http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/197834742

Substance and shadow or, Morality and religion in their relation to life: an essay upon the physics of of creation

"The leading words of my title-page call for a precise definition, in order that the reader may clearly discern the aim of the discussion to which I invite his attention. By morality I mean that sentiment of selfhood or property which every man not an idiot feels in his own body. It is a state of conscious freedom or rationality, exempting him from the further control of parents or guardians, and entitling him in his own estimation and that of his fellows, to the undivided ownership of his words and deeds. It is the basis of conscience in man, or what enables him to appropriate good and evil to himself, instead of ascribing the former as he may one day learn to do exclusively to celestial, the latter exclusively to infernal influence. The word is often viciously used as a synonyme of spiritual goodness, as when we say, "A is a very moral man," meaning a just one; or, "B is a very immoral man," meaning an unjust one. No man can be either good or evil, either just or unjust, but by virtue of his morality; i. e. unless he have selfhood or freedom entitling him to own his action. This is a conditio sine qua non. The action by which he majority or manhood, what every man, as man, possesses in common with every other man. By religion I mean -- what is invariably meant by the term where the thing itself still exists -- such a conscience on man's part of a forfeiture of the Divine favor, as perpetually urges him to make sacrifices of his ease, his convenience, his wealth, and if need be his life, in order to restore himself, if so it be possible, to that favor. This is religion in its literal form; natural religion; religion as it stands authenticated by the universal instincts of the race, before it has undergone a spiritual conversion into life, and while claiming still a purely ritual embodiment It is however in this gross form the germ of all humane culture. Accordingly we sometimes use the term in an accommodated sense, i. e. to express the spiritual results with which religion is fraught rather than the mere carnal embodiment it first of all offers to such results. Thus the apostle James says: Pure and undefiled religion (i. e., religion viewed no longer as a letter, but as a spirit), is to visit the fatherless and the widow, and keep oneself unspotted from the world (i. e., has exclusive reference to the life). We also say proverbially, handsome is that handsome does; not meaning of course to stretch the word handsome out of its literal dimensions, but only by an intelligible metonomy of body for soul, or what is natural for what is spiritual, to express in a compendious way the superiority of moral to physical beauty. My reader will always understand me, then, as using the word religion in its strictly literal signification, to indicate our ritual or ceremonious homage to the Divine name. Now morality and religion, thus interpreted, are regarded on my title-page as concurring to promote the evolution of man's spiritual destiny on earth"--Introduction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).

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