God and Man
By E. E. KELLETT
PROFESSOR DENIS SAURAT, who is already known by his essay on the religion of Victor Hugo, now makes a survey of religion in general. For it seems desirable to note at the outset that this book, despite its title, is less a history of religions " in the plural than a study of religion in the singular and abstract. It is true, of course, that the author, to aid his search, discusses, and discusses very ably, a large number of individual cults and creeds, both dead and living, but he undertakes this task not, primarily, as a matter of historical interest. He aims rather at discovering the common deno- minator of all religions—that one impulse which drives man- kind to explore the spiritual world. To him, Religion is a branch of Philosophy ; and, when he learns that two or more creeds have the same philosophical groundwork, he pursues their ramifications no further. Thus, in his view, Catholicism and Protestantism start from the same metaphysical premisses ; and hence, strongly as their differences attract the ordinary historian, he passes them by as beside his purpose. The reader will fmd in these pages no account at all of such sects as the Mennonites or the Jansenists ; and only a cursory mention of such very important denominations as the Baptists, the Independents, or the Methodists. This is not to say that Professor Saurat is indifferent to these movements : but, for his present purpose, they concern him little. To him, as a philosopher, Heracleitus, Spinoza, Descartes and Kant are religious teachers, more germane to his inquiry than George Fox, Wesley or General Booth.
He is too wise to expect any general measure of agreement with his conclusions : and, indeed, disagreement on religious questions is a sign of life. When men cease to differ on religion, religion will be dead. There is, as yet, no consensus even as to its definition. Professor Saurat does not attempt formally to define it, preferring to describe it roughly as the expression of two great human desires, the desire of God and the desire of immortality. These two desires he thinks likely to be permanent elements in human nature : men will never rest content either in a blank atheism or in the belief that death ends all. But their ideas both as to God and as to the next world have altered, are altering, and will continue to alter. Religion, like Shelley's Cloud, changes, but cannot die ; history, employed as a guide to the future, points to a steady evolution of the idea of the divine.
Professor Saurat distinguishes three periods in this evolu- tion, each inevitably corresponding to a change in the mind of men : a primitive period, in which the gods behaved as they liked—that is, in which men had not yet learned that nature is more or less uniform ; a theological period, during which men demanded of the gods some sort of coherent demeanour—this is because men themselves were growing more moral, more merciful, and more consistent ; and thirdly, a scientific period, during which men will accept that amount of the divine which they think they can discover through experience. The reader will detect here the influence of Comte ; but the difference between Comte and Professor Saurat is none the less profound. Comte wished to get rid of God entirely, and- to substitute what he regarded as the " Positive " conception of Humanity : Professor Saurat, while fully recognizing the claims of science, wishes to religionize the scientific spirit. Every scientific discovery is to him a revelation of God, and we must modify our ideas of God in accordance with it.
These " periods," of course, overlap. The analyses of various religions which fill the body of the book prove con-
A History of Religions. By Denis Saurat. (Jonathan Cape. 12s. 6d.)
elusively, if proof were needed, that no exact delimitation is possible. We find, for example, in Egypt a very lofty code of morality emerging alongside of a highly superstitious cult. (Incidentally, Professor Saurat rejects the view of Sir G. Elliot Smith and others that practically all cults and creeds were derived from Egypt. It is part of his thesis that in similar circumstances similar ideas naturally arise.) In Greece, philosophy constantly revolted against the unethical myths and rituals of the State and commonalty, but they survived in spite of all assaults. In Israel, Isaiah and Micah might protest against " vain oblations," or proclaim the unity of God, but the people went on worshipping their local Baals on every high hill and under every green tree ; and, while the authorized creed declared that no image of God was lawful, there was not a village without its obelisk or teraph. And so elsewhere. Zoroastcr expelled idolatry with a pitch- fork, but it returned in sevenfold strength. No religion was ever more refined than that of Lao-Tse ; and none is now more concrete and anthropomorphic. Nor has Christian- ity much to boast of in this regard. There is a wide dis- tinction between the ethereal visions of St. Teresa and the half-heathen ceremonies of a Sicilian peasant ; and the keen eye can see in Christian dogma innumerable plagiarisms from Platonism, Mithraism, Manichaeism, and even Odinism.
All this Professor Saurat treats with remarkable impar- tiality, which he carries so far that he will not even censure the Church for the slaughter of the Albigenses—a deed which it is said the Pope himself repented, and which can be palliated, though not excused, only on political grounds hardly reconcilable with the precepts of Christ.
The later pages of the book, though necessarily few, are perhaps the most interesting and suggestive of all. They raise many questions to which the future alone—if even that— can provide an answer. We have, in the previous chapters, seen God evolve from a capricious, utterly non-moral, and often bloodthirsty demon of many shapes and forms into something like a merciful, just, and ethical Being, with no competitor save perhaps a dimly-conceived principle of Evil ; what will the advance of science and philosophy make of Him ? Will He be the God of Spinoza, "a substanc.:i consisting in infinite attributes, each of which expresses infinite actuality " ? if so, it would seem that the more we think of Him the less we shall know of Him. Will He be the Absolute of Hegel ? Hegel has himself told us that " pure Being is the same as Nothing " ; it is " the night in which all cows are black." Professor Saurat shows some sympathy with the astronomical conception of Sir James Jeans, that God is, at least in one aspect, a mathematician. He may be so. An intelligent atom, living on the web of a garden-spider, and discovering that the web is a logarithmic curve, may well conceive that the spider knows all about algebraic geometry and is a sort of Napier of Merchiston—and who can be sure that the atom is wrong ?
Whatever be the result, in the long run, of all these specu- lations, Professor Saurat is probably right in holding that mankind, necessarily conceiving God as a sublimation of what is best in itself, will never deprive Him of personality— its own most precious possession. And it will hardly invent a better image under which to figure Him than that of father- hood. It is permissible, also, to maintain that, on the moral side, it is unlikely ever to reach a higher ideal than that presented in the life and sayings of Jesus Christ. Beyond that it is needless to pry. In the words of Whitman, which Professor Saurat has chosen as his motto, " I say to mankind, Be not curious about God."
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