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Dr. Charlotte Krause : Her Life & Literature
tusks, defined it as a pointed weapon; the third, after touching the trunk, said the elephant was a leather bag; the fourth caught hold of one of the ears, and defined the whole animal as a flapping fan; the fifth, after passing his hand over its body, declared it to be a mountain; the sixth, who had touched one of the legs, said the elephant was a pillar; and the seventh described it as a piece of rope, because he had just caught hold of the tail. Each of them grasped only part of the nature of the actual thing, and just so, each of the various religions on earth appears to make us see a different aspect of Truth Divine. How then are we entitled to speak of merit in one or another of them ? Criterion of an Ideal Religion
As a matter of fact, the individual, whenever acting, endeavours to act so as to establish, or to maintain, an optimum (i.e., best possible degree ) of physical well-being, in response to its innate egotistic instincts. In this activity, it feels itself, often and again, checked by another kind of inner voices, which ( no matter whether they be called conscience, or categorical imperative, or social instincts, or whatever else ), regularly warn it, whenever egotism tempts it to transgress one or another of the universal commandments of ethics, and to endanger, thereby, directly or indirectly, the well-being of the social body to which it belongs. Life seems to be nothing but an attempt of the individual to keep itself balancing, as it were, on the delicate line of demarcation between the postulates of egotism and those of ethics, avoiding to hurt its own interests on one, and those of society on the other side. This state of equilibrium is experienced, by the refined mind, as the optimum of inner happiness attainable under the given juncture of circumstances. It is that bliss, that ‘Peace of God', which religion promises to its followers.
For religion has always considered it its task to indicate that line of demarcation, winding along between those two postulates. Every religion has approached this task with boldness and determination, and in its own peculiar way, following its own particular
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