RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Religion
aspects of religious experience. Psychology traces the religious sentiment to the feeling of dependence
and the feeling of mystery or awe.
4. Psy- The feeling of dependence involves
chology of ethical causality and teleology. In
Religion, the feeling of mystery is involved
reverence for the indefinitely great or the infinite. The process here is twofold: that of " ejection," by which the self reads into the other (or God) the contents of its own feeling; and that of reading back into one's self both the known qualities of the other (or God) derived from the sense of dependence, and the unknown or mysterious qualities of God which give rise to the feeling of awe or reverence. This investigation of religion is confirmed by a study of the genesis of personal self-consciousness in the child. Religion is thus traced not to an instinct but to an impulse which is incapable of further analysis. In the development of religion, anthropology shows that no one thoughtcontent is essential to religion, that the objects of religious sentiment are symbolic and yet ever personal, and that religion as an experience is a social phenomenon. The unity of religious experience is interpreted from the normal action of consciousness, in which appears the social nature of religion, the personal object of it, and the unfolding of this type of consciousness as a function of personal development wherein religion is seen to be an integral part of normal human consciousness. Its non-appearance in adult life is an indication of arrested development. The varieties of religious experience, whether normal or pathological, are referred to personal idiosyncrasies, due to expansive or repressive emotions, to ideas which arise from different philosophical postulates, and to alterations of personality which set up distinct or separate centers of action within the same individual. Psychology has also its inquiry concerning particular aspects of the religious life as, e.g., with reference to conversion as an adolescent phenomenon cr as an adult experience, the nature of religious belief (J. B. Pratt, The Psychology of Religious Belief, New York, 1907), mysticism (W James, Varieties of Religious Experience, ib. 1907), and the psychology of suggestion and the crowd (Boris Sidis, The Psychology of Suggestion, ib. 1909; E. A. Ross, Social Psychology, ib. 1908). In this field exploration has scarcely more than blazed the way, but already the work entered upon unconsciously by Augustine in his " Confessions," by Jonathan Edwards (q.v.) with clear purpose in his Treatise on the Religious Affections, and by Horace Bushnell (q.v.) in his Christian Nurture has produced results of massive and rewarding worth (cf. E. D. Starbuck, The Psychology of Religion, London, 1899; G. A. Coe, The Spiritual Life, New York, 1900; J. M. Baldwin, Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development, ib. 1899; F M. Davenport, Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals, ib. 1905; J. M. Baldwin, Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, ii. 458 sqq., ib. 1902; G. B. Cutten, The Psychological Phenomena of Christianity, ib. 1908. So far as religion is conceived of as consciousness of social values, it is an attitude, a "construct," built up through overt activities of primitive groups which were either spontaneous
and playful or with reference to practical needs of the process of life, for the most part socially mediated. This view finds strong allies in ethnology and functional psychology. The activities and attitudes mutually condition each other, and their difference in different individuals and races is accounted for by reference to the varying social conditions in which they appear and of which they are products (cf. I. King, The Development of Religion, ib. 1910; E. S. Ames, The Psychology of Religious Experience, Boston, 1910).
The philosophy of religion assumes data drawn from the science of religion and seeks for the ultimate grounds of the beliefs there given, or by an epistemo-
logical process endeavors to prove the
5. Philoso- limitations of human knowledge and
phy of so found religion on revelation alone.
Religion. As a name it has displaced " Natural
Theology." It is susceptible of many kinds of treatment. (1) It may involve the problem of our real knowledge of the Absolute as opposed to agnosticism, to pure feeling, to immediate intuition, and to logical demonstration; the problem of the necessity of religion and the essential meaning of revelation; and the problem of the ultimate interpretation of the idea of religion in the identity of God and man as self-conscious Spirit, resulting in a moral idealism wherein is affirmed the unity of all spiritual life — of finite persons among themselves, and of these with the Infinite (cf. J. Caird, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, Edinburgh, 1880). (2) The philosophy of religion may be restricted to theism. Accordingly, its aim is to establish the validity of belief in the supreme reality of the world or God. This is attempted from various points of view in harmony with the particular philosophical assumptions by which different writers are guided. Thus the inquiry is based wholly on revelation as the source of religion (H. Mansel, Limits of Religious Thought, London, 1858), upon evolutionary doctrine and personalism (J. Fiske, Idea of God, Boston, 1885), intuitional philosophy (S. Harris, The Philosophical Basis of Theism, New York, 1887), mystical idealism (C. B. Upton, Bases of Religious Belief , London, 1893), ethical considerations (A. Seth, Two Lectures on Theism, Edinburgh, 1897), transcendental idealism (J. Royce, The World and the Individual, New York, 1900-01; cf. A. Caldecott, Philosophy of Religion, ib. 1901). (3) The philosophy of religion may aim at a still wider scope and in so doing traverse most of the questions which arise in systematic theology. Thus it investigates the nature, origin, and development of religion, the nature and relations of man to a higher being, religion as a life both in what it offers and in what it realizes, the reconciliation of the ethical idea of God with the scientific and philosophical doctrine of the world, and the destiny both of things and of persons in their relation to the infinite and absolute self (cf. G. T. Ladd, Philosophy of Religion, ib. 1905). (4) The philosophy of religion may endeavor to establish the truth of its axiom of the conservation of value by considerations drawn from epistemology, psychology, and ethics (cf. H. Hoffding, Philosophy of Religion, London, 1906).
C. A. Beckwith.
Religion
Religion and Literature