GEORGE JOHN ROMANES
Thoughts on Religion
Edited by Charles Gore. Fifth ed.
Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Company, 1902.
[41] Religion [compared to Science] É
is a department of thought having no less exclusive reference to the Ultimate. More particularly, it is a department
of thought having for its object a self-conscious and intelligent Being, which
it regards as a personal God, and the fountain-head of all causation. É To call
any theory of things a Religion which does not present any belief in any form
of Deity, is to apply the word to the very opposite of that which it has
hitherto been used to denote. To speak of the Religion of the Unknowable, the
religion of Cosmism, the Religion of Humanity, and so forth, where the
personality of the First Cause is not recognized, is as unmeaning as it would
be to speak of the love of a triangle, or the rationality of the equator. That is to say, if any meaning is to be
extracted from the terms at all, it is only to [42] be so by using them in some
metaphorical sense. We may, for
instance, say that there is such a thing as a Religion of Humanity, because we
may begin by deifying Humanity in our own estimation, and then go on to worship
our ideal. But by thus giving
Humanity the name of Deity we are not really creating a new religion: we are
merely using a metaphor, which may or may not be successful as a matter of
poetic diction, but which most assuredly presents no shred of value as a matter
of philosophical statement.
[43]
On the other hand, Religion is not in any way concerned with causation [as
Science is], further than to assume that all things and all processes are
ultimately due to intelligent personality. Religion is thus, as Mr. Spencer says, Ôan a priori theory of the universeÕ—to which, however, we
must add, Ôand a theory which assumes intelligent personality as the
originating source of the universe.Õ Without this needful addition, a religion would be in no way logically
distinguished from a philosophy.
[113] By the term Ôreligion,Õ I shall mean
any theory of personal agency in
the universe, belief in which is strong enough in any degree to influence
conduct.