PREFACE

This work is intended primarily as a handbook for beginners in the psychological analysis of religion. The foremost concern, therefore, has been to make clear the nature of the problems, the kinds of data, the methods of research, and the achieved results.

The justification for attempting such a handbook lies partly in the inherent difficulty of analyzing religious experience, and partly in conditions that grow out of the extreme youth of the psychology of religion. We are still in the beginnings-plural of this enterprise. Of ten recent writers who have published volumes of a general character devoted largely or wholly to the subject, no three pursue the same method, or hold the same point of view as to what the religious consciousness is. I refer to Ames, Durkheim, Höffding, James, King, Leuba, Pratt, Starbuck, Stratton, and Wundt. Such disparity is not a reproach to a scientific inquiry in its first stages, but rather a sign of its vitality. But students who are approaching the subject for the first time are likely to be confused by the seeming babel, even though it be more apparent than real, or else—and this is a more common and a greater evil-to suppose that the first tongue that they happen to hear speaks the one exclusive language of science. I have therefore attempted, not only to sharpen the outlines of problems, but also to provide, particularly in the alphabetical and topical bibliographies, convenient apparatus for following up

problems, and especially for setting them in a scientific perspective.

My first intention was to make this work simply a handbook. But inasmuch as even an introduction to the researches of others is bound to represent some standpoint of one's own, and inasmuch as candor is best served by making standpoints explicit, I decided to include a rather extended statement of certain inquiries and conclusions that I have found more and more interesting and, as I believe, fruitful. The upspringing of functional analysis of mental life is likely to prove immensely significant for the sciences of man, who contemplates and judges his own functions. But functionalism in psychology is still in its infancy-it is only now discovering its own fingers and toes. It is working with categories borrowed from biology, not clearly realizing that it has taken for its parish the whole world of values. To meet this situation I have felt it necessary, not only to assume the standpoint of functional analysis, but also to investigate it. The result is a view of religion that does not separate it at all from instinct, yet finds its peculiar function elsewhere.

I have not attempted a balanced treatment of the whole subject of the psychology of religion. Rather, I have brought into the foreground the problems that seem to be most pressing at the present moment. Here, without doubt, my own mind reveals its leanings. I have no desire to conceal them. All attention, in fact, is selective; all investigation is moved by a greater interest in something than in something else.

It is not always necessary to make one's interests explicit, but investigation of the more intimate aspects

of experience that we call valuational proceeds best upon a basis of frank self-revelation. The investigator of the psychology of religion, whatever be the case with others, cannot afford to neglect the psychology of his own psychologizing.1

That the reader may duly weigh my tendencies, they are made explicit rather than carried along as suppressed premises in supposedly impersonal thinking-as though there could be thinking without a motived will-to-think." As a further aid to critical reading of this work, I here and now set down a list of my attitudes with respect to religion and to the psychology of religion. The reader may then

'One writer, Professor J. H. Leuba, has set a good precedent by frankly letting his readers know something of his religious experience. Naturally, he thinks that his own experience has brought him into "the ideal condition for the student of religion" (A Psychological Study of Religion [New York, 1912], p. 275, and note)! On the danger of the 'psychologist's fallacy" in the psychology of religion, see W. F. Cooley, "Can Science Speak the Decisive Word in Theology?" Journal of Philosophy, X (1913), 296-301.

* Such limitations are not peculiar to investigations in which, as in the present instance, the valuational aspect of consciousness is in the foreground. It is a general rule that scientific men are more certain of their generalizations than of their data. The least certain parts of psychology, for example, are revealed in current discussions of the nature of the psychical, and of the nature and method of psychology. In the same way the biologist finds himself hard pressed to say just what the difference is between a vital phenomenon and any other. Every investigator, whatever his specialty, as a matter of fact (1) selects his data, and (2) treats them from the standpoint of a particular interest. What a blessing it would be if a catalogue could be made of the principles of selection actually employed, and of the particular interests that determine analyses, in each science! But-this would plunge us into the problem of values, and into philosophy! Rather than take this plunge let us keep up the delusion that as scientific men we depersonalize ourselves into “clear, cold logic-engines”!

judge for himself the extent to which they act as prejudices.

1. The religious enterprise is to me the most important undertaking in life. Much is at stake. This importance of religion attaches to some extent also to efforts to analyze religion. For such efforts, by focusing attention on one point or another, may result in either the heightening or the lowering of appreciation for something valuable.

2. I do not appeal to any religious experience of my own as settling for me any question of psychology. Nor do I accept as authoritative the report of anyone else that such questions have been settled by his experience. Every religious experience, without exception, is to me a datum, to be examined by analytic processes that do not appear or that are undeveloped in the experience itself. Now, it is of the essence of religious dogma to assert that somebody-pope, council, prophet, inspired writer-has had a religious experience that does settle certain psychological questions concerning itself— such questions, for example, as the difference between this experience and ordinary experiences, the way in which certain ideas have got into the mind, and much more. This fact, as well as general considerations of history and of scientific method, make it impossible for me to reconcile the psychology of religion with any dogmatic authority.

3. On the other hand, the religious urgency that I have already mentioned makes me more or less cautious with regard to the content of religious tradition—particularly the Christian tradition in which I have been reared. Here I find, not a dead body awaiting dissection,

but a living being-one needing surgery, I am sure, but alive, and to live. Freedom from intellectual authority and the practice of psychologizing religious facts have rather intensified than lessened my conviction (1) that within the historical movement broadly called the Christian religion the human spirit has come to demand more of life than it has demanded elsewhere, that is, that in this religion we have the greatest of all stimuli; and (2) that this stimulus both proceeds from and points to reality. I entertain as my own, in short, the Christian faith in divine fatherhood and human brotherhood, and I work cordially within a Christian church to make this religion prevail. Quite naturally, no doubt, I assume that looking at religion from the inside helps rather than hinders analysis, and I certainly find no motive in the Christian religion for undervaluing other religions or even non-religions; the principle of brotherhood makes me expect to find something of myself in the other man's point of view. But if any reader thinks that being thus religious has warped my psychology, I request that he will do two things: (1) not rest in any general surmise or assumption, but find the specific facts that have been neglected, misrepresented, or misanalyzed, and (2) examine his own way of getting at the inside of the same facts, that is, confess his own interests as I am now confessing mine. In this way he will not only correct my one-sidedness, but also hasten the correction of his own, and science will move the faster up its zigzag trail.

4. My religious experience has been as free from mysticism as it has been from dogmatism. Indeed, the chief incitement to seek mystical experiences came to me wrapped up in dogma, and the disappointment of