VII

THE PROBLEM OF ORGANIC RELIGION

If philosophy is “the science of the totality of things,” and “they are called wise who put things in their right order and control them well,” then it is religion, above all other factors and potencies, that enters in to reveal the right relationships and standards of value, and to contribute the redemptive and energizing force that makes possible the adequate control which is the second factor in the conduct of the man that is “called wise.”  Philosophy and religion are not to be confounded; religion is sufficient in itself and develops its own philosophy, but the latter is not sufficient in itself, and when it assumes the functions and prerogatives of religion, it brings disaster.

Religion is the force that relates action to life.  Of course it has other aspects, higher in essence and more impalpable in quality, but it is this first aspect I shall deal with, because I am not now speaking of religion as a purely spiritual power but only of its quality as the great coordinator of human action, the power that establishes a right ratio of values and gives the capacity for right control.  Whether we accept the religion of the Middle Ages or not; whether we look on the period as one of high and edifying Christian civilization, or as a time of ignorance and superstition, we are bound to admit that society in its physical, intellectual and spiritual aspects was highly organized, and coordinated after a most masterly fashion.  It was more nearly an unit, functioning lucidly and consistently, than anything the world has known since the Roman Empire.  Whatever its defects, lack of coherency was not one of them.  Life was not divided into water-tight compartments, but moved on as a consistent whole.  Failures were constant, for the world even then was made up of men, but the ideal was perfectly clear-cut, the principles exactly seen and explicitly formulated; life was organic, consistent, highly articulated, and withal as full of the passion of aspiration towards an ultimate ideal as was the Gothic cathedral which is its perfect exemplar.

The reason for this coherency and consistency was the universal recognition and acceptance of religion as the one energizing and standardizing force in life, the particular kind of religion that then prevailed, and the organic power which this religion had established; that is to say, the Church as an operative institution.  So long as this condition obtained, which was, roughly speaking, for three hundred years, from the “Truce of God” in 1041 to the beginning of the “Babylonian Captivity” of the Papacy at Avignon in 1309, there was substantial unity in life, but as soon as it was shaken, this unity began to break up into a diversity that accomplished a condition of chaos, at and around the opening of the sixteenth century, which only yielded to the absolutism of the Renaissance, destined in its turn to break up into a second condition of chaos under the influence of industrialism, Puritanism and revolution.