child of theory becomes a grown-up man, he is often taxed for the benefit of a once unappreciative world. 27

REFERENCES

1 F. M. Cornford, Thucydides Mythistoricus (London, Arnold, 1907), ix-x. 2 Among the more easily available histories of science, W. T. Sedgwick and H. W. Tyler, A Short History of Science (N. Y., Macmillan, 1917), and Walter Libby, An Introduction to the History of Science (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1917) may be singled out for mention. F. W. Westaway, Scientific Method, Its philosophy and its practice (2 ed., London, Blackie, 1919), contains interesting historical chapters on scientific method.

3 For an example (from Oliver Goldsmith), see F. B. Strong (ed.), Lectures on the Methods of Science (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1906), 38-39.

Quoted in William James, The Principles of Psychology (N. Y., Holt, 1890), Vol. 2, 640-641.

5 Henri Poincaré, The Foundations of Science (N. Y., Science Press, 1921), 362 (from Book I, Chap. 1, of Science and Method).

Poincaré, 128 (from Science and Hypothesis, Chap. 9).

7A. N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (N. Y., Macmillan, 1926), 31-32.

8 W. S. Jevons, The Principles of Science, A treatise on logic and scientific method (N. Y., Macmillan, 1874), Vol. 2, 162–164.

9 Quoted in Sedgwick and Tyler, 200–201.

10 Sedgwick and Tyler, 257.

11 A. D. Ritchie, Scientific Method, an inquiry into the character and validity of natural laws (London, Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1923), 3-4.

12 Ritchie, 104.

13 Jevons, Vol. 2, 236–237.

14 Jevons, Vol. 2, 222–223.

15 A. W. Duff, College Physics (N. Y., Longmans, Green, 1925), 221.

16 H. A. Bumstead, in L. L. Woodruff (ed.), The Development of the Sciences (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1923), 60.

17 F. J. Teggart, Theory of History (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1925), 162. 18 Francis Bacon, De Augmentis Scientiarum, Book II (in J. M. Robertson's ed. of Bacon's philosophical works, London, Routledge, 1905, 425).

19 Frederick Soddy, Science and Life, Aberdeen addresses (London, Murray, 1920), 2-3.

20 International Encyclopedia (2 ed., N. Y., Dodd, Mead, 1917), Vol. 19, 215–216. 21 F. S. Marvin (ed.), Science and Civilization (Oxford Univ. Press, 1923), 14. 22 Ritchie, 14.

23 J. A. Thomson, Introduction to Science (N. Y., Holt, 1911), 101.

24 Francis Thompson.

25 Richard Gregory, Discovery, or The spirit and service of science (N. Y., Macmillan, 1916), 235-236.

26 J. J. Sylvester in R. E. Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica, or The philomath's quotation-book (N. Y., Macmillan, 1914), 104.

27 These anecdotes are from Gregory, 2-3. Pasteur used the former story in his 1854 inaugural address at Lille, crediting it to Benjamin Franklin; see René ValleryRadot, The Life of Pasteur, trans. by Mrs. R. L. Devonshire (N. Y., Garden City Publ. Co., 1926), 76.

Chapter XVIII

RELIGION

Diverse components of the religious life

Although few persons have been entirely denied firsthand acquaintance with the great complex of forces and attitudes we call religion, it is not easy to see clearly how the various components of the religious life are related to each other. We know, for example, that Christianity goes back, through a long and varied past in which it has meant many things to many men, to a certain individual who once lived in Palestine, and from whom it gets its name; but we realize that this individual was not totally cut off from all connection with the past of his people-that, in fact, he claimed to be the bearer of a new testament which had been foretold and prepared for in the old. We run over his gospel in our minds, and in it we see much that assimilates it to the thought of his time and place, although he undoubtedly was a religious genius of the first order. What then, we are forced to ask, is the relation between the religious genius and traditional religion?

Or again, we bethink ourselves of the religious attitudes and beliefs of the average Christian, and compare them with the well articulated doctrines of systematic theology; we rapidly call before our minds the child repeating, "Now I lay me down to sleep" with his mother, the ascetic disciplining his body to purge his soul, the philosopher proving God, freedom, and immortality, the saint quaffing deep of the bounty of the Lord, the prophet castigating a backsliding people, the priest making his rounds, the layman living a life in the world that is not of the world, the sinner panting for remission from his sins; we think of all the Christian churches with their rituals and ceremonials, their hymns and prayers, their holy days, their priests and other officers, their activities both to order this world aright and make

straight the way to the next. Where is one to begin who wishes to understand all this confusion and welter of agents and processes?

It seems best to start with the fact of variety and interdependence. No religion is made by any one factor working alone. Although for purposes of analysis we shall discuss the religious experience, religious organizations, and theology separately, it must be remembered that these things do not exist in isolation. They are bound together as aspects of a single tradition and life. Nearly all religions, for example, elaborate some picture of another world; but this other world in the nature of the case is always derivative-a supplement to, or extension of, the world men are living in, from which it derives not only its meaning but its content: 1

Values must be discovered and produced in a world of experience before they can be conceived or assumed to exist in a higher world. The other world must always be derived from this world; it can never be a primary concept.

This is only another way of saying that even a revelation must reveal, and that it cannot reveal if the deliverance fails to accord in some manner with the state of men's minds at the time of its enunciation. The wind must be tempered to the shorn lamb, as many Christians in recent years have recognized by speaking of a progressive revelation of God's purpose.*

Even the character of God Himself is interpreted so as to correspond fairly closely to the prevailing ideals. Thus in the middle ages He was conceived of largely in feudal terms, as the great overlord of an ascending hierarchy and the recipient of feudal dues from mankind; in the eighteenth century His nature was redefined to make it correspond more nearly to the conceptions proper to the then developing natural science and machine industry, and God came to be looked upon as the Great Artificer or the First Cause—the maker of the great world-machine; today, under the influ

* This doctrine in itself may be regarded as a proof of the dependence of otherworldly conceptions on the cultural heritage, for it is of course a theological counterpart of the theory of evolution.

1

ence of evolutionary ideas, God is thought of as working out His will through time, and even as Himself developing or growing into His full powers. Some even go so far as to say that God has not yet been born, and that the whole end and purpose of history is to bring Him into being.

On the other hand it must be remembered that the gods are members of the society into which men are born. They are just as definitely parts of the social order, although they are seldom seen, as the ruler of the land, and it is taken for granted that men will maintain intercourse with them very much as they do with their fellows.

It follows that religion is not primarily an individual matter, as some have conceived. Even its more personal and interior manifestations, as for instance the experiences which lead a man to separate himself from other men and go forth alone into the wilderness to win salvation, are frequently if not always social phenomena. At certain times in the history of a faith, the desert may become studded with these hermits of the Lord. By their very numbers they bear witness to the fact that they represent a social movement. "One cannot imagine a solitary individual creating a religion for himself." Even the form and content of our more private religious experiences are functions of our culture, as Lowie has pointed out in connection with the Crow Indians, who are required by their culture to fast in the wilderness until they have attained a vision: 3

Though the visions were determined by individual psychology and by individual exigency or desire, they are very far from being wholly intelligible on that basis. Both in a general way and in detail the social atmosphere distinctive of Crow culture and specifically Crow conceptions affects the texture of the hallucinations. As for general purport, the frequency of military visions corresponds precisely to the high regard in which these Indians hold bravery, and it is only natural that those deeds conventionally rated as preeminently brave, such as the capture of a gun or the touching of an enemy, should figure conspicuously.

This influence of tribal idealism seems plausible enough. But what shall we say when one faster after another states

that he gained his end on the fourth day? This is of course incredible as a coincidence. Unless there is a more or less unconscious reinterpretation of the experience to fit a tribal norm, the sameness must be due to the overpowering influence of the mystic number of the Crow, which might actually lead to a postponement of the thrill sought until the fourth day. In either case cultural suggestion operates as the dynamic agent. Another significant feature is the acquisition of a sacred song. . . When practically every visionary mentions the singing of some song, we are plainly dealing with an accepted model. The faster hears a song because that is an integral part of a trance; again the cultural tradition predetermines his experience. Equally common is the faster's adoption by the apparition. . . . To turn to a particular category of revelations, those imparting invulnerability, a frequent incident is the transformation of trees or rocks into enemies, who vainly shoot at the vicariously invulnerable spirit being. [The faster] sees and hears not merely what any faster... would see and hear under like conditions of physiological exhaustion and under the urge of generally human desires, but what the social tradition of the Crow tribe imperatively suggests.

In other words, religion presents no striking differences from other social phenomena. We must not expect the religious genius entirely to transcend the world; only a richly dowered tradition is competent to give him birth. Like the poet, the highly religious man may bring much of sensitivity and insight to the world, but without a heritage to awaken and give body to his powers he stands condemned to ineffectuality, an empty shell of what he might have been.

The central fact in religion

The driving and sustaining fact in religion is the sense of need. The infant-most needy of all individuals-is not acquainted with this feeling, but an awareness of the fundamental precariousness of life is seldom absent in the adult. The notion is hardly a philosophical one, for it is too deeply seated to be cognitive or reasoned from the start. No man has lacked occasion to feel that life is a game played according to strange and hidden rules, and that at any moment he