From Unknown, via Harry Chandler:
The tide recedes, but leaves behind bright seashells on the sand. The sun goes down, but gentle warmth still lingers on the land. The music stops, and yet it echoes on in sweet refrains. For every joy that passes, something beautiful remains.
From Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism at 23-24:
[M]ysticism alone postulates…not only the existence of the Absolute, but also this link: this possibility first of knowing, finally of attaining it. It denies that possible knowledge is to be limited (a) to sense impressions, (b) to any process of intellection, (c) to the unfolding of the content of normal consciousness. Such diagrams of experience, it says, are hopelessly incomplete. The mystics find the basis of their method not in logic but in life: in the existence of a discoverable “real,” a spark of true being, within the seeking subject, which can, in that ineffable experience which they call the “act of union,” fuse itself with and thus apprehend the reality of the sought Object. ” In theological language, their theory of knowledge is that the spirit of man, itself essentially divine, is capable of immediate communion with God, the one Reality. RefMgr field[22]: 3″
2006
From Ann and Barry Ulanov, Religion and the Unconscious:
[13] Depth psychology and Christian theology both deal with our daily experiences and their larger meaning for us. . . .Although the approaches of the two disciplines differ, they share a concentration on the hidden depths of human experience and a determination to probe these depths. They go beyond their differences to an intermingling of styles, techniques, and procedures in their common concern with that special kind of human experience which we think is best called primordial experience. Primordial experience is the means by which we live and understand the primordial elements of being. In it we encounter directly the original strata of human life; we meet all that has gone before us that remains instinct in the human psyche. We call it primordial because it is the most basic and important level of human experience, though much of our conscious life is devoted to eluding and repressing it. Its contents are, to begin with, chiefly made up of unconscious materials, but they move so boldly and so often into consciousness, that we cannot equate primordial experience with the unconscious. What we meet in it are the central elements of our being, in confrontations of such suddenness and force that often our body and spirit are shaken and our ordinary preoccupations brought to a full stop. [14] We are cut loose for the moment from all that we have lived before, at least to the extent that there is now quite clearly a before. And all that we may live through or reconstruct after this moment of encounter will stand out from the rest of our lives even if never again referred to in so many words, never understood, never really integrated into our lives. We have been called out of ourselves, pushed away from our former identification with a self-image, with our place in the world, and all our role-playing activities. Primordial experience may be a moment of ecstasy or exaltation so joyous that our lives will always be touched with its lingering pleasures. Or it may be a moment that discharges a destructive power so shattering to our sensibility that we will continue to fear long after the event that not only our sanity has been threatened but the very laws that govern sanity. Positive or negative feelings, of the dimensions of awe, fear, terror, wonder, gratitude, or a transcendent serenity, comprise the emotional grammar of our responses to primordial experience. Primordial experience may come to us once or over and over again in a series of encounters that repeat themselves, change, appear, and reappear throughout our lives, so that we finally come to see them as the essence of our human experience, the foundation upon which everything else rests. Our moments of primordial experience can be seen then to compose the story line of our lives, directing us inexorably to our source and our end. Primordial experience invades and all but effaces the boundaries between the disciplines of depth psychology and theology, and or good reason. Both disciplines focus on our experiences of meaning and value. But investigate the subterranean realms of human life that lie beneath the surface world of daily happenings. In these realms we find ourselves – where we have come from, what we are, where we may be going. . . . [15] For theology, primordial events mark the beginning of religious experience and the latent possibility of a life of sustained attention to God. This is original religious experience, something that has actually happened to us, not something we have learned about in church or synagogue or school. This is knowledge that we can trust. It has the authority of an indwelling existence; it inhabits us whether we like it or not. But negative or positive, as with the patient in analysis, primordial religious events must be consciously acknowledged, or the spiritual equivalent of neuroses – sin or despair – will almost certainly follow. [25] The function of religion for the human psyche is to offer true or false containment for primordial experience. In true containment, religion gives primordial experience a place and a state of being in which it finds itself at ease with us and we find ourselves at ease with it. In false containment, religion gives primordial experience such a threatening appearance that there is nothing we can do but flee from it. To put it another way, religion may block a certain level of experience in the psyche by segregating it from what has been called reality – Freud’s reality principle – or religion may function to provide a protected containment for that kind of experience which allows it to mingle and interpenetrate with the rest of our perception of reality. And what precisely is that kind of experience? It is primordial experience mediated to consciousness through the special language of the unconscious. This language is recognized by analysts of all schools as altogether different from that of consciousness. Freud calls it the language of primary process as distinguished from the secondary processes of conscious rationality. Jung calls it nondirected thinking in contrast to the directed thinking of consciousness. Primary-Process Thinking Primary-process thinking reigns over the unconscious, what first Groddeck and later Freud called the id. Mental processes in this sort of thinking are totally subject to the pleasure principle: pleasure is sought and pain is avoided wherever possible. Primary processes admit of not distinction between inner and outer ( What I wish is what is real ), subject and object (You are what I need you to be – and nothing else! ), self or other ( We feel alike, therefore we are alike ). Impulses abound and press for instant release and gratification. The need to wait until the appropriate moment for satisfaction, or to find the object that properly corresponds to the instinctual impulse, counts for nothing. Such a need is a concern of the ego, functioning according to secondary-process thinking, under the rule of the reality principle. Primary process may be likened to a rushing river of being – a tumult of unformulated, strongly felt wishes, or partial images, affective impulses, pulsating instincts, insistent urges, compelling drives. It is inexhaustible, an eternal flow of life in its most elemental form coursing beneath all the modulated actions, rational intentions, and measured involvements with one another that we may erect above it. This first and foremost process in our thinking and feeling history is eternal, unconscious, infantile life, as Freud sees it. Out of it all other kinds of mental life evolve. It is a raw form of life that may sweep us ruthlessly away if we fall into it, yet may also bring our consciousness into fertile productivity if we can find ways to channel its endless flow. The whole point of Freudian analysis may be described as learning to unblock points of obstruction (or fixation) in this river of being and thus to provide smoother courses for its flow than those we had earlier been compelled to follow. In other words, it is a strong attempt to change basic behavior patterns. Analysis teaches us how to live closer to our subterranean being, to let it touch us without flooding us in psychosis, without our needing to repress the fact of its presence or to deny its powerful influences on all our actions. In that way we may avoid that restriction of consciousness which leads to neurosis. Nondirected Thinking For Jung, nondirected thinking is what expresses our inner reality. It does so through the language of images and symbols. It is a subjective, nonrational language of affect, instinct, and image, seeking somehow to describe and promote individual development. Both Freud and Jung see thinking when it is primary or nondirected as reigning in the unconscious and containing within itself a mixture of the products of the unconscious expressed in the language of dreams, myths, and fantasies and in those forms of human communication which draw directly upon image and affect, such as poetry, painting, music, religion, myth, fable, and even psychoanalytical ritual. Jung stresses that the nondirected thinking of the unconscious always precedes and continues to undergird the development of the directed thinking of consciousness. Nondirected thinking is the natural, given life of the psyche from which is formed the directed thinking of consciousness, just as the ego as the center of consciousness in the human personality develops out of the matrix of the unconscious. The dominance of nondirected thinking can be observed in all primitive states of mind, such as those of early childhood or of people still living in primitive phases of civilization. In itself, Jung insists there is nothing pathological about nondirected thinking. In fact, he rescues it from the slur of pathology and pejorative labels such as autistic. Nondirected thinking is a natural phenomenon necessary to the functioning of the human psyche. It turns pathological only when it continues to dominate a person’s mental functioning to the exclusion of directed thought, as in schizophrenia, for example. Freud Vs. Religion [33] Freud attacks religion for what he sees as a false containment of this level of experience. Religion deludes us, Freud says, into believing we do not have to give up our identification with those childish wishes for self gratification which are sovereign in primary-process thinking. Religion, as Freud interprets it, offers us rituals in whose containing space we can avoid the harshness of reality, such as the terrors of nature and the instinctual privations demanded by society, by granting reality to the illusion that we are still children of an all protecting father-god who will recompense us for the sufferings of this life in the bliss of an afterlife. Jung and Religion: The Numinous [35] Jung, in contrast, recognizes religion as a necessary fact of human experience, providing what we may call true containment for the subterranean, vibrating level of nondirected thinking. He takes the word religion at its etymological face value as derived from religare, meaning to bind back, to bind strongly. But what does religion bind us to? To immediate, primordial, individual experience of the numinous, that dynamic agency or effect not caused by an arbitrary act of will [which] seizes and controls the human subject, who is always rather its victim rather than its creator. The experience of being bound to this primordial moment is felt as an accretion of consciousness devoted to careful consideration and observation of the dynamic factors involved. One may feel fear, awe, love, and adoration toward them, but above all one accepts the necessity of taking them into account in day-to-day living. One depends on these factors, developing trust and loyalty toward them, for through their agency the unknown, the otherness of life, has directly touched and changed one’s own life. Balance and Protection By respecting such individual experience of the numinous, religion provides two kinds of balance and protection. The first defends the individual himself against the danger of falling into the gigantic depths numinous events may open up before him. Numinous experience burns with an intensity that can so inflame one’s sensibilities that one fears that one’s sanity may be consumed in the blaze. Afterward, one may actually feel burned out, scorched beyond recovery. Against this, religion provides a container, a fireproof retort in which to hold such a burning moment, so that it can work itself out in less frightening forms and the individual beholder can find his own way of relating to it. The dogmas and creeds of religious history gather the flaming revelations given to many individuals into a majestic whole, an unfolding drama, unified and orderly, whose doctrines are made transparent by the burning light they contain within. Thus the first balance that religion provides is to safeguard human sanity by presenting a context of tradition and dogma, records of experience of the divine in which to contain and observe the fierce brightness of our own revelation. Conversely, these individual experiences feed into religious tradition, making it a living, contemporary configuration of the truth of religious mystery. The transcendent has become immanent, not by process of reasoning, but through the immediacy of experience; and what is even more striking, perhaps, it is an immanence that never for a moment in any way lessens the transcendence – the radical otherness of the divinity with which we have been touched. The second balance and protection offered by religion defends the individuality of the person. By directing allegiance to an extramundane authority, religion provides the individual person with a frame of reference that transcends the mass-mindedness of modern society. Such empirical awareness of an intensely personal reciprocal relationship between one’s self and the otherness of this otherworldly authority protects the individual from submersion in the mass. It provides the basis for individual freedom and autonomy.
2006
From Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America:, v. I, Chapter XVII Principal Causes Which Tend to Maintain The Democratic Republic of the United States at 288-313:
[288] A Democratic republic exists in the United States; and the principal object of this book has been to explain the causes of its existence . . . .All the causes which contribute to the maintenance of the democratic republic in the United States are reducible to three heads: I. The peculiar and accidental situation in which Providence has placed the Americans. II. The laws. III. The manners and customs of the people. . . .
[290] It would be easy for me to enumerate many secondary causes that have contributed to establish, and now concur to maintain, the democratic republic of the United States. But among these favorable circumstances I discern two principal ones, which I hasten to point out. I have already observed that the origin of the Americans, or what I have called their point of departure, may be looked upon as the first and most efficacious cause to which the present prosperity of the United States may be attributed. The Americans had the chances of birth in their favor; and their forefathers imported that equality of condition and of intellect unto the country whence the democratic republic has very naturally taken its rise. Nor was this all; for besides this republican condition of society, the early settlers bequeathed to their descendants the customs, manners, and opinions that contribute most to the success of a republic. When I reflect upon the consequences of this primary fact, I think I see the destiny of America embodied in the first Puritan who landed on these shores, just as the whole human race was represented by the first man. . . .
[299] Influence of the Laws Upon the Maintenance of the Democratic Republic in the United States. Three principal causes of the maintenance of the democratic republic – Federal union – Township institutions – Judicial power. . . .These circumstances seem to me to contribute more than all others to the maintenance of the democratic republic in the United States. The first is that federal form of government which the Americans have adopted, and which enables the Union to combine the power of a great republic with the security of a small one.
The second consists in those township institutions which limit the despotism of the majority and at the same time impart to the people a taste for freedom and the art of being free.
The third is to be found in the constitution of the judicial power. I have shown how the courts of justice serve to repress the excesses of democracy, and how they check and direct the impulses of the majority without stopping its activity. . . .
[299] Influence of Customs Upon the Maintenance of a Democratic Republic in the United States I have previously remarked that the manners of the people may be considered as one of the great general causes to which the maintenance of a democratic republic in the United States is attributable. I here use the word customs with the meaning which the ancients attached to the word mores; for I apply it not only to manners properly so called – that is, to what might be termed the habits of the heart – but to the various notions and opinions current among men and to the mass of those ideas which constitute their character of mind. I comprise under this term therefore, the whole moral and intellectual condition of a people. My intention is not to draw a picture of American customs, but simply to point out such features of them as are favorable to the maintenance of their political institutions.
Religion Considered As a Political Institution Which Powerfully Contributes to the Maintenance of a Democratic Republic Among the Americans. North America peopled by men who professed a democratic and republican Christianity – Arrival of the Catholics – Why the Catholics now form the most democratic and republican class. By the side of every religion is to be found a political opinion, which is connected with it by affinity. If the human mind be left to follow its own bent, it will regulate the temporal and spiritual institutions of society in a uniform manner, and man will endeavor, if I may so speak, to harmonize earth with heaven.
The greatest part of British America was peopled by men who, after having shaken off the authority of the Pope, acknowledged no other religious supremacy: they brought with them into the New World a form of Christianity which I cannot better describe than by styling it a democratic and republican religion. This contributed powerfully to the establishment of a republic and democracy in public affairs; and from the beginning, politics and religion contracted an alliance which has never been dissolved. . . .
[303] If it be of the highest importance to man, as an individual, that his religion should be true, it is not so to society. Society has no future life to hope for or to fear; and provided the citizens profess a religion, the peculiar tenets of that religion are of little importance to its interest. . . .
[304] I do not question that the great austerity of manners that is observable in the United States arises, in the first instance, from religious faith. Religion is often unable to restrain man from the numberless temptations which chance offers; nor can it check that passion for gain which everything contributes to arouse; but its influence over the mind of woman is supreme, and women are the protectors of morals. There is certainly no country in the world where the tie of marriage is more respected than in America or where conjugal happiness is more highly or worthily appreciated. In Europe almost all the disturbances of a society arise from the irregularities of domestic life. To despise the natural bonds and legitimate pleasures of home is to contract a taste for excesses, a restlessness of heart, and fluctuating desires. Agitated by the tumultuous passions that frequently disturb his dwelling, the European is galled by the obedience which the legislative powers of the state exact. But when the American retires from the turmoil of public life to the bosom of his family, he finds in it the image of order and of peace. There his pleasures are simple and natural, his joys are innocent and calm; and as he finds that an orderly life is the surest path to happiness, he accustoms himself easily to moderate his opinions as well as his tastes. While the European endeavors to forget his domestic troubles by agitating society, the American derives from his own home that love of order which he afterwards carries with him into public affairs.
In the United States the influence of religion is not confined to the manners, but it extends to the intelligence of the people. Among the Anglo- Americans some profess the doctrines of Christianity from a sincere belief in them, and others do the same because they fear to be suspected of unbelief. Christianity, therefore reigns without obstacle, by universal consent; the consequence is, as I have before observed, that every principle of the moral world is fixed and determinate, although the political world is abandoned to the debates and the experiments of men. Thus the human mind is never left to wander over a boundless field; and whatever may be its pretensions, it is checked from time to time by barriers that it cannot surmount. Before it can innovate, certain primary principles are laid down, and the boldest conceptions are subjected to certain forms which retard and stop their completion.
The imagination of the Americans, even in its greatest flights, is circumspect and undecided; its impulses are checked and its works unfinished. These habits of restraint recur in political society and are singularly favorable both to the tranquillity of the people and to the durability of the institutions they have established. Nature and circumstances have made the inhabitants of the United States bold, as is sufficiently attested by the enterprising spirit with which they seek for fortune. If the mind of the Americans were free from all hindrances, they would shortly become the most daring innovators and most persistent disputants in the world. But the revolutionists of America are obliged to profess an ostensible respect for Christian morality and equity, which does not permit them to violate wantonly the laws that oppose their designs; nor would they find it easy to surmount the scruples of their partisans even if they were able to get over their own. Hitherto no one in the United States has dared to advance the maxim that everything is permissible for the interests of society, an impious adage which seems to have been invented in an age of freedom to shelter all future tyrants. Thus, while the law permits the Americans to do what they please, religion prevents them from conceiving, and forbids them to commit, what is rash or unjust.
Religion in America takes no direct part in the government of society, but it must be regarded as the first of their political institutions; for if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of it. Indeed, it is in this same point of view that the inhabitants of the United States themselves look upon religious belief. I do not know whether all Americans have sincere faith in their religion – for who can search the human heart?–but I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens or to a party, but it belongs to the whole nation and to every rank of society. . . . .
[307] But there are others who look forward to a republican form of government [in France] as a tranquil and lasting state, towards which modern society is daily impelled by the ideas and manners of the time, and who sincerely desire to prepare men to be free. When these men attack religious opinions, they obey the dictates of their passions and not of their interests. Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. Religion is much more necessary in the republic which they set forth in glowing colors than in the monarchy which they attack; it is more needed in democratic republics than in any others. How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed? And what can be done with a people who are their own masters if they are not submissive to the Deity? . . . .
[310] As long as a religion rests only upon those sentiments which are the consolation of all affliction, it may attract the affections of all mankind. But if it be mixed up with the bitter passions of the world, it may be constrained to defend allies whom its interests, and not the principle of love, have given to it; or to repel as antagonists men who are still attached to it, however opposed they may be to the powers with which it is allied. The church cannot share the temporal power of the state without being the object of a portion of that animosity which the latter excites . . .
[311] As long as a religion is sustained by those feelings, propensities, and passions which are found to occur under the same forms at all periods of history, it may defy the efforts of time; or at least it can be destroyed only by another religion. But when religion clings to the interests of the world, it becomes almost as fragile a thing as the powers of the earth. It is the only one of them all which can hope for immortality; but if it be connected with their ephemeral power, it shares their fortunes and may fall with those transient passions which alone supported them. The alliance which religion contracts with political powers must needs be onerous to itself, since it does not require their assistance to live, and by giving them its assistance it may be exposed to decay. . . .
[312] The American clergy were the first to perceive this truth and to act in conformity with it. They saw that they must renounce their religious influence if they were to strive for political power, and they chose to give up the support of the state rather than to share its vicissitudes. . . .
[312] The two great dangers which threaten the existence of religion are schism and indifference. In ages of fervent devotion men sometimes abandon their religion, but they only shake one off in order to adopt another. Their faith changes its objects but, but suffers no decline. The old religion then excites enthusiastic attachment or bitter enmity in either party; some leave it with anger, others cling to it with increased devotedness, and although persuasions differ, irreligion is unknown. Such, however, is not the case when a religious belief is secretly undermined by doctrines which may be termed negative, since they deny the truth of one religion without affirming that of any other. Prodigious revolutions then take place in the human mind, without the apparent co-operation of the passions of man, and almost without his knowledge. Men lose the objects of their fondest hopes as if though forgetfulness. They are carried away by an imperceptible current, which they have not the courage to stem, but which they follow with regret, since it bears them away from a faith they love to a skepticism that plunges them into despair.
[313] In ages which answer to this description men desert their religious opinions from lukewarmness rather than from dislike; they are not rejected, but they fall away. But if the unbeliever does not admit religion to be true, he still considers it useful. Regarding religious institutions in a human point of view, he acknowledges their influence upon manners and legislation. He admits they may serve to make men live in peace and prepare them gently for the hour of death. He regrets the faith that he has lost; and as he is deprived of a treasure of which he knows the value, he fears to take it away from those who still possess it. On the other hand, those who continue to believe are not afraid openly to avow their faith. They look upon those who do not share their persuasion as more worthy of pity than of opposition; and they are aware that to acquire the esteem of the unbelieving, they are not obliged to follow their example. They are not hostile, then, to anyone in the world; and as they do not consider the society in which they live as an arena in which religion is bound to face its thousand deadly foes, they love their contemporaries while they condemn their weaknesses and lament their errors. As those who do not believe conceal their incredulity, and as those who believe display their faith, public opinion pronounces itself in favor of religion: love, support, and honor are bestowed upon it, and it is only by searching the human soul that we can detect the wounds that it has received. The mass of mankind, who are never without the feeling of religion, do not perceive anything at variance with the established faith. The instinctive desire of a future life brings the crowd about the altar and opens the hearts of men to the precepts and consolations of religion. But this picture is not applicable to us, for there are men among us who have ceased to believe in Christianity, without adopting any other religion; others are in the perplexities of doubt and already affect not to believe; and others, again, are afraid to avow that Christian faith which they still cherish in secret.
From Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Second Part, First Book, Chapter V, How Religion in the United States Avails Itself of Democratic Tendencies", at pages 20-28:
I have shown in a preceding chapter that men cannot do without dogmatic belief, and even that it is much to be desired that such belief should exist among them. I now add that, of all the kinds of dogmatic belief, the most desirable appears to me to be dogmatic belief in matters of religion; and this is a clear inference even from no higher consideration than the interests of this world.
Men are therefore immeasurably interested in acquiring fixed ideas of God, of the soul, and of their general duties to their Creator and their fellow men; for doubt on these first principles would abandon all their actions to chance and would condemn them in some way to disorder and impotence.///This, then, is the subject on which it is most important for each of us to have fixed ideas; and unhappily it is also the subject on which it is most difficult for each of us, left to himself, to settle his opinions by the sole force of his reason. None but minds singularly free from the ordinary cares of life, minds at once penetrating, subtle, and trained by thinking, can, even with much time and care, sound the depths of these truths that are so necessary. And, indeed, we see that philosophers are themselves almost always surrounded with uncertainties; that at every step the natural light which illuminates their path grows dimmer and less secure; and that, in spite of all their efforts, they have discovered as yet only a few conflicting notions, on which the mind of man has been tossed about for thousands of years without ever firmly grasping the truth or finding novelty even in its errors. Studies of this nature [21] are far above the average capacity of men; and, even if the majority of mankind were capable of such pursuits, it is evident that leisure to cultivate them would still be wanting.///Fixed ideas about God and human nature are indispensable to the daily practice of men’s lives; but the practice of their lives prevents them from acquiring such ideas. The difficulty appears to be without a parallel. Among the sciences there are some that are useful to the mass of mankind and are within reach; others can be approached only by the few and are not cultivated by the many, who require nothing beyond their more remote applications; but the daily practice of the science I speak of is indispensable to all, although the study of it is inaccessible to the greater number.///General ideas respecting God and human nature are therefore the ideas above all others which it is most suitable to withdraw from the habitual action of private judgment and in which there is most to gain and least to lose by recognizing a principle of authority.///The first object and one of the principal advantages of religion is to furnish to each of these fundamental questions a solution that is at once clear, precise, intelligible, and lasting, to the mass of mankind. There are religions that are false and very absurd, but it may be affirmed that any religion which remains within the circle I have just traced, without pretending to go beyond it (as many religions have attempted to do, for the purpose of restraining on every side the free movement of the human mind), imposes a salutary restraint on the intellect; and it must be admitted that, if it does not save men in another world, it is at least very conducive to their happiness and their greatness in this.///This is especially true of men living in free countries. When the religion of a people is destroyed, doubt gets hold of the higher powers of the intellect and half paralyzes all the others. Every man accustoms himself to having only confused and changing notions on the subjects most interesting to his fellow creatures and himself. His opinions are ill-defended and easily abandoned; and in despair of ever solving by himself the hard problems respecting the destiny of man, he ignobly submits to think no more about them.///Such a condition cannot but enervate the soul, relax the springs of the will, and prepare a people for servitude. Not only does it [22] happen in such a case that they allow their freedom to be taken from them; they frequently surrender it themselves. When there is no longer any principle of authority in religion any more than in politics, men are speedily frightened at the aspect of this unbounded independence. The constant agitation of all surrounding things alarms and exhausts them. As everything is at sea in the sphere of the mind, they determine at least that the mechanism of society shall be firm and fixed; and as they cannot resume their ancient belief, they assume a master.///For my own part, I doubt whether man can ever support at the same time complete religious independence and entire political freedom. And I am inclined to think that if faith be wanting in him, he must be subject; and if he be free, he must believe.///Perhaps, however, this great utility of religions is still more obvious among nations where equality of conditions prevails than among others. It must be acknowledged that equality, which brings great benefits into the world, nevertheless suggests to men (as will be shown hereafter) some very dangerous propensities. It tends to isolate them from one another, to concentrate every man’s attention upon himself, and it lays open the soul to an inordinate love of material gratification.///The greatest advantage of religion is to inspire diametrically contrary principles. There is no religion that does not place the object of man’s desires above and beyond the treasures of earth and that does not naturally raise his soul to regions far above those of the senses. Nor is there any which does not impose on man some duties towards his kind and thus draw him at times from the contemplation of himself. This is found in the most false and dangerous religions. Religious nations are therefore naturally strong on the very point on which democratic nations are weak; this shows of what importance it is for men to preserve their religion as their conditions become more equal.///I have neither the right nor the intention of examining the supernatural means that God employs to infuse religious belief into the heart of man. I am at this moment considering religions in a purely human point of view; my object is to inquire by what means they may most easily retain their sway in the democratic ages upon which we are entering.///It has been shown that at times of general culture and equality [23] the human mind consents only with reluctance to adopt dogmatic opinions and feels their necessity acutely only in spiritual matters. This proves, in the first place, that at such times religions ought more cautiously than at any other to confine themselves within their own precincts; for in seeking to extend their power beyond religious matters, they incur a risk of not being believed at all. The circle within which they seek to restrict the human intellect ought therefore to be carefully traced, and beyond its verge the mind should be left entirely free to its own guidance. ….///[25] In speaking of philosophical method among the Americans I have shown that nothing is more repugnant to the human mind in an age of equality than the idea of subjection to forms. Men living at such times are impatient figures; to their eyes, symbols appear to be puerile artifices used to conceal or to set off truths that should more naturally be bared to the light of day; they are unmoved by ceremonial observances and are disposed to attach only a secondary importance to the details of public worship.///Those who have to regulate the external forms of religion in a democratic age should pay a close attention to these natural propensities of the human mind in order not to run counter to them unnecessarily.///I firmly believe in the necessity of forms, which fix the human mind in the contemplation of abstract truths and aid it in embracing them warmly and holding them with firmness. Nor do I suppose that it is possible to maintain a religion without external observances; but on the other hand, I am persuaded that in the ages upon which we are entering it would be peculiarly dangerous to multiply them beyond measure, and that they ought rather to be limited to as much as is absolutely necessary to perpetuate the doctrine itself, which is the substance of religion, of which the ritual is only the form. [footnote 1: In all religions there are some ceremonies that are inherent in the substance of the faith itself, and in these nothing should on any account be changed. This is especially the case with Roman Catholicism, in which the doctrine and the form are frequently so closely united as to form but one point of belief.] A religion which became more insistent in details, more inflexible, and more burdened with small observances during the time that men become more equal would soon find itself limited to a band of fanatic zealots in the midst of a skeptical multitude.///I anticipate the objection that, as all religions have general and eternal truths for their object, they cannot thus shape themselves to the shifting inclinations of every age without forfeiting their claim to certainty in the eyes of mankind. To this I reply again that the principal opinions which constitute a creed, and which theologians call articles of faith, must be very carefully distinguished from the accessories connected with them. Religions are obliged to hold fast to the former, whatever be the peculiar spirit of the age; but they should take good care not to bind themselves [25] in the same manner to the latter at a time when everything is in transition and when the mind, accustomed to the moving pageant of human affairs, reluctantly allows itself to be fixed on any point. The permanence of external and secondary things seems to me to have a chance of enduring only when civil society is itself static; under any other circumstances I am inclined to regard it as dangerous.///
2006
From Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, at pages 322-324:
[322] The customs of the Americans of the United States are, then, the peculiar cause which renders that people the only one of the American nations that is able to support a democratic government; and it is the influence of customs that produces the different degrees of order and prosperity which may be distinguished in the several Anglo-American democracies. Thus the effect which the democratic institutions is exaggerated in Europe.
Too much importance is attributed to legislation, too little to customs. These three great causes serve, no doubt, to regulate and direct American democracy; but if they were to be classed in their proper order, I should say that physical circumstances are less efficient than the laws, and the laws infinitely less so than the customs of the people. I am convinced that the most advantageous situation and the best possible laws cannot maintain a constitution in spite of the customs of the country; while the latter may turn to some advantage the most unfavorable positions and the worst laws. The importance of customs is a common truth to which study and experience incessantly direct our attention. It may be regarded as a central point in the range of observation, and the common termination of all my inquiries. So seriously do I insist upon this head that, if I have hitherto failed in making the reader feel the important influence of practical experience, the habits, the opinions in short, of the customs of the Americans upon the maintenance of their institutions, I have failed in the principal object of my work. . . .
[324] In America the same passions are to be met with as in Europe, some originating in human nature, others in the democratic condition of society. Thus, in the United States I found that restlessness of heart which is natural to men when all ranks are nearly equal and the chances of elevation are the same to all. I found there the democratic feeling of envy expressed under a thousand different forms. I remarked that the people there frequently displayed in the conduct of affairs a mixture of ignorance and presumption; and I inferred that in America men are liable to the same failings and exposed to the same evils as among ourselves. But upon examining the state of society more attentively, I speedily discovered that the Americans had made great and successful efforts to counteract these imperfections of human nature and to correct the natural defects of democracy. Their divers municipal laws appeared to me so many means of restraining the restless ambition of the citizens within a narrow sphere and of turning those same passions which might have worked havoc in the state to the good of the township or parish. The American legislators seem to have succeeded to some extent in opposing the idea of right to the feelings of envy; the permanence of religious morality to the continual shifting of politics; the experience of the people to their theoretical ignorance; and their practical knowledge of business to the impatience of their desires.
From Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Second Part, Second Book, Chapter II, Of Individualism in Democratic Countries", at pages 98-99:
I have shown how it is that in ages of equality every man seeks for his opinions within himself; I am now to show how it is that in the same ages all his feelings are turned towards himself alone.
Selfishness blights the germ of all virtue; individualism, at first only saps the virtues of public life; but in the long run it attacks and destroys all others and it is at length absorbed in downright selfishness. Selfishness is a vice as old as the world, which does not belong to one form of society more than to another; individualism is of democratic origin, and it threatens to spread in the same ratio as the equality of condition.///Among aristocratic nations, as families remain for centuries in the same condition, often on the same spot, all generations become, as it were, contemporaneous. A man almost always knows his forefathers and respects them; he thinks he already sees his remote descendants and he loves them. He willingly imposes duties on himself towards the former and the latter, and he will frequently sacrifice his personal gratifications to those who went before and to those who will come after him. Aristocratic institutions, moreover, have the effect of closely binding every man to several of his citizens. As the classes of an aristocratic people are [99] strongly marked and permanent, each of them is regarded by its own members as a sort of lesser country, more tangible and more cherished than the country at large. As in aristocratic communities all the citizens occupy fixed positions, one above another, the result that each of them always sees a man above himself whose patronage is necessary to him, and below himself another man whose co-operation he may claim. Men living in aristocratic ages are therefore almost always attached to something placed out of their own sphere, and they are often disposed to forget themselves. It is true that in these ages the notion of human fellowship is faint and that men seldom think of sacrificing themselves for mankind; but they often sacrifice themselves for other men. In democratic times, on the contrary, when the duties of each individual to the race are much more clear, devoted service to any one man becomes more rare; the bond of human affection is extended, but it is relaxed.///Among democratic nations new families are constantly springing up, others are constantly falling away, and all that remain change their condition; the woof of time is every instant broken and the track of generations effaced. Those who went before are soon forgotten; of those who will come after, no one has any idea: the interest of man is confined to those in close propinquity to himself. As each class gradually approaches others and mingles with them, its members become undifferentiated and lose their class identity for each other. Aristocracy had made a chain of all the members of the community, from the peasant to the king; democracy breaks that chain and severs every link of it.///As social conditions become more equal, the number of persons increases who, although they are neither rich nor powerful enough to exercise any great influence over their fellows, have nevertheless acquired or retained sufficient education and fortune to satisfy their own wants. They owe nothing to any man, they expect nothing from any man; they acquire the habit of always considering themselves as standing alone, and they are apt to imagine that their whole destiny is in their own hands.///Thus not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but it hides his descendants and separates his contemporaries from him; it throws him back forever upon himself alone and threatens in the end to confine him entirely within the solitude of his own heart.
From Paul Tillich and Carl Rogers, Pastoral Psychology, A Dialogue," (19 February, 1968) at pages 55-61:
[60] Tillich’s very last public appearance, a radio appearance with Carl Rogers on March 7, 1965.
again and again on man’s predicament and the appropriate therapeutic response, ///Rogers asked simply, “….I would be interested in knowing why you tend to put your thinking–which is very congenial to that of a number of psychologists these days–why you tend to put your thinking in religious terminology and theological language?”///Tillich responded by saying: “First: now the fundamental point is that I believe, metaphorically speaking, man lives not only in the horizontal dimension…but he also has in himself something which I call, metaphorically, the vertical line…not to a heaven with a God and other beings in it…towards …something which is infinite, unconditional, ultimate…Man has an experience in himself that he is more than a piece of finite objects which come and go….I don’t believe that scientific language is able to express the vertical dimension adequately….This is the reason why I think we need another language, and this language is the language of symbols and myths; it is a religious language….we know the symbols have to be reinterpreted and even radically reinterpreted. But I have taken this heavy yoke upon myself and I have decided long ago I will continue to the end.”
From Paul Tillich, The Shaking of the Foundations, You are Accepted" (1948) at pages 161-162:
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Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual, because we have violated another life, a life which we loved, or from which we were estranged. It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage. Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted! If such an experience happens to us, we experience grace. After such an experience we may not be better than before, and we may not believe more than before. But everything is transformed. In that moment, grace conquers sin, and reconciliation bridges the gulf of estrangement. And nothing more is demanded of this experience, no religious or moral or intellectual presupposition, nothing but acceptance.”
1948
From Paul Tillich, The Shaking of the Foundations, The Yoke of Religion" (1948) at page 93:
25 At that time Jesus said, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; 26 yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.
27 All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. 28 Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.
29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. [94] These words of Jesus are universal, and fit every human being and every human situation. They are simple; they grasp the heart of the primitive as well as that of the profound, disturbing the mind of the wise. Practically every word of Jesus had this character, sharing the difference between Him as the originator and the dependent interpreters disciples and theologians, saints and preachers.