The Function of High Religion

In the light of this conception of maturity as the ultimate phase in the development of the human personality, we are, I think, in a position to understand the riddle which we set ourselves at the beginning of this chapter. I asked what significance there was for us in the fact that men have so persistently associated the good life with some form of ascetic discipline and renunciation. The answer is that asceticism is an effort to overcome immaturity. When men do not outgrow their childish desires, they seek to repress them. The ascetic discipline, if it is successful, is a form of education; if it is unsuccessful, it is an agonized conflict due to an imperfect education or an incapacity to grow up. By the same token, moral regulations imposed on others, insofar as they are at all rational, and not methods of exploitation or expressions of jealousy, are attempts to curb the social disorders which result from the activities of grown-up children.

It follows that asceticisms and moralities are at best means to an end; they are more or less inadequate substitutes for the educational process and the natural growth of wisdom. They are often confused with virtue, but they are not virtue. For virtue is the quality of mature desire, and when desire is mature the tortures of renunciations and of prohibitions have ceased to be necessary. "Blessedness," says Spinoza, "is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself; nor should we rejoice in it for that we restrain our lusts, but, on the contrary, because we rejoice therein we can restrain our lusts." The mature character may be attained by growth and experience and insight, or by ascetic discipline, or by that process of being reborn which is called conversion; when it is attained, the moral problem of whether to yield to impulse or to check it, and how much to check it and how much to yield, has disappeared. A mature desire is innocent. This, I think, is the final teaching of the great sages. "To him who has finished the Path, and passed beyond sorrow, who has freed himself on all sides, and thrown away every fetter, there is no more fever of grief," says a Buddhist writer.

The Master said,
"At fifteen I had my mind bent on learning. "At thirty, I stood firm. "At forty, I had no doubts.
"At fifty, I knew the decrees of Heaven.
"At sixty, my ear was an obedient organ for the reception of truth.
"At seventy, I could follow what my heart desired, without transgressing what was right."

To be able, as Confucius indicates, to follow what the heart desires without coming into collision with the stubborn facts of life is the privilege of the utterly innocent and of the utterly wise. It is the privilege of the infant and of the sage who stand at the two poles of experience; of the infant because the world ministers to his heart's desire and of the sage because he has learned what to desire. Perhaps this is what Jesus meant when he told his followers that they must become like little children.

If this is what he meant, and if this is what Buddha, Confucius, and Spinoza meant, then we have here the clue to the function of high religion in human affairs. I venture, at least, to suggest that the function of high religion is to reveal to men the quality of mature experience, that high religion is a prophecy and an anticipation of what life is like when desire is in perfect harmony with reality. It announces the discovery that men can enter into the realm of the spirit when they have outgrown all childishness.