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752 THE MONIST.

is made in quite an hypothetical spirit. And one is here reminded

that the complaints by critics of "lack of system," of "the ignoring
of fundamental points," etc., in "Pragmatic" literature is certainly
premature. Nothing so far has been put out that pretends to be any
thing more than prolegomena.
On the whole it is safe to say that whatever becomes of the
"Pragmatic movement," when the history of "the revival of Prag
matism" or "Humanism," or "Teleological Empiricism" is written,
Mr. Schiller's contributions are certain to have a prominent and per
manent place.
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO. A. W. MOORE.

THE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE.

The least religious experience is so mysterious and so com

plex, that a moderate degree of reflection upon it tends to a sense
of intellectual impotence. "If I speak," says Emerson, "I define and
confine, and am less." One would gladly set down religion among
the unspeakable things and avoid the imputation of degrading it. It
is certain that the enterprise of defining religion is at present in dis
repute. It has been undertaken so often and so unsuccessfully that
contemporary students for themost part prefer to supply a list of his
torical definitions of religion, and let their variety demonstrate their
futility. Metaphysicians and psychologists agree that in view of the
diff rences of creed, ritual, organization, conduct and temperament
that have been true of different religions in different times and
places, and may as well abandon the idea that there is a constant
element.

But on the other hand we have the testimony afforded by the

name religion ; and the ordinary judgments of men to the effect that
it signifies something to be religious, and to be more or less religious.
There is an elementary logical principle to the effect that a group
name implies certain common group-characters. Impatience with ab
stract or euphemistic definitions should not blind us to the truth. Even the
psychologist tends in his description of religious phenomena to single
out and emphasize what he calls a typical religious experience. And
the same applies to the idealist's treatment of the matter. Religion^
he reasons, is essentially a development of which the true meaning
can be seen only in the higher stages. The primitive religion, is,
he argues, only implicit religion. But lower stages cannot be regard
ed as belonging to a single development with higher stages, if there
 CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 753

be not some achial promise of the latter in the earlier, or some ele
ment which endures throughout. It is unavoidable, then, to assume
that in dealing with religion we are dealing with a specific and de
finable experience.
The profitableness of such an undertaking as the present one
is another matter. It may well be that in so human and practical
an affair as religion, definition is peculiarly inappropriate. But is
there not a human and practical value in the very defining of re
ligion? Is there not a demand for it in the peculiar relation that
exists between religion and the progress of enlightenment? Relig
ion associates itself with the habits of society. The progress of en
lightenment means that more or less all the time, and very pro
foundly at certain critical times, society must change its habits. The
consequence is that religion is likely tobe abandoned with the old habits.
The need of a new religion is therefore a chronic one. The reformer
in religion, or the man who wishes to be both enlightened and re
ligious, is chiefly occupied with the problem of disentangling
religion pure and undefiled from definite discredited practices and
opinions. And the solution of the problem turns upon some appre
hension of the essence of religion. There is a large amount of
necessary and unnecessary tragedy due to the extrinsic connection
between ideas and certain modes of their expression. There can be
no more serious and urgent duty than that of expressing as directly,
and so as truly as possible, the great permanent human concerns.
The men to whom educational reform has been largely due have
been the men who have remembered for their fellows what this
whole business of education is after all for. Comenius and Pesta
lozzi served society by stripping educational activity of its historical
and institutional accessories and laying bare the genuine human
need that these are designed to satisfy. There is a similar virtue in
the insistent attempt to distinguish between the essential and the ac
cessory in religion.
Although declining to be discouraged by the conspicuousness
of past failures in this connection, one may well profit by them. The
amazing complexity of religious phenomena must somehow be seen
to be consistent with their common nature. The religious expe
rience must not only be found, but must also be reconciled with
"the varieties of religious experience." The inadequacy of the well
known definitions of religion may be attributed to several causes.
The commonest fallacy is to define religion in terms of a religion,
My definition of religion must include my brother's religion, even
though he live on the other side of the globe, and my ancestor's re
 754 THE MONIST.

ligion, in spite of his prehistoric remoteness. Error arises here

through the attempt to define religion in terms of what it ought
to be. There is a question as to the relation between ideal religion
and actual religion; but the field of religion contains by common
consent religions that must on their own grounds condemn one
another, religions that are bad religions, and yet religions.
A more enlightened, and therefore more dangerous, fallacy, isdue
to the supposition that religion can be defined exclusively in terms of
some department of human nature. From this standpoint religion
has been defined in terms exclusively of feeling, of intellect or of
conduct. It is always easy to overthrow such a definition by rais
ing the question as to the treatment of definitely describable relig
ious phenomena that belong to a department of human life avowedly
excluded by the definition. Religion is not feeling, because there
are many phlegmatic God-fearing men whose religion consists in
good works. Religion is not conduct, for there are many mystics
whose very religion is withdrawal from the field of action. Re
ligion is not intelligence, for no one has ever been able to formulate
a creed that is common to all religions. Yet without a doubt we
must look for the essence of religion in human nature. The present
psychological interest in religion has emphasized this truth. How,
then, shall we escape a facultative or departmental account of it?
Modern psychology suggests an answer. As Dr. Leuba has point
ed out, the most illuminating conception of human nature in con
nection with this inquiry is that which points out the interdependence
of knowledge, feeling and volition.* The perfect case of this unity
is belief. The believing experience is cognitive in its intent, but
practical and emotional as well in its content. I believe when I take
for granted. The object of my belief is not merely known but also
felt and acted upon. What I believe expresses itself in my total
experience.
Thereis some hope, then, of an adequate definition of the re
ligious experience if it be regarded as belonging to the psychologi
cal type of belief. Belief, however, is evidently a broader category
than that of religion. An account of religion in terms of believing,
and the particular type of it here in question would, then, constitute
the central stem of a psychology of religion. But belief is more
than believing. There is an object believed, and the believing ex
perience means to be true. Hence to complete an account of re
ligion one must consider its object, that is, its cognitive implica
* Leuba : "Introduction to a Psychological of Religion."
Study Monist,
Vol. XI, p. 195.
 CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 755
tions. The program properly contains three topics: first, the
religious experience as a believing state; second, the religious type
of belief; and third, the religious object of belief.
The present discussion limits itself to the first two of these topics
Its sources will be the experiences of religious people as viewed
from within- out. Critical opinion of a man's religion is not
here in question, but only the content and meaning which it has
for him. "I would have you," says Fielding, "go and kneel beside
theMohammedan as he prays at the sunset hour and put your heart
to his and wait for the echo that will surely come; yes, surely, if
you wait as a man who would learn, who can learn. I would have
you go to the Hill Man smearing the stone with butter that his god
may be pleased ; to the woman crying to the forest god for her sick
child ; to the boy before his monks learning to be good. No matter
where you go, no matter what the faith is called, if you have the
hearing ear, if your heart is in unison with the heart of the world,
you will hear always the same song far down below the noises of
the warring creeds, the clash of words and forms, the differences
of place, of climes, of civilizations, of ideals, far down below all
these lies that which you would hear. I know not what you would
call it*
I. The general identification of religion with belief is made
without serious difficulty.The essential factor in belief is, as we have
seen, the reaction of the whole personality to a fixed object or ac
cepted situation. A similar principle is employed in common judg
ments about a man's religion. He is accounted most religious
whose religion penetrates his life most intimately. In the man
whose religion consists in the outer exercise of attendance upon
church, we recognize the sham. He appears to be religious. He
does at any rate one of the things which a religious man would do.
But an object of religious faith is not the constant environment of
his life. He may or may not feel sure of God from his pew, but
God is not among the things that count in his daily life. God does
not enter into his calculations or determine his scale of values.
Again, discursive thinking is regarded as an interruption of relig
ion. When I am at pains to justify my religion, I am already
doubting; and for common opinion doubt is identical with irre
ligi n. In so far as I am religious, my religion stands in no need of
justification, even though I regard it as justifiable. In my religious
experience I am taking something for granted ; in other words I act
about it and feel about it in a manner that is going to be deter
* : The Hearts
Fielding of Men, p. 322.
756 THE MONIST.

mined by special conditions of mood and temperament. The me

chanical and prosaic man acknowledges God in his mechanical and
prosaic way. He believes in divine retribution as he believes in
commercial or social retribution. He is as careful to prepare for
the next world as he is to be respectable in this. The poet, on the
other hand, believes in God after the manner of his genius. Though
he worships God in spirit, he may conduct his life in an irreg
ular manner peculiar to himself. The different moods of the same
individual life may be judged by the same measure. When God
ismost real to him, brought home to him most vividly, or conscious
ly obeyed, in these moments he is most religious. When, on the
other hand, God is merely a name to him, and church a routine, or
when both are forgotten in the daily occupations, he is least re
ligious. His life on the whole is said to be religious in so far as
periods of the second type are subordinated to periods of the first
type.
Further well-known elements of belief, corollaries of the above,
are evidently present in religion. A certain imagery remains con
stant throughout an individual's experience. He comes back to it as
to a physical object in space. And although religion is sporadically
an exclusive and isolated affair, it tends strongly to be social. The
religious object, or God, is a social object, common to me and to my
neighbor, and presupposed in our collective undertakings.
This reduction of religion to the type of the believing state
should thus provide us with an answer to that old and fundamental
question concerning the relative priority of faith and works. The
test of the faith is in the works, and the works are religious in so far
as they are the expression of the faith. Religion is neither the doing
of anything nor the feeling of anything nor the thinking of any
thing, but the reacting as a whole, in terms of all possible activities
of human life, to some accepted situation.
2. We may now face the interesting but difficult question of
the specific character of religious belief. In spite of the fact that
in these days the personality of God is often regarded as a transient
feature of religion, that type of belief which throws most light upon
the religious experience would seem to be the belief in persons.
Such belief consists in the practical recognition of a more or less
persistent attitude and disposition to ourselves. The outward be
havior of our fellow-men is construed in terms of the practical
bearing of the attitude which it implies. The extraordinary feature
of such belief is the disproportion between the vividness of the be
lief and the evidence upon which it is grounded. Of this we are
 CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 757
most aware in connection with those personalities which we regard
as distinctly friendly or hostile to ourselves. We are always more
or less clearly in the presence of our friends and enemies. Their
well-wishing or their ill-wishing haunts the scene of our living.
There is no more important constitutent of what the psychologists
calls our "general feeling tone." Indeed there are times when we
are entirely possessed by a state that is either exuberance in the
presence of those who love us, or awkwardness and stupidity in the
presence of those whom we believe to suspect or dislike us. The
latter state may easily become chronic. Many men live permanent
ly in the presence of an accusing audience. The inner life which
expresses itself in the words "Everybody hates me!" is perhaps
the most common form of morbid self-consciousness. On the other
hand, buoyancy of spirits springs largely from the constant and ob
stinate conviction that "everybody likes me." In this case one is
filled with a sense of security, and is conscious of a sympathetic
reinforcement that adds to the private joys and compensates for the
private sorrows. And this sense of attitude is wonderfully dis
criminating. We can feel the presence of a "great man," a "for
midable person," a superior or inferior, one who is interested or in
different, and all the subtlest degrees of approval and disapproval.
A similar sensibility may quicken us even in situations where
no direct individual attitude to ourselves is implied. We regard
places and communities as congenial when we are in sympathy with
their prevailing purposes or standards of value. We may feel ill
at ease or thoroughly at home in cities where we know no single
human soul. Indeed in a so misanthropic an individual as Rousseau
(and we all have our Rousseau moods), the mere absence of social
repression arouses a most intoxicating sense of tunefulness and
security. Nature plays the part of an indulgent parent who permits
all sorts of personal liberties.
"The view of a fine country, a succession of agreeable pros
pects, a fine air, a good appetite, and the health I gain by walk
ing ; the freedom of inns, and the distance from everything that
can make me recollect the dependence of my situation, conspire
to free my soul, and give boldness tomy thoughts, throwing me,
in a manner, into the immensity of things, where I combine,
choose, and appropriate them to my fancy, without restraint or
fear. I dispose of all nature as I please."*
In this confidence or distrust, inspired originally by the social
environment, and similarly suggested by other surroundings of life,
* : Confessions, Book IV.
Rousseau
758 THE MONIST.

we have the key to the religious consciousness. But it is now time

to add that in the case of religion these attitudes are concerned with
the universal or supernatural rather than with present and normal
human relationships. The religious consciousness is such practi
cal acknowledgment of a residual environment, which lies beyond
the range of ordinary communication. This profounder realm of
tradition and nature may have any degree of unity from chaos to
cosmos. For religion the idea of original and far-reaching power
is more significant than that of totality. But that which is at first
only "beyond," is practically the same object as that which comes
in the development of thought to be conceived as the "world" or
the "universe." We may, therefore, use these latter terms to in
dicate the object of religion until the treatment of special instances
shall define itmore precisely. My religion is, then, my sense of the
disposition of the universe to myself. We shall expect to find, as
in the social phenomena with which we have just dwelt, that the
manifestation of this sense consists in a general reaction appro
priate to the disposition so attributed. In view of it I shall be fun
damentally ill at ease, profoundly confident, or habitually cautious.
The ultimate nature of the world is here no speculative problem. A
dog that could wag his tail at the universe would be more religious
than the sublimest dialectician. It is in the vividness of the sense
of presence that the acuteness of religion consists. I am religious
in so far as the whole tone and temper of my living reflects a belief
as to what the universe thinks of such as me.
The examples that follow are selected because of differences
in personal flavor that serve to throw into relief their common re
ligious character. Theodore Parker, in describing his own boy
hood, writes as follows:
"I can hardly think without a shudder of the terrible effect
the doctrine of eternal damnation had on me. How many, many
hours have I wept with terror as I lay on my bed, till between
praying and weeping, sleep gave me repose. But before I was
nine years old the fear went away, and I saw clearer light in the
goodness of God. But for years, say from seven till ten, I said
my prayers with much devotion, I think, and then continued to
repeat, 'Lord, forgive my sins/ till sleep came on me."*
Compare with this, Stevenson's Christmas letter to his mother,
in which he says :
"The whole necessary morality is kindness; and it should
spring, of itself, from the one fundamental doctrine, Faith. If
* : Theodore 18.
Chadwick Parker, p.
 CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 759

you are sure that God, in the long run, means kindness by you,
you should be happy ; and if happy, surely you should be kind."*
Here is Destiny frowning and Destiny smiling, but in each case
so real, so present, as to be immediately responded to with grate
ful warm-heartedness and with helpless terror.
The author of the Imitait o Christi speaks thus of the daily liv
ing of the Christian :
"The life of a Christian who has dedicated himself to the ser
vice of God, should abound with eminent virtues of all kinds
that he may be really the same person which he is by outward
appearance and profession. Indeed he ought not only to be the
same, but much more, in his inward disposition of soul ; because
he professes to serve a God who sees the inward parts, a search
er of the heart and reins, a God and Father of spirits : and there
fore, since we are always inHis sight, we should be exceedingly
careful to avoid all impurity, all that may give offense to Him
whose eyes cannot behold iniquity. We should, in a word, so far
as mortal and frail nature can, imitate the blessed angels in all
manner of holiness, since we, as well as they, are always inHis
* * * * And
presence good men have always this notion of
the thing. For they depend upon God for the success of all they
do, even of their best and wisest undertakings." f
Such is to be practical acknowledgment of God in the
routine of life. The more direct response to this presence appears
abundantly in St. Augustine's conversation and reminiscence with
God:
"How evil have not my deeds been ; or if not my deeds my
words; or if not my words my will. But Thou, O Lord, art
good and merciful, and Thy right hand had respect unto the
profoundness of my death, and removed from the bottom of my
heart that abyss of corruption. And this was the result, that I
willed not to do whatI willed, and willed to do what Thou
willedst.How sweet did it suddenly become to me
to be without the delights of trifles. And what once I feared
to lose, itwas now a joy for me to put away. For Thou didst
cast them away, and instead of them didst enter in Thyself,
sweeter than all pleasure, though not to flesh and blood ; brighter
than all light, but more veiled than all mysteries ;more exalted
than all honour, but not to the exalted in their own conceits.

* Stevenson : Letters, Vol. I, p. 229.

f The Imitation of Christ, p. 40. Translation by Stanhope.
 76o THE MONIST.

Now was my soul free from the gnawing cares of seeking and
getting.And I babbled unto Thee my brightness.
my riches, and my health, the Lord my God."*
In these two passages we meet with religious conduct and with
that supreme religious experience, the direct worship of God. In
each case the heart of the matter is an individual's indubitable con
viction of the world's favorable concern for him. The deeper order
of things constitutes the real and the profoundly congenial com
munity in which he lives.
Let us now apply this general account of the religious ex
perience to certain typical religious phenomena: first, conversion;
second, piety; and, finally, religious instruments, and modes of con
veyance.

Although recent study of the phenomenon of conversion has

brought to light a considerable amount of interesting material,
there is some danger of misconceiving its importance. The psy
chology of conversion is primarily the psychology of crisis or radi
cal alteration rather than the psychology of religion. For the ma
jority of religious men and women conversion is an insignificant
event, and in many cases
it never occurs at all. Religion is more
purely present where it is normal and monotonous. But this phe
nomenon is nevertheless highly significant in that religion and
irreligion are placed in close juxtaposition, and the contribution
of religion at its inception thereby emphasized.
In general it is said that conversion takes place during the
period of adolescence. But this is the period of the most sudden
expansion of the environment of life, a time of introduction into
many new presences. This is sometimes expressed by saying that
it is a period of acute self-consciousness. Life is consciousness of
itself as over against its inheritance; its whole setting sweeps into
view. Some sort of solution of the life-problem, some coming
to terms with the universe, is the normal issue of it.
Religious
conversion signifies then, that as part of this fundamental adjust
ment, the individual defines and accepts for his life a certain atti
tude on the part of the universe.
The examples cited by the psychologists as well as the gen
eralizations which they derive, bear out this interpretation. Ac
cording to Professor James :
"General Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, consid
ers that the first vital step in
saving outcasts consists in making
* St. : "Confessions."
Augustine In Schaff : Nicene and Post-Nicene
Fathers, Vol. I, p. 129.
 CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS.
761

them feel that some decent human being cares enough for them
to take an interest in the question whether they rise or sink."*

The new state is one of courage and hope stimulated by a

sense of the glow of friendly interest. The convert is no longer
"out in the cold." He is told that the world wishes him well, and
this is brought home to him through representations of the tender
ness of Christ and through the direct ministerings of those who
mediate it. But somehow the convert must be persuaded to realize
all this. He must believe it before it can mean anything to him.
Hence he is urged to pray-a proceeding that is at first ri
diculous to him since it involves taking for granted what he dis
believes. (But therein lies the critical point. It is peculiar to the
object in this case that it can exist only for one who already believes
in it. The psychologists call this the element of "self-surrender."
To be converted a man must somehow suffer his surroundings to
put into him a new heart, which may thereupon confirm its object.
Such belief is tremendously tenacious because it so largely creates
its own evidence. Once believe that "God, in the long run, means
kindness by you," and you are likely to stand by it to the end
the more so in this case because the external evidence either way is
to the average man so insufficient. Such a belief as this is inspired
in the convert, not by reasoning, but by all the powers of suggestion
that personality and social contagion can afford.
The psychologists describe piety as sense of unity. One feels
after reading their accounts that they are too abstract. For there
are many kinds of unity, characteristic of widely varying moods
and states. Any state of rapt attention is a state of unity, and this
occurs in the most secular moments of life. Nor does it help mat
ters to say that in the case of religion this unity must have been
preceded by a state of division; for we cannot properly character
ize one state of mind in terms of another, unless the latter be re
tained in the former. And that which is characteristic of the re
ligious sense of unity would seem to be just such an overcoming
of difference. There is a recognition of two distinct attitudes, which
may be more or less in sympathy with one another but which are
both present even in their fullest harmony. And were I to be taken
out of myself so completely as to forget myself I should inevitably
lose that sense of sympathy from which arises the peculiar exulta
tion of religious faith, a heightened experience of the same type

* cf. Leuba, loe. cit.; and Amer.

James: op. cit., p. 203; Joum. of Psychol
ogy, Vol. VII, p. 309; Starbuck, Psychology of Religion, Part I.
762 THE MONIST.

with the freedom and spontaneity which I experience in the pres

ence of men with whom I have most in common.
The further graces and powers of piety readily submit to a
similar description. My sense of positive sympathy expresses itself
in an attitude of well-wishing; living in an atmosphere of kindness
I instinctively endeavor to propagate it. My buoyancy is distinctly
of that quality which, to a lesser degree is due to any sense of
social security; my power is that of one who works in an environ
ment that reinforces him. I experience the objective or even cos
mical character of my enterprises. They have a momentum which
makes me their instrument rather than their perpetrator. A par
adoxical relation between religion and morality has always inter
ested observers of custom and history. Religion is apparently as
capable of the most fiendish malevolence as of the most saintly
gentleness. Fielding writes that:
"When religion is brought out or into daily life and used as
a guide or a weapon in the world it has no effect either for good
or evil. Its effect is simply in strengthening the heart, in blind
ing the eyes, in deafening the ears. It is an intensive force, an
intoxicant. It doubles or trebles a man's powers. It is an im
pulsive force sending him headlong down the path of emotion,
whether that path lead to glory or infamy. It is a tremendous
stimulant, that is all."*
Religion does not originate life purposes or define their mean
ing, but stimulates them by the same means that works in all cor
porate and social activity. And to work with the universe is the
most tremendous incentive that can appeal to the individual will.
Therefore in highly ethical religions the power for good exceeds
that of any other social and spiritual agency. Such religion makes
present, actual, and real, that good on the whole which the indi
vidual otherwise tends to distinguish from what is good for him.
In daily life the morally valid and the practically urgent are com
monly arrayed against one another; but the ethical religion makes
the valid urgent.
The instruments of religion are legion, and it is in order here
to mention only certain prominent cases in which their selection
would seem to have direct reference to the provocation and perpet
uation of such a sense of attitude as we have been describing.
This is true in a general way of all symbolism. There is no essen
tial difference between the religious symbol and such symbols as
serve to remind us of human relationships. In both cases the per
*
Op. cit., p. 152.
 CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 763

ceptual absence of will is compensated for by the presence of some

object associated with that will. The function of this object is
due to its power to revive and perpetuate a certain special social
atmosphere. But the most important vehicle of religion has always
been personality. It is after all to priests, prophets and believers,
that religious cults have owed their vitality. The traits that mark
the prophet are both curious and sublime. He is most remarkable
for the confidence with which he speaks for the universe. Whether
it be due to lack of a sense of humor or a profound conviction of
truth, is indifferent to our purpose. The power of such men is un
doubtedly due to their suggestion of a force greater than they,
whose designs they bring directly and socially to the attention of
men. The prophet in his prophecy is indeed not altogether dis
tinguished from God; and it is through the mediation of a directly
perceptible human attitude that a divine attitude gets itself fixed
in the imagination of the believer. What is true of the prophet is
equally true of the preacher, whose function it is not to represent
God in his own person, but to depict Him with his tongue. It is
generally recognized that the preacher is neither a moralizer nor
a theologian, but it is less perfectly understood that it is his func
tion to suggest the living presence of God. His proper language
is that of the imagination, and the picture which he portrays is one
of a reciprocal social relationship between man and the Supreme
Master of the situation of life. He will not define God or prove
God, but introduce Him and talk about Him. And at the same
time the association of prayer and worship with his sermon, and
the general atmosphere created by the meeting together of a body
of disciples, will act as the confirmation of his suggestion of such a
living presence.
The conveyance of any single religious cult from generation to
generation affords a signal illustration of the importance in reli
gion of the recognition of attitude. Religions manage somehow to
survive any amount of transformation of creed and ritual. It is
not what is done, or what is thought, that identifies the faith of the
first Christians with that of the last, but a certain reckoning with
the disposition of God. The successive generations of Christians
are introduced into the spiritual world of their fathers, with its fur
nishing of hopes and fears remaining substantially the same; and
their Christianity consists in their continuing to live in itwith only
a slight and gradual renovation. To any given individual God is
more or less completely represented by his elders in the faith in
their exhortations and ministerings ; and through them he fixes as
 764 THE MONIST.

the center of his system an image of God, his accuser or redeemer.

The complete verification of this interpretation of the religious
experience would require the application of it to the different his
torical cults. Although a general examination of such instances
is entirely beyond the scope of this paper, a brief consideration may
be given to those which seem to afford reasonable grounds for ob
jection, such as primitive religion, atheistic religion, and reflective
or critical religion.
First, itmay be said that in primitive religions, notably in fet
ichism, tabooism and totemism, there is no recognition of a cos
mical unity. It is quite evident that there is no conception of a
universe. But it is equally evident that the natural and historical
environment in its generality has a very specific practical signifi
cance for the primitive believer. It is often said with truth that
these, earliest forms of religion are more profoundly pantheistic
than polytheistic. Man recognizes an all-pervading interest that
is capable of being directed to himself. The selection of a deity is
not due to any special qualification for deification possessed by the
individual object itself, but to the tacit presumption that, as Thales
said, "all things are full of gods." The disposition of residual real
itymanifests to the believer no consistency or unity, but it is never
theless the most constant object of his will. He lives in the midst
of a capriciousness which he must appease if he is to establish
himself at all.
Secondly, in the case of Buddhism, we are said to meet with
a religion that is essentially atheistic.
"Whether Buddhas arise, O priests, or whether Buddhas do
not arise, it remains a fact and the fixed and necessary constitu
tion of being, that all its constituents are transitory."

The secret of life lies in the application of this truth.

"O builder, Tve discovered thee!

This fabric thou shalt ne'er rebuild !
Thy rafters are all broken now,
And pointed roof demolished lies!
This mind has demolition reached,
And seen the last of all desire!"

The case of Buddha himself and of the exponents of his purely

esoteric doctrine belong to the reflective type which will presently
be given special consideration. But with the ordinary believer,
even where the extraneous but almost inevitable polytheism is least
in evidence, the religious experience consists in substantially the
 CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS. 765
same elements that appear in theistic religions. The individual is
here living appropriately to the ultimate nature of things, with the
ceaseless periods of time in full view. That which is brought home
to him is the illusoriness and hollowness of things when taken in
the spirit of active endeavor. The only profound and abiding good
is nothingness. While nature and society conspire to mock him,
Nirvana invites him to its peace. The religious course of his life
consists in the use of such means as can win him this end. From
the standpoint of the universe he has the sympathy only of that
wisdom whose essence is self-destruction. And this truth is me
diated by the imagination of divine sympathy, for the Blessed One
remains as the perpetual incarnation of His own blessedness.
Finally there remains the consideration of the bearing of this
interpretation upon certain more reflective and disciplined types of re
ligion. The religion of the critically enlightened man must be less
naive and credulous in its imagery. God tends to vanish into an
ideal or a universal, or congeal into some object of theoretical def
inition. But here we are on that borderland where the assignment
of individual cases can never be made with any certainty of cor
rectness. We can generalize only by describing the conditions that
such cases must fulfil if they are properly to be denominated re
ligious. And there can be no question of the justice of deriving
religions. An idealistic philosophy will, then, be a religion just in
so far as it is rendered practically vivid by the imagination. Such
imagination must create and sustain a social relationship. The ques
tion of the legitimacy of this imagination is another matter. It raises
the general issue concerning the judgment of truth implied in re
ligion, and this must be treated at length in another discussion.
But at any rate the religious experience may be realized by virtue
of the metaphorical or poetical representation of a situation as one
of intercommunication between persons, where reflective definition
at the same time denies it. The possibility of such a representa
tion may best be understood from the fact that the important
element in the religious experience is not God in and for Himself,
but the worshipper as judged by God. And just as a keen aware
ness of the presence of other men is a kind of self-consciousness, so
in religion one may be viewing one's self from the divine standpoint.
The human worshipper may himself supply all the personality that
is necessary. But whatever faculty be the source of supply for this
indispensable social quality of religion, he who defines God as the
ultimate goodness or the ultimate truth, has certainly not yet wor
shipped Him. He begins to be religious only when such an ideal
766 THE MONIST.

determines the atmosphere of his daily living; when he regards

the immanence of such an ideal in nature and history as the object
of his will ; and when he responds to its presence in the spirit of his
conduct and his contemplation.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY. RALPH BARTON PERRY.

DEFINITION OF RELIGION.

It is an old experience that emotional people frequently show

a contempt for the labors of the intellect. The heart ever and anon
rebels against the head, and feelings defy definitions. No wonder
that religion and religious devotees casually exhibit a dislike for
science, and mankind is only now finding out that this opposition
that obtains between the two most salient features of our spiritual
life is not an irreconcilable contradiction but a mere contrast.
It is for these reasons that some of the simplest notions have
been declared to be undefinable and inexplicable. Human sentiment
revolts against the idea that a cold and clear formula should cover
all that is stirring in our inmost soul, and so it appears more satis
factory to the average sentimentalist to rest satisfied with the ver
dict that certain things are undefinable. Among them are mainly
the words, "God," "soul," and "religion." But we ought to remem
ber that a definition is a description of the salient features of a thing
and not the thing itself. A definition helps us to understand the na
ture of a thing, and a definition does not contain anything that would
describe its relation to our own self or its paramount importance for
our life. Thus it happens that the so-called undefinable ideas are
some of the simplest concepts, and their very simplicity is objection
able to one who does not understand the nature of scientific precis
ion, and this is now and then true even of a man such as is Emerson
whose words Professor Ralph Barton Perry quotes : "If I speak,
I define and confine, and am less."
Professor Perry himself opens his article on "Religious Expe
rience" with the words : "The least religious experience so ismyste
rious and so complex, that a moderate degree of reflection upon it
tends to a sense of intellectual impotence." We might say the same
of any event that takes place in this world, the simplest of all being
the fall of a stone which takes place according to the well known
Newtonian formulas of gravitation. Though our definition of the
fall of the stone is perfect, the act itself is so complex that a real
comprehension of all the details of a single instance would only go
to reveal our intellectual impotence. We are capable of g n ralisa