a vivid concern with personal salvation. All this is as false to religion as it is to morality. What the religious man seeks is not primarily to receive favours or consolations or even to win salvation for himself—the very word ‘salvation’ at least lends itself to misunderstanding. Religion does not exist in the isolated individual soul, but in man's relation to something that is other and greater than himself.

If reflexion on religious experience leads men to talk about the Whole which is also the Other, this suggests a close connexion between religion and metaphysics. Metaphysics too, as the supposed science of ultimate reality, is concerned with the Whole, and it employs very similar language—even to the extent of using initial capital letters. This practice is often derided to-day, and it would be out of place in philosophy if its only aim were to be aw-einspiring. Yet it may serve to indicate that we are concerned, not with limited wholes (of which the number is infinite), but with the one ultimate whole of which all limited wholes are only parts. Hence ‘the Whole’ becomes almost akin to a proper name—the name of something that is individual—and so is written with a capital. Since no finite individual can be the Whole, the Whole is also known as ‘the Other’, and this expression too is treated as akin to a proper name.

It must not be thought that relationship to the Other is confined to religion.

Even in thinking there is always a relation to the Other—a relation, not only to other selves with whom we share our thoughts and to a world not made by us which we seek to know, but ultimately to a whole system of reality, of which other selves and the world as we know it are only parts. In knowing bits of reality we seek to know them together in their relation to one another and so as parts of a wider whole—ultimately as parts of the one all-comprehensive whole. Such knowledge is the ideal, conscious or unconscious, of all our thinking, even although it is beyond our intellectual grasp.

But perhaps it is in action that we are most aware of our relation to the Other. In all action there is a relation to other selves who co-operate with or resist our will and to a world of things which is at once an instrument and an obstacle; but when we rise to the level of morality, we find, not only that we are seeking to realize a systematic whole of human co-operation, but that this ideal cannot be attained without something like the co-operation of the whole universe of which we form a part. It is this that brings morality so close to religion.

With art the case is rather different, for every work of art appears almost to be a little universe in itself.

So far the Other has been spoken of as if it were something out there for us to know, to work with or against, and so on. But many men, and these by no means necessarily religious, have at times a feeling that in their thinking and acting, especially when these are at their best, it is not they who are thinking and acting, but something other that is thinking and acting through them; and the artist may have a similar experience. It may almost seem as if what I call our activity is given to us from without and so far is passive—even although we have at least to hold it together in time if it is to be our experience. Some may connect this experience with the unconscious, or even with some sort of collective unconsciousness, but it is specially prominent in religion. Whatever importance we attach, or refuse to attach, to feelings of this kind, they at least suggest the possibility that the Other may not merely be the object of our thought or the aid to our strivings, but may be active in us and so perhaps not wholly other than ourselves. If this were so, the Other would be, not merely the Whole on which we depend, but also the Whole of which we are somehow a part.

Talk of this kind is highly abstract and even metaphysical, but it is one of the ways in which philosophers try to formulate the Idea of God.

As hitherto described, the character of the Other has been left extremely vague—too vague to satisfy the religious consciousness, yet not vague enough to be free from contradictions. It is hard to see how the Other can also be the Whole, yet this is how it appears to be experienced, or at least felt, by religious men. To them God is certainly the Other, but He is also conceived as somehow ‘all in all’.

Views of this kind are apt to arouse the ire of analytic thinkers who regard clarity as the supreme intellectual virtue. They forbid us to talk about the Whole, and are naturally pleased to find that when we ignore their prohibition, we begin to talk nonsense—not merely by making assertions which cannot be verified, but by using concepts which are mutually contradictory.

No easy answer can be given to this criticism. Nevertheless our concern with limited parts of the world inevitably raises questions as to the Whole, unless we deliberately restrain our thoughts by an arbitrary act of will. We may, reasonably enough, regard these questions as unanswerable and so may prefer not to attempt an answer; but we go too far if we ignore their existence or elevate our personal preferences into categorical prohibitions. It may be possible for us at least to understand how these questions must arise, and even to understand how we must fall into contradictions when we seek to apply to the Whole, by some kind of analogy, words whose ordinary use is to describe only the parts. But in any case our present task is to make clear what seem to be the claims of the religious consciousness. There is no attempt here to justify these claims.

The question whether the religious man feels a relation to something which is the Whole or the Other, or is somehow both, is akin to the theological question of God's immanence or transcendence. Some doctrines of Buddhism, if an Irishism may be used, make God so immanent that He ceases to be God, and we may become doubtful whether we have here one form of religion or merely a special way of morality. It is also possible to consider God as so transcendent that He becomes inconceivable and consequently indistinguishable from nothing. If we are to believe in God at all, we must think of Him as immanent in the self and in the world at least to the extent of being conceivable, however imperfectly, by man; and we must also think of Him as transcendent in the sense of not being wholly conceivable by finite beings.

Of greater interest to the religious man is the question whether God is to be conceived as personal or impersonal.

Mr. Aldous Huxley tells us that mystics who go far enough in recollection and meditation always end ‘by losing their intuitions of a personal God and having direct experience of an ultimate reality that is impersonal’. This conclusion appears to have his moral approval since he also informs us that ‘whenever God is thought of, in Aristotle's phrase, as the commander-in-chief rather than as the order of the army… persecution always tends to arise’. Such generalizations seem too sweeping; but the fact has to be faced that there are religions—especially in the East—which are content with a God (if this term may be applied) who is characterized only by metaphysical attributes, such as first cause or ultimate reality, and not at all by attributes derived from human personality, such as wisdom and goodness. In the Western world God is more commonly conceived, not merely as ultimate reality, but also as a subject of thought and action and as in this respect akin to a human person. This is what is meant by speaking of Him as ‘the Absolute Thou’. Those who use this language conceive of God as somehow personal or more than personal and of man's relation to Him as somehow akin to a possible relation between men. Here is the great cleavage within religion itself, and many of those who take the Western view would regard any other as more of a philosophy than a religion. Even so, it has to be recognized that to speak of God in terms of personality is at the best to make use of a human analogy, which must be inadequate to the divine nature. It is possible that these sharp theological distinctions are the product of reflexion rather than of religious experience itself, but I propose to use in the main our Western terminology, which has at least the advantage of being familiar. Its difficulties will no doubt force themselves upon us later.

In spite of all these uncertainties it may perhaps be as well to say boldly that for the religious consciousness God must be and must be perfect.

To say that God must be is to say that the religious consciousness is not satisfied by the mere conception of an ideal. Religious men will not be content with an imaginary God any more than business men will be content with imaginary dollars. If the view is accepted that religious experience is not self-centred, but is, as it were, focussed upon the Other, then it is not enough for it to have what has been called an imaginary focus—a focus imaginarius. If a religious man is convinced by his critics that he is worshipping an ideal which is not also real, he will seem to himself to be descending from religion to morality.

The statement that from the religious point of view God must be perfect is almost equally obvious. It is true that in primitive religions the gods may be merely objects of fear and gratitude and so may be regarded as little more than beings who certainly possess power and may possibly exercise benevolence. But as religion develops, the divine nature is less crudely conceived. Even in the narrowly self-centred view with which we began it was assumed that religion must be able to satisfy our intellectual ideals, our moral aspirations, our emotional needs, and our sense of beauty. If so, God must be characterized in the light of such satisfaction; and we find this confirmed in the language which speaks of Him as the all-wise and all-knowing, the all-powerful and all-loving, the all-glorious, and the all-holy. Once we pass to the more genuinely religious view which is not self-centred, it seems evident that only a God so conceived can be an object of worship.

It may be thought that the concept of perfection is altogether vague and incapable of supporting analysis. This may be so, but we have to remember that analysis is not the dominant interest of religion. I have here interpreted perfection in the traditional language of Western religions, but the statement that God must be perfect need not be incompatible with a considerable variety of beliefs. It might be accepted by a man who used the word ‘perfection’ in a purely metaphysical sense for the self-sufficient or the complete. It might even be accepted by a man who regarded perfection as a state bordering upon nothingness. We may think this a queer idea of perfection, but it is not more queer than the idea that blessedness is a complete absence of feeling.

If the word ‘God’ may be used for the Other who appears to the religious consciousness to be somehow also the Whole, to be utterly remote and yet revealed in all creation, to be personal or more than personal, but above all to be and to be perfect, is it possible to describe further the relation between the religious man and his God?

Here again we have to start from religious experience, an experience in which feeling is a prominent factor. The emotional side of religion runs the whole gamut from despair to ecstasy, but on the humbler levels it may be most fittingly described as consolation. It could also be described as peace—an inner peace even in the midst of strife—but these words make religious experience seem too self-contained unless it is added that the peace and consolation in question seem to be given and received; they are not acquired by our own efforts. In order to make it clear that religious experience seems to be more than a state of the individual, it may be said—with Schleiermacher—that the predominant religious feeling is one of dependence. Whatever he may have meant by this, I take it to be an immediate feeling of dependence on the Other—not a self-contained feeling of helplessness from which we make a dubious inference to something else as its cause. Otto prefers to speak of a ‘creature-feeling’; but this—apart from its revolting character as a word—again suggests an intellectual theory of the relation between the creature and the creator, although what he has in mind is something very different. Perhaps the feeling in question could be described better as a feeling of trust or even of self-surrender.

The religious feeling of dependence may be one of utter dependence, involving awe as well as trust; but we should surely hesitate to connect it too closely with fear and horror and shuddering. However strong such feelings may be in primitive religion, and even in the initial, or sometimes the recurrent, experiences of the sadder saints, they seem most appropriately directed to the uncanny which is still undifferentiated and may be devilish rather than divine.

If the religious feeling of dependence is taken to be one of awe as well as of trust, the religious attitude may be described most simply as worship.

So far it is the feeling of dependence that has been emphasized; but if religion is for the whole man, there must also be both an intellectual recognition of this dependence and a voluntary acceptance of it as a basis for action.

Of these two the voluntary attitude is the easier to characterize. It may be described as one of service or, better, of dedication. The religious man seeks to put his whole life at the service of God and in doing God's will to serve others. His aim is not his own personal spiritual progress but the coming of the Kingdom of God; and all the duties incumbent upon him in that enterprise he sees as divine commands.

The factor of intellectual recognition is much harder to describe, for it is here that religion passes insensibly into theology, and so the subtle begins to prevail over the simple. The religious man recognizes that he can do nothing of himself and that everything comes to him by divine grace. This is the ground of his humility and gratitude; but it must also be remembered that only in divine service does he feel himself to be free. Furthermore, in recognizing his own dependence he recognizes also the dependence of all creation. In particular, he conceives goodness as effective in the world only through God's will; and this conception may be described as at least one aspect, the intellectual aspect, of what men call ‘faith’. There is implicit in it a theory of God's nature and of His relation both to the world and to human beings. Yet the theory is taken for granted rather than explicitly conceived: it is felt, so to speak, as an awareness of reality rather than as the acceptance of propositions. If we wish to avoid the emphasis on theory which is too often associated with the word ‘faith’, we may prefer to go back to a word already used in connexion with the feeling of dependence—the word ‘trust’. The religious man trusts in God that in spite of appearances He will do all things well and will not allow any effort towards goodness to be made in vain. It is this that gives the saint an assurance of strength and peace.

Religion is for simple people, and so must itself be simple. A theory which ignores this simplicity must be mistaken. Perhaps it may be hoped that we have not gone too far wrong if we have described religion as worship, dedication, and trust; for all of these are possible even for the simplest of men.

It may be tempting to connect worship with feeling, dedication with willing, and trust, as I have described it, with thinking or belief; but these connexions were only provisional devices for trying to find what we sought. Religious experience is always an experience of the whole man as a whole in his relation to the Other or the Whole. Like everybody else, the religious man will at different times be specially concerned with acting or thinking or feeling. Indeed this must be so if, ideally at least, his whole life is religious through and through; but he is not more religious in virtue of the predominance of one factor rather than another. The religious life is not lived in compartments. Alike in worship, in dedication, and in trust the whole man is feeling and willing and even in some ways thinking or knowing, if we use these words in their most general sense; and his whole life—not merely different phases of it—is trust and dedication and worship. Each of these is inseparable from the other two, and indeed they are not three things, but only one. This one thing which is the essence of the religious life may be described most simply and appropriately by the single word ‘love’, provided love is understood as worship and dedication and trust—not as sickly sentiment without intellectual content or practical results. And, like all love, it may seem to come as a favour or a gift—not by our own efforts, but by divine grace.

To say this is merely to formulate what all religious men are supposed to know. I began by speaking about religion as concerned with the wholeness of the individual in his relation to the Whole or the Other. These cold and vague phrases might be filled up in various ways, even in negative ways that regard the wholeness of the individual as something to be found only through absorption in the Whole, and so through self-annihilation. I have filled up these phrases positively in accordance with our Western tradition. On this view what the religious man seeks is that grace may be given to him to lead, in co-operation with his fellows, a life of worship and dedication and trust, not for the sake of his own wholeness, but as his contribution to an all-comprehensive whole beyond himself, or even as a manifestation of his love for God and God's love for him. This may remain a true description even if he is the victim—the happy or pathetic victim—of an illusion. In spite of widespread and growing indifference to religion, I am inclined to think that at least it is the description of a human aspiration and a human need.