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Experiments in Personal Religion: Study III
Religious Experience through the Influence of the Beautiful
H. N. Wieman

Experiments in the Religious Experience of Beauty

1. The Religious Experience of Beauty

There are four ways to experience beauty. One is the way of the aesthete; the second the way of the artist; the third the way of the moralist; the fourth, the religious way. The same person may experience beauty in all four of these ways at different times according to his mood. But he can scarcely have all four experiences at the same time; and generally he will experience beauty in one of these ways rather than the others unless he specially cultivates some other. We wish to suggest a method for cultivating the religious way of experiencing beauty. Our first step must be to clarify and distinguish the religious way as over against these others.

The aesthete finds an ecstacy in the experience of beauty which is for him the supreme good. He seeks nothing more; he wants more. This state of feeling is the end result for him. He seeks beauty where it may be found, but he does not create it. He cultivates his capacity for his appreciation that he may enter more deeply into the experience. But he does nothing more about it. When he has attained the highest ecstacy there is nothing more save to prolong that state of feeling.

The experience of the artist is very different. He is inspired by beauty to create a beautiful object. The joy of beauty is for him constructive. It is the stern joy of wringing from out the raw materials of nature a thing of beauty. It may be beautiful sound, as in music, or beautiful movement, as in the dance, or beauty of rhythm and imagery, as in poetry. But there is a strenuosity and drive in the experience of the artist that is not found in that of the aesthete.

The moralist finds still another good in beauty. Beauty stirs him to strenuous and constructive endeavor. In this respect he is like the artist and different from the aesthete. But his endeavor is not with the materials of any fine art. It is with the materials out of which we construct the good life. Beauty helps him immensely in his endeavor to achieve the good life. It makes the good life more alluring. When moral ideals are clothed in beauty, as in Tennyson's Idylls of the King, and in many songs and sermons, they inspire to moral endeavor as they could not do in any other guise.

But the most profound experience of beauty is religious. The aesthete misses it; so does the artist and moralist, except as these become religious. When we say that the aesthete, the moralist, and the artist must become religious in order to have the most profound experience of beauty, we do not mean that they must subscribe to any creed, nor join a church, although they might well do this. All we mean is that this most profound experience of beauty is religious, and he who has it thereby to that degree becomes religious.

What is this most profound and religious experience of beauty.? We must try to indicate its character, at least to the point where it can be recognized.

In this most profound experience beauty makes us aware of a reality which is richer and deeper and more marvelous than anything we can dream or conceive. This reality is not anything we perceive in the beautiful object. It is not anything we fancy. We do not here refer to bright visions that may come to us as we listen to music or to a story or contemplate any other beautiful thing. This reality which enters our awareness when we are under the spell of beauty is quite unimaginable. It is beyond the reach of our dreams just as truly as it eludes our sentences. We feel it like a ghostly presence. It seems almost to be right there, and yet it is nowhere.

Two questions must be answered concerning this experience: (1) Is this sense of unimaginable reality an illusion? (2) In what sense and under what conditions is it religious?

Answer to the first question will be found through an examination of the psychology of this experience. In this profound experience of beauty the object is so formed and so contemplated that it arouses in us a multiplicity of plastic and subtle and tentative and novel responses. Now any response aroused in us which is strange and new, especially if it consist of a complicated interplay of many tentative and novel responses, will give us this sense of strange and wonderful and unimaginable reality.

The sense of unimaginable reality which comes to us in this psychological state is not an illusion if we understand this reality to be that wholly different world which would be ours if we so reconstructed ourselves and our environment that interaction between self and environment would be very different from what it now is. The spell of beauty does not engender illusion because this profound religious experience of beauty is precisely the experience which makes a wholly different world possible. It does so because it arouses innumerable subtle, tentative, and novel impulses. These impulses provide ' the necessary psychological material out of which new and different habits can be formed. This possibility of new and different habits makes possible that reconstruction of self and environment which would bring about a different world. Since beauty engenders that psychological state out of which the required habits might be developed, it makes new and different and unimaginable worlds a genuine possibility. The psychological state induced in us by beauty is the first prerequisite to the achievement of a different world.

So we conclude that the sense of unimaginable reality which comes to us under the spell of beauty is not an illusion if it be regarded as awareness not of something actual, but of something possible.

In the presence of great beauty one becomes as a little child. A little child is capable of great modification of behavior and development. Therefore the doors of possibility stand wide open before him. With advancing age these doors close one after another. But the religious experience of beauty, by arousing many plastic, novel, and tentative impulses, preserves our youth. It keeps us plastic. It preserves and it restores our capacity for growth and for multiform adaptability. It opens many a door that was closed even for the child. It causes the man to turn and become as a little child; and thereby his entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven becomes a possibility. Beauty does truly usher us to the borderland of unexplored reality.

But we have not yet explained how this experience is religious. Merely to become aware of genuine but unimaginable reality is not in itself religious. It becomes religious only when one goes forth to seek that new and different world by living the life of faith.

The life of faith may mean either one of two things: It may mean waiting in the hope that death will take us into that other world; or it may mean the aggressive search and striving for the ways and means by which to achieve that other world here on earth. This search and striving requires experimental ventures in ways of conducting one's life, which is one form of faith. Also it means searching after the best relations with God, because God is that factor or character in the universe which will bring the best possible world into actuality when we establish the required relations with him. We know God will do that because God is that by definition. No matter how one conceives God, he always thinks of God as that particular being who will bring the greatest good to mankind when men establish right relations with him.

Therefore we say the experience of beauty is religious when it does two things: (1) when it gives us a sense of richer, deeper reality than we can conceive or imagine, but a reality which constitutes a truly possible world; (2) and when it inspires us to shape our whole lives in such a way as to make that adaptation to God through which the best unattained but possible world shall be brought into existence.

How does this differ from morality? In morality we strive to do what we know is right. Religion includes that, but goes on beyond it. Morality is trying to live according to the best ideals of this world. But the religious living which issues from the experience of beauty tries to discover the ideals of that other possible world, which may be wholly different from the ideals of this world.

The aesthete, the artist, the moralist, and the prophet all find their inspiration and their insight in beauty. Beauty stirs them each to a strange unrest and 'sets them to climbing toward high places. The aesthete climbs toward that ecstacy which awaits the sensitive soul in the presence of beauty. The artist climbs toward the creation of those forms that come to haunt him after beauty has visited him. The moralist climbs toward those ideals which beauty has rendered radiantly alluring. But the religious prophet climbs a path more perilous, more mysterious, than the others. He goes forth in the attempt to wring from out the immensities of the universe that other world, wholly different from this, which visits him in ghostly presence when he gazes on the face of beauty.

2. How Beauty Leads to God

Beauty is not confined to works of art. Art provides us with only a small part of the beauty of the world. Nature, including unpremeditated human behavior, is full of beauty. The most profound and stirring beauty steals upon us unawares without the intervention of human handiwork. just as we pass around the point of a hill we perceive for the first time a tree standing in a meadow with the autumn haze beyond it and clinging dimly about it, and we are face to face with beauty. Or we pass through a strange dense wood and suddenly come upon a waterfall, the foaming water plunging from a granite height, a little rainbow at the foot, and there in the dark pool a great globule of scarlet reflected from a flower upon the bank. Or we lift our eyes to the cold blue mountains in the distance, their peaks streaked with gleaming white, and for a moment the ecstacy is ours.

The beautiful object, whether of art or nature, not only opens to us the vast realm of possibility. It also makes us aware of the depth of richness in the concrete actual world, and does this beyond any other kind of experience. The beautiful object is so fashioned that we can be simultaneously responsive to its many different parts and qualities. The ordinary object which is not beautiful, or the beauty of which is not appreciated, has only one or two features to which we react. We ignore it in all respects save those one or two qualities in it which happen to make it useful to us. The ugly object, on the other hand, has many different features to which we react; but our responses conflict, one tending to inhibit the other. Only the beautiful object is so formed that we can respond to its many parts and qualities all at once and yet do so without inner conflict or distress.

Thus beauty makes us aware of the rich fulness of the actual as well as the great realm of possible worlds. For this reason it brings us into intimate association with God. For God is that which (1) gives the rich fullness of reality to the actual world and (2) determines the scope and limitation of the possible transformations which this actual world can undergo. Whoever discerns the richness and depth of the actual world, and also the realm of possible worlds into which this actual world can be transformed, is very close to God. Since beauty gives us this experience it brings us into the presence of God. It can do this, however, only when we have that profound experience which we have described as the religious experience of beauty. The aesthete, the artist, and the moralist, unless they undergo this religious experience, do not have that awareness of unimaginable reality which constitutes the religious significance of beauty.

3. A Personal Experiment with Beauty

Seek out that form of beauty that stirs you most deeply. For most people, perhaps, great music will do this best. Before going into the presence of beauty prepare yourself by worship. Go where you can be completely alone. Relax and try to sense the all-encompassing presence of God. Remember that in adaptation to him you may attain to wholly unknown possibilities of good. Then examine yourself to discover what readjustment of your total personality is needed to enter into the fullest possible appreciation of that beauty which you are shortly to experience. Repeat quietly and trustingly many times this required readjustment. Then end the season of worship in the state of passive relaxed awareness of God. Having thus prepared yourself, go to that place where you can surrender yourself to the most profound experience of your chosen form of beauty. After it is past note whether you had in any way or to any degree the sense of unimaginable reality which has been described. Has it deepened your sense of the presence of God? Does it increase the zest and eagerness of your quest of a better world?

To complete the experiment you should make your life a great venturesome search for that other possible world, wholly different from this, which hovered so mysteriously near you under the magic spell of beauty. But such an experiment would far exceed the scope of a short course like this. Only after centuries have passed can the result of such an experiment be reported. Only when ages are done shall we fathom the mysterious possibility that beauty brings so dimly near.