The subject of Saintliness left us face to face with the question, Is the sense of divine presence asense of anything objectively true? We turned first to mysticism for an answer, and found thatalthough mysticism is entirely¹ willing to corroborate² religion, it is too private (and also toovarious) in its utterances³ to be able to claim a universal authority. But philosophy publishes resultswhich claim to be universally valid⁴ if they are valid at all, so we now turn with our question tophilosophy. Can philosophy stamp a warrant of veracity⁵ upon the religious man's sense of thedivine?

I imagine that many of you at this point begin to indulge in guesses at the goal to which I amtending. I have undermined the authority of mysticism, you say, and the next thing I shall probablydo is to seek to discredit⁶ that of philosophy. Religion, you expect to hear me conclude, is nothingbut an affair of faith, based either on vague sentiment, or on that vivid sense of the reality of thingsunseen of which in my second lecture and in the lecture on Mysticism I gave so many examples. Itis essentially⁷ private and individualistic; it always exceeds our powers of formulation; andalthough attempts to pour its contents into a philosophic⁸ mould will probably always go on, menbeing what they are, yet these attempts are always secondary processes which in no way add to theauthority, or warrant the veracity, of the sentiments from which they derive⁹ their own stimulus¹⁰ andborrow whatever glow of conviction they may themselves possess.

In short, you suspect that I am planning to defend feeling at the expense of reason, to rehabilitatethe

分享到：