INTERPRETATIONS OF POETRY AND RELIGION.* THIS collection of essays is
written by a Catholic sceptic of Spanish origin, now a Professor at Harvard. A volume of poems by the same author was very favourably reviewed some months ago in this journal. The central idea of all the papers, which are on very various subjects, is that " religion and poetry are identical in essence, and differ merely in the way in which they are attached to practical affairs." Dog- matic Christianity is to Mr. Santayana a myth, but a myth whose importance cannot be exaggerated, containing, as it does, the highest moral and spiritual truth. " Religious doc- trines would do well," he thinks, " to withdraw their preten- sions to be matters of fact." Every movement in Christendom towards rational religion he considers a regrettable heresy, the Catholic Church still offering to the world the whole truth under cover of cunningly devised fables. Protestantism was a mistake. "Mythology cannot become science by being reduced in bulk, but it may cease as a mythology to be worth having." The decay of religious observance Mr. Santayana deplores. Without a religion the "facts of nature and history become trivial incidents, gossip of the Fates, cacklings of their inexhaustible garrulity." All the dogmas of the Catholic Church show forth as in an allegory the vast difference between right and wrong, whose infinity, according to Mr. Santayana, cannot be exaggerated. Religion is the "phantom guide" leading society to perfection,—perfection in this world, be it understood, for the essayist hopes for no individual future life, and believes in no personal God. This new-fashioned preacher of the types twists an opposite meaning into every plain statement of Catholic conviction. It is, he tells us, the "momentousness and finality" of man's experience here which made him think of himself as hanging between eternal bliss and perdition. Thus " Christian fictions," while they "beguile the intellect, enlighten the imagination," because, says the essayist, " what is false in the science of facts may be true in the science of values." In " The Dissolution of Paganism" and " The Poetry of Christian Dogma," Mr. Santayana's skill in writing shows perhaps to its greatest advantage. The thirst of the Old World, " sick of heroes and high-priests and founders of cities," for a religion which would sanctify sorrow and suffer- ing, their "refusal to look for a Messiah unless they could find him on a cross," is well described, and so are " the new loves, new duties, fresh consolations, and luminous unutter- able hopes " of early Christianity. Mr. Santayana has, as it were, built for himself a Church, founded it upon a fable, and furnished it with Catholic images. Here he prostrates himself before an Unreal Presence, breathes incense, and reads poetry. Some of the critical results of his poetry-reading he gives to the public, but true to the purpose of his book, he deals rather with the philosophy of his poets than with their poetic gifts. We have a whole chapter on Shakespeare's want of religion. For our part, we think there is more religion in Shakespeare's oaths—which Mr. Santayana so prettily calls the " fossils of piety "—than in all our author's sanctimonious negations. The only essay in the volume which shows the least trace of a sense of humour is the one on " The Poetry of Barbarism," in which the writer, deals with Browning and
Interpretations of Poetry and Religion. By George Santayana. London: Attain and Charles Click. Leal
Walt Whitman. So far as the latter is concerned, we cannot help suspecting that he is laughing at his reader. We do not believe that, considering the general result of his principles, he sincerely admires the American poet, though he declares him to have " a profound inspiration." He goes on to say that his work is " the most sincere possible confession of the lowest-- I-mean the most primitive—perceptions." With him, he says, "the. surface is absolutely all." When the essayist speaks of the poet's " abundance of detail without organisation, wealth of perception without intelligence, and imagination without taste," he may be sincere; but who, keeping in mind Whit- man's long, rhythmless strings of names, can think the following sentence other than satirical: " Walt Whitman has gone back to the innocent style of Adam when the animals filed before him and he called them all by their names " ? As to Whitman's moral significance, the outcome of his teaching is, Mr. Santayana says, " that men are to be vigorous, comfort- able, sentimental, and irresponsible." The poet has " a benevo- lent tolerance of moral weakness," and the reader is advised to take him up. when he is "weary of conscience and ambition." There are noble things nobly said by Whitman, but never was he praised more ineptly than by _Mr. Santayana. Browning also is to be regarded as .a barbarian,—that is, as one "who regards his passions as their own excuse for being, who merely feels and acts, valuing in his life its force and its filling, but being careless of its purpose and its form." The poet's world, he says, "is a world of history, with civilisation for its setting and with the conventional passions for its motive forces." Browning's philosophy is repellent to his critic, and he thus amusingly sums it up :—" The gist of the matter is that we are to live indefinitely, that all our faults can be turned to good, all our unfinished business settled, and therefore there is time for anything we like in this world and for all we need in the next. It is in spirit the direct opposite of the philosophic ins 'rim of regarding the end, of taking care to leave a finished life and a perfect character behind us." The essayist adds contemptuously :—" To the irrational man, to the boy, it is no unpleasant idea to have an infinite number of days to live through, an infinite number of dinners to eat, an infinity of fresh fights and new love affairs, and no end of last rides together."
We think this book will be read with pleasure, chiefly because it is so well written. The criticism it contains is interesting, especially having an eye to its source, but as a contribution to religious or philosophical thought it seems to us to be worth- less. To whom could it be of value ? We all know that there is a great deal of poetry in Christianity, but that is not the part of the faith in which this generation is most interested. Religious-minded doubters, and they are the only people who read such a book as this for any reason but to pass the time, will find little nutriment in it. They will agree that the difference between right and wrong is infinite, but they will submit that it is neither more infinite nor more important than the difference between consciousness and unconscious- ness. What they want to know is,—will they be conscious or unconscious a few years or a few decades hence ? The writer who discusses the subject of religion, and regards this question as non-essential, shows a contempt for values as much as for realities. It is useless to offer a man an epic poem when he is begging for his life. One permanent quarrel we have with all the writers of Mr. Santayana's school, and that is that they will not make new bottles into which to put their new wine. They have of course a perfect right to their own ideas in the matter of religion, but we do dispute their right to clothe their negations in the language of faith. Why are they not able to formulate their own doubts without parodying Christian creeds Let them find a name of their own for their "phantom guide" who is to lead them into their graves and their grandchildren to perfection, but let them not confound their will-o'-the-wisp with "the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world."
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