my adolescence, when the promised and sought-for mystical "witness of the Spirit" did not come, caused me to turn away from both the dogmatic and the mystical approach to religion. Not far from the middle of my college days it was settled-though I could not then realize how well settled-that thenceforth I should look for the center of gravity of religion in the moral will. I do not rely upon intuitions, nor make the subconscious my refuge in the day of critical adversity. Life seems to me to be an ethical enterprise; my life problem concerns the choice of my cause, the investment of my purposes; and this, surely, implies distrust of anything that evaporates in the sunlight of my most critical self-possession. 5. From the standpoint of the moral will, the rational possibility of faith in a personal God and in life after death seems to me to be immensely important. For I conceive the ethical in social terms, and therefore for me persons are the paramount reality. If I had any merely individual self-consciousness, its continuance after death, or before death, would not be clearly worth while. Our life gets its meaning, its reality, by being social. But when once it has this meaning, how can one consent to perish or to let others perish without moral protest? If our current social thinking does not view the question of survival after death as an acute social problem, it is because we have already made an unsocial assent to the idea of a death that ends all; it is because our sociality is trunkated. So with regard to God. It is socially desirable that "an ideal socius" should exist. If this desire is only slightly in evidence in much of our social thinking, the reason, as before, is that we have steeled ourselves not to desire too great a social good. I, for one, am unwilling to subject myself to any such selfdiscipline. I will not curb my heart as long as its desires are truly social. My personal religion, in fact, consists, first and foremost, in the emancipation of social desire. 6. Finally, I own up to a strong aversion to dogmatism in science as well as in religion. In scientific circles, just as in religion, politics, and business, there are orthodoxies and heresies, and both orthodoxy and heresy may be dogmatic. I am inclined to think that science takes itself too seriously at times. Possibly we could become more scientific by cultivating a sense of humor! How would it do to start a “Scientific Gridiron Club" for the purpose of "roasting" our foibles? Once a year we could play the harlequin with our freshly discarded convictions and with our freshly adopted ones alike. We could see ourselves following scientific fads and running in scientific herds, being moved, like the profane, by suggestion. We could coolly gaze upon the heat and the haste with which we have endeavored to preach and to legislate for life. We could, in short, behold science as an exhibition of human nature. The psychology of religion may be expected, of course, to modifiy to some extent our religious practices and our theological notions, but it is not likely to fill with great success the rôle of prophet, or of pope, or even of business manager! GEORGE A. COE NEW YORK CITY TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE CHAPTER I. RELIGION AS AN OBJECT OF PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY II. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MENTAL MECHANISMS AND Appendix: On the Specific Nature of Mental III. THE DATA, AND HOW THEY ARE ASCERTAINED NESS V. RACIAL BEGINNINGS IN RELIGION VI. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA OF GOD VII. RELIGION AND THE RELIGIONS VIII. RELIGION AS GROUP CONDUCT IX. RELIGION AS INDIVIDUAL CONDUCT 136 |