This article appeared in the November 27, 1942 issue Commonweal
NATURAL RELIGION assumes that it will find the Unconditional objectively manifest in existence, and studies human experience in that hope, only to find that the more it learns, the clearer it becomes that all experience is dualistic, bifurcating, into Individuality versus Universality, Known Object versus Knowing Subject, Extension versus Thought, Free Will versus Necessity, etc., and that it is impossible to relate these contradictory elements in such a way that either is conditioned by the other.
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Since it cannot reconcile, Natural Religion must repress, and whether it choose to admit the Esthetic or the Ethical, it walks in dread lest the other half of life which it has rejected should come to consciousness, for then it must also become conscious that its choice was arbitrary, from which knowledge only one conclusion is possible, the scepticism of despair—What is Mind ? No matter. What is Matter? Never mind.
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Revealed religion starts out with the belief that God created the world ex nihilo. In that case everything manifest is equally real but equally conditioned, and if we cannot resolve the dualism of our experience, it is in our perception of existence that this dualism must lie, not in existence itself, i.e., a contradiction we manufacture for ourselves because we have eaten of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
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To say that the Unconditional is subjectively manifest is to say that every human action is an individual act of will, which cannot be judged in abstraction from the concrete temporal situation in which it occurs. In this, Revealed religion sides with the Esthetic against the Ethical in upholding the unique importance of the individual will. On the other hand, to say that the Unconditional is subjectively manifest, is also to say that a good act is always and only the product of a good will, and a bad act is always and only the product of an evil will. In this, Revealed religion sides with the Ethical against the Esthetic belief that to will is good in itself. Lastly it disagrees with both in asserting that the value of an act lies in its subjective intention, not in its manifest result.
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A married man and a married woman are tempted to commit adultery. They consult the Esthetic who asks smiling, "Are you in love? Really? You're quite sure? Then, children, I give you my blessing." Just to be on the safe side they consult the Ethical also who exclaims: "How dare you suggest such a thing. Quite inexcusable under any circumstances. But there, there, don't cry. I'll help you. I have here some excellent sedative pills. Take two every three hours." As a last resort they consult the Religious who, before they can have even begun to tell their story, says: "I know what you are going to ask. If you are not in love, the question is academic and you should be ashamed of wasting my time and yours. If you are in love, I am very glad, but the answer is no. Suffer and praise God."
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The recognition that, on any given occasion, one's will is evil is not an inevitable consequence of the structure of the human mind, like the recognition of the truths of mathematics, for one can refuse it; that is, it is a subjective religious event. The conversion of an evil will into a good will cannot be its own act, for it is impossible to will the opposite of what one wills; that is, it is an act of God's.
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Freed from their religious pretensions, the esthetic and ethical can realize their proper functions, the first of providing a clear mirror in which each man may discover what his will is, the second of providing the means by which every good intention may translate itself into an effective result. Magic becomes Art: Ethics becomes Science.
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