(d) We have seen that the individual has duties toward
the state. We have also seen that the state has
duties toward the individual. The state should
not make it practically impossible for him to be a
loyal citizen. A somewhat similar duty appears
to be incumbent upon the church.
A church that forces upon all of its members, as a
condition of membership, intricate and abstract systems
of metaphysics; a church that does not teach good-will
toward men, but makes walls of separation out of slight
differences of opinion; a church that lags behind the
moral sense of the community in which it finds itself;
a church that starves the religious life; these, and
such as these, must expect to lose adherents.
It is not that men reject them; it is that they reject
men.
Those who read history have no reason to think that
men, except here and there and under exceptional circumstances,
will cease to regard religious duties as duties.
I have not ventured to offer any detailed solution
of the problem of loyalty to the church. But
neither have I ventured to offer any detailed solution
of the problem of loyalty to the state. In the
one case, as in the other, I suggest as guides tradition,
intuition and reflective reasoning. I can only
counsel good sense and some degree of patience.
It may be said: You do not solve the difficulty
for the individual. I admit it. Such difficulties
every thinking man must meet and solve for himself.
169. THE LAST WORD.—Those persons,
whether students, or teachers, who dislike this final
chapter, may omit it, without detriment to the rest
of the book. The doctrine of the Rational Social
Will is not founded upon this chapter. The latter
is a mere appendix.
I regret that, in a work in which I have wished to
avoid disputation, I have felt compelled to touch
upon religious duties at all. But they have played,
and still play, so significant a role in the history
of mankind, that the omission could scarcely have
been made. You are free to take them or leave
them; but you are not free to take or leave the Rational
Social Will as the Moral Arbiter of the Destinies of
Man.
1. CHAPTERS I TO III.—The notes in
a book of any sort are rarely read, except by a few
specialists, and by them not seldom with a view to
refuting the author. I shall make the following
as brief as I may. But I do wish to give some
of my readers—all will not be equally learned—an
opportunity to get acquainted with a few books better
than this one. This first note is not addressed
to the learned, and some will find it superfluous.
I intend to mention here a handful of books which
any cultivated man may read with profit, and re-read
with profit, if he has already read them. They
can be collected gradually at a relatively slight expense,
and it is a pleasure to have them in one’s library.
The list may easily be bettered, and may be indefinitely
lengthened. I mention only books for those who
are accustomed to do their reading in English.
