Much, of course, depends here upon the sense in which the word
"experience" is used. The assumption need not necessarily be
challenged except where, as is very often the case, an arbitrarily
limited definition of experience is intended. From this general
assumption flows the subjective theory of morals; from it is derived
the conviction that the rationalistic values in religion are the only
real, or at least demonstrable, ones; and hence from this comes the
shifting of the seat of religious authority from "revelation" to
experience. In so far as this is a correction of emphasis only, or the
abandonment of a misleading term rather than the denial of one of the
areas and modes of understanding, again we have no quarrel with it.
But if it means an exclusion of the supersensuous sources of knowledge
or the denial of the existence of absolute values as the source of our
relative and subjective understanding, then it strikes at the heart
of religion. Because the religious life is built on those factors of
experience that lie above the strictly rational realm of consciousness
just as the pagan view rests on primitive instincts that lie beneath
it. Of course, in asserting the importance of these "supersensuous"
values the religionist does not mean that they are beyond the reach
of human appraisal or unrelated by their nature to the rest of our
understanding.
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