IN the first chapter there are many changes, but for the most part merely of single words and phrases. The complimentary passage on us proud Islanders is even stronger in its original form. ‘Religion can only be for us a dead letter, a sacred article in the constitution without any reality, for we are only occupied with fierce defence of national orthodoxy and the maintenance of superstitious attachment to ancient usages, while our pursuit of knowledge is limited to a miserable empiricism.’
P. 16, last par., has lost something of the irony of the Romanticist. “We have systems from all schools, yea, even from schools that are mere habitations and nurseries of the dead letter. The spirit is neither to be confined in academies nor to be poured out into a row of ready heads. It evaporates usually between the first mouth and the first ear.”
On p. 17, foot, beginning “In isolation,” a somewhat mighty figure has been weakened, doubtless as too youthfully daring. He is speaking of the work of the true heroes of religion. “Only single noble thoughts flash through their soul, kindled with celestial fire. The magic thunder of an enchanting speech accompanied the high phenomenon, and announced to adoring mortals that the Deity had spoken. An atom impregnated with heavenly power, fell into their soul, and there assimilated all, and gradually expanded till it burst like a divine fate in a world whose atmosphere offers too little resistance, and produced in its last moments one of those heavenly meteors, one of those significant signs of the time, of the origin of which none was ignorant, and with awe of which all mortals were filled. You must seek this heavenly spark which is produced when a holy soul is stirred by the Universe, and you must attend to it in the incomprehensible moment of its formation.”
The earlier portion of the Second Chapter (pp. 26-66), has been materially altered, a large part of it having been entirely re-cast. The opening passage is little altered, the parallel drawn between the sociality of states and the combining of the mental activities is only verbally different, but it is used to explain that he frequently returns to more childlike times, not from depreciation of the present but in order to discover religion more by itself.
‘Ultimately, metaphysics, morals and religion have the same object, the Universe. This has led to confusion. Yet your instinct and opinions are against making religion one with metaphysics, for you do not admit that it can tread with the same firm step, or with morals, for there are foully immoral parts in its history. It must, therefore, deal with the same matter in a different way. “What does your metaphysics do, or, if you will not have that antiquated, too historical name, your transcendental philosophy? It classifies the Universe, gives the grounds for what exists, deduces the necessity of the actual, and spins from itself the reality and the laws of the world.” Religion, however, has nothing to do with grounds and deductions and first causes. “And what does your ethics do? It developes from the nature of man and his relation to the Universe a system of duties, it commands and prohibits actions with absolute authority. But religion cannot venture to use the Universe for the deduction of duties, or to contain a code of laws.” The common idea of religion is that it is a mixture of fragments of metaphysics and ethics, but it is time this idea was quite annihilated. “The theorists in religion who seek to know the nature ofthe Universe and of a Highest Being whose work it is, are metaphysicians, but discreet enough not to despise a little morals; the practical persons, to whom the will of God is the chief matter, are moralists, but a little in the metaphysical style. They import the idea of the good into metaphysics as the natural law of a Being without limits and without wants, and they import the idea of an Original Being from metaphysics into morals that the great work should not be anonymous, but that such a glorious code might be prefaced by a picture of the law-giver.” Were this mixture anything more than a selection for beginners, and had a principle of union of its own, religion must be the highest in philosophy, and metaphysics and ethics only sub-divisions. All these are found together even in the sacred books, unavoidably and also of high design. But religion is like the diamond in the clay, enclosed not to remain hidden, but to be all the more surely found. It is simply a device for subtle winning of the hearer, but it has overstepped the mark when the shell conceals the kernel. “I have been put out by your common idea, it is taken out of the way I trust. Interrupt me now no more.”
“Religion neither seeks like metaphysics to determine and explain the nature of the Universe, nor like morals to advance and perfect the Universe by the power of freedom and the divine will of man. It is neither thinking nor acting, but intuition and feeling. It will regard the Universe as it is. It is reverent attention and submission, in childlike passivity, to be stirred and filled by the Universe’s immediate influences.” To metaphysics, man is the centre of all, the condition of all existence; to religion, he is, like every other finite thing, but a manifestation of the Universe. Morals proceeds from the consciousness of freedom and seeks to expand the realm of freedom to infinity; religion regards man as needing to be what he is, whether he will or not. Religion, morals and metaphysics are equals, different but complementary. “To have speculation and practice without religion is mad presumption, audacious hostility to the gods, the unholy sense of Prometheus, who faintheartedly stole what he might have asked for in safety. Man has but stolen the feeling of his infinity and likeness to God, and as unjust goods he cannot prosper with it, for he must also be conscious of his limits”