The Life of Reason - George Santayana (great books to read .TXT) 📗

book Pages 184-205 Volume Three: Reason in Religion

CHAPTER I

HOW RELIGION MAY BE AN EMBODIMENT OF REASON

Religion is certainly significant, but not literally true.—All religion is positive and particular.—It aims at the Life of Reason, but largely fails to attain it.—Its approach imaginative.—When its poetic method is denied its value is jeopardised.—It precedes science rather than hinders it.—It is merely symbolic and thoroughly human. Pages 3-14

CHAPTER II

RATIONAL ELEMENTS IN SUPERSTITION

Felt causes not necessary causes.—Mechanism and dialectic ulterior principles.—Early selection of categories.—Tentative rational worlds.—Superstition a rudimentary philosophy.—A miracle, though unexpected, more intelligible than a regular process.—Superstitions come of haste to understand.—Inattention suffers them to spread.—Genius may use them to convey an inarticulate wisdom. Pages 15-27

CHAPTER III

MAGIC, SACRIFICE, AND PRAYER

Fear created the gods.—Need also contributed.—The real evidences of God's existence.—Practice precedes theory in religion.—Pathetic, tentative nature of religious practices.—Meanness and envy in the gods, suggesting sacrifice.—Ritualistic arts.—Thank-offerings.—The sacrifice of a contrite heart.—Prayer is not utilitarian in essence.—Its supposed efficacy magical.—Theological puzzles.—A real efficacy would be mechanical.—True uses of prayer.—It clarifies the ideal.—It reconciles to the inevitable.—It fosters spiritual life by conceiving it in its perfection.—Discipline and contemplation are their own reward Pages 28-48

CHAPTER IV

MYTHOLOGY

Status of fable in the mind.—It requires genius.—It only half deceives.—Its interpretative essence.—Contrast with science.—Importance of the moral factor.—Its submergence.—Myth justifies magic.—Myths might be metaphysical.—They appear ready made, like parts of the social fabric.—They perplex the conscience.—Incipient myth in the Vedas.—Natural suggestions soon exhausted.—They will be carried out in abstract fancy.—They may become moral ideals.—The Sun-god moralised.—The leaven of religion is moral idealism Pages 49-68

CHAPTER V

THE HEBRAIC TRADITION

Phases of Hebraism.—Israel's tribal monotheism.—Problems involved.—The prophets put new wine in old bottles.—Inspiration and authority.—Beginnings of the Church.—Bigotry turned into a principle.—Penance accepted.—Christianity combines optimism and asceticism.—Reason smothered between the two.—Religion made an institution Pages 69-82

CHAPTER VI

THE CHRISTIAN EPIC

The essence of the good not adventitious but expressive.—A universal religion must interpret the whole world.—Double appeal of Christianity.—Hebrew metaphors become Greek myths.—Hebrew philosophy of history identified with Platonic cosmology.—The resulting orthodox system.—The brief drama of things.—Mythology is a language and must be understood to convey something by symbols Pages 83-98

CHAPTER VII

PAGAN CUSTOM AND BARBARIAN GENIUS INFUSED INTO CHRISTIANITY

Need of paganising Christianity.—Catholic piety more human than the liturgy.—Natural pieties.—Refuge taken in the supernatural.—The episodes of life consecrated mystically.—Paganism chastened, Hebraism liberalised.—The system post-rational and founded on despair.—External conversion of the barbarians.—Expression of the northern genius within Catholicism,—Internal discrepancies between the two.—Tradition and instinct at odds in Protestantism.—The Protestant spirit remote from that of the gospel.—Obstacles to humanism.—The Reformation and counter-reformation.—Protestantism an expression of character.—It has the spirit of life and of courage, but the voice of inexperience.—Its emancipation from Christianity Pages 99-126

CHAPTER VIII

CONFLICT OF MYTHOLOGY WITH MORAL TRUTH

Myth should dissolve with the advance of science.—But myth is confused with the moral values it expresses.—Neo-Platonic revision.—It made mythical entities of abstractions.—Hypostasis ruins ideals.—The Stoic revision.—The ideal surrendered before the physical.—Parallel movements in Christianity.—Hebraism, if philosophical, must be pantheistic.—Pantheism, even when psychic, ignores ideals.—Truly divine action limited to what makes for the good.—Need of an opposing principle.—The standard of value is human.—Hope for happiness makes belief in God Pages 127-147

CHAPTER IX

THE CHRISTIAN COMPROMISE

Suspense between hope and disillusion.—Superficial solution.—But from what shall we be redeemed?—Typical attitude of St. Augustine.—He achieves Platonism.—He identifies it with Christianity.—God the good.—Primary and secondary religion.—Ambiguous efficacy of the good in Plato.—Ambiguous goodness of the creator in Job.—The Manicheans.—All things good by nature.—The doctrine of creation demands that of the fall.—Original sin.—Forced abandonment of the ideal.—The problem among the Protestants.—Pantheism accepted.—Plainer scorn for the ideal.—The price of mythology is superstition. Pages 148-177

CHAPTER X

PIETY

The core of religion not theoretical.—Loyalty to the sources of our being.—The pious Æneas.—An ideal background required.—Piety accepts natural conditions and present tasks.—The leadership of instinct is normal.—Embodiment essential to spirit.—Piety to the gods takes form from current ideals.—The religion of humanity.—Cosmic piety Pages 178-192

CHAPTER XI

SPIRITUALITY AND ITS CORRUPTIONS

To be spiritual is to live in view of the ideal.—Spirituality natural.—Primitive consciousness may be spiritual.—Spirit crossed by instrumentalities.—One foe of the spirit is worldliness.—The case for and against pleasure.—Upshot of worldly wisdom.—Two supposed escapes from vanity: fanaticism and mysticism.—Both are irrational.—Is there a third course?—Yes, for experience has intrinsic, inalienable values.—For these the religious imagination must supply an ideal standard Pages 193-213

CHAPTER XII

CHARITY

Possible tyranny of reason.—Everything has its rights.—Primary and secondary morality.—Uncharitable pagan justice is not just.—The doom of ancient republics.—Rational charity.—Its limits.—Its mythical supports.—There is intelligence in charity.—Buddhist and Christian forms of it.—Apparent division of the spiritual and the natural Pages 214-228

CHAPTER XIII

THE BELIEF IN A FUTURE LIFE

The length of life a subject for natural science.—"Psychical" phenomena.—Hypertrophies of sense.—These possibilities affect physical existence only.—Moral grounds for the doctrine.—The necessary assumption of a future.—An assumption no evidence.—A solipsistic argument.—Absoluteness and immortality transferred to the gods.—Or to a divine principle in all beings.—In neither case is the individual immortal.—Possible forms of survival.—Arguments from retribution and need of opportunity.—Ignoble temper of both.—False optimistic postulate involved.—Transition to ideality Pages 229-250

CHAPTER XIV

IDEAL IMMORTALITY

Olympian immortality the first ideal.—Its indirect attainment by reproduction.—Moral acceptance of this compromise.—Even vicarious immortality intrinsically impossible.—Intellectual victory over change.—The glory of it.—Reason makes man's divinity and his immortality.—It is the locus of all truths.—Epicurean immortality, through the truth of existence.—Logical immortality, through objects of thought.—Ethical immortality, through types of excellence Pages 251-273

CHAPTER XV

CONCLUSION

The failure of magic and of mythology.—Their imaginative value.—Piety and spirituality justified.—Mysticism a primordial state of feeling.—It may recur at any stage of culture.—Form gives substance its life and value. Pages 274-279

Volume Four: Reason in Art

CHAPTER I

THE BASIS OF ART IN INSTINCT AND EXPERIENCE

Man affects his environment, sometimes to good purpose.—Art is plastic instinct conscious of its aims.—It is automatic.—So are the ideas it expresses.—We are said to control whatever obeys us.—Utility is a result.—The useful naturally stable.—Intelligence is docility.—Art is reason propagating itself.—Beauty an incident in rational art, inseparable from the others. Pages 3-17

CHAPTER II

RATIONALITY OF INDUSTRIAL ART

Utility is ultimately ideal.—Work wasted and chances missed.—Ideals must be interpreted, not prescribed.—The aim of industry is to live well.—Some arts, but no men, are slaves by nature.—Servile arts may grow spontaneous or their products may be renounced.—Art starts from two potentialities: its material and its problem.—Each must be definite and congruous with the other.—A sophism exposed.—Industry prepares matter for the liberal arts.—Each partakes of the other. Pages 18-33

CHAPTER III

EMERGENCE OF FINE ART

Art is spontaneous action made stable by success.—It combines utility and automatism.—Automatism fundamental and irresponsible.—It is tamed by contact with the world.—The dance.—Functions of gesture.—Automatic music. Pages 34-43

CHAPTER IV

MUSIC

Music is a world apart.—It justifies itself.—It is vital and transient.—Its physical affinities.—Physiology of music.—Limits of musical sensibility.—The value of music is relative to them.—Wonders of musical structure.—Its inherent emotions.—In growing specific they remain unearthly.—They merge with common emotions, and express such as find no object in nature.—Music lends elementary feelings an intellectual communicable form.—All essences are in themselves good, even the passions.—Each impulse calls for a possible congenial world.—Literature incapable of expressing pure feelings.—Music may do so.—Instability the soul of matter.—- Peace the triumph of spirit.—Refinement is true strength. Pages 44-67

CHAPTER V

SPEECH AND SIGNIFICATION

Sounds well fitted to be symbols.—Language has a structure independent of things.—Words, remaining identical, serve to identify things that change.—Language the dialectical garment of facts.—Words are wise men's counters.—Nominalism right in psychology and realism in logic.—Literature moves between the extremes of music and denotation.—Sound and object, in their sensuous presence, may have affinity.—Syntax positively representative.—Yet it vitiates what it represents.—Difficulty in subduing a living medium.—Language foreshortens experience.—It is a perpetual mythology.—It may be apt or inapt, with equal richness.—Absolute language a possible but foolish art Pages 68-86

CHAPTER VI

POETRY AND PROSE

Force of primary expressions.—Its exclusiveness and narrowness.—Rudimentary poetry an incantation or charm.—Inspiration irresponsible.—Plato's discriminating view.—Explosive and pregnant expression.—Natural history of inspiration.—Expressions to be understood must be recreated, and so changed.—Expressions may be recast perversely, humourously, or sublimely.—The nature of prose.—It is more advanced and responsible than poetry.—Maturity brings love of practical truth.—Pure prose would tend to efface itself.—Form alone, or substance alone, may be poetical.—Poetry has its place in the medium.—It is the best medium possible.—Might it not convey what it is best to know?—A rational poetry would exclude much now thought poetical.—All apperception modifies its object.—Reason has its own bias and method.—Rational poetry would envelop exact knowledge in ultimate emotions.—An illustration.—Volume can be found in scope better than in suggestion Pages 87-115

CHAPTER VII

PLASTIC CONSTRUCTION

Automatic expression often leaves traces in the outer world.—Such effects fruitful.—Magic authority of man's first creations.—Art brings relief from idolatry.—Inertia in technique.—Inertia in appreciation.—Adventitious effects appreciated first.—Approach to beauty through useful structure.—Failure of adapted styles.—Not all structure beautiful, nor all beauty structural.—Structures designed for display.—Appeal made by decoration.—Its natural rights.—Its alliance with structure in Greek architecture.—Relations of the two in Gothic art.—The result here romantic.—The mediæval artist.—Representation introduced.—Transition to illustration. Pages 116-143

CHAPTER VIII

PLASTIC REPRESENTATION

Psychology of imitation.—Sustained sensation involves reproduction.—Imitative art repeats with intent to repeat, and in a new material.—Imitation leads to adaptation and to knowledge.—How the artist is inspired and irresponsible.—Need of knowing and loving the subject rendered.—Public interests determine the subject of art, and the subject the medium.—Reproduction by acting ephemeral.—demands of sculpture.—It is essentially obsolete.—When men see groups and backgrounds they are natural painters.—Evolution of painting.—Sensuous and dramatic adequacy approached.—Essence of landscape-painting.—Its threatened dissolution.—Reversion to pure decorative design.—Sensuous values are primordial and so indispensable Pages 144-165

CHAPTER IX

JUSTIFICATION OF ART

Art is subject to moral censorship.—Its initial or specific excellence is not enough.—All satisfactions, however hurtful, have an initial worth.—But, on the whole, artistic activity is innocent.—It is liberal, and typical of perfect activity.—The ideal, when incarnate, becomes subject to civil society.—Plato's strictures: he exaggerates the effect of myths.—His deeper moral objections.—Their lightness.—Importance of æsthetic alternatives.—The importance of æsthetic goods varies with temperaments.—The æsthetic temperament requires tutelage.—Aesthetic values everywhere interfused.—They are primordial.—To superpose them adventitiously is to destroy them.—They flow naturally from perfect function.—Even inhibited functions, when they fall into a new rhythm, yield new beauties.—He who loves beauty must chasten it Pages 166-190

CHAPTER X

THE CRITERION OF TASTE

Dogmatism is inevitable but may be enlightened.—Taste gains in authority as it is more and more widely based.—Different æsthetic endowments may be compared in quantity or force.—Authority of vital over verbal judgments.—Tastes differ also in purity or consistency.—They differ, finally, in pertinence, and in width of appeal.—Art may grow classic by idealising the familiar, or by reporting the ultimate.—Good taste demands that art should be rational, i.e., harmonious with all other interests.—A mere "work of art" a baseless artifice.—Human uses give to works of art their highest expression and charm.—The sad values of appearance.—They need to be made prophetic of practical goods,