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RELIGIONS ANCIENT AND MODERN
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ORIGIN
AND THE NATURE OF RELIGION
RELIGIONS: ANCIENT AND MODERN
Animism. By EDWARD CLODD, author of _The Story of Creation_.
Pantheism. By JAMES ALLANSON PICTON, author of _The Religion of the
Universe_.
The Religions of Ancient China. By Professor GILES, LL.D., Professor of
Chinese in the University of Cambridge.
The Religion of Ancient Greece. By JANE HARRISON, Lecturer at Newnham
College, Cambridge, author of _Prolegomena to Study of Greek Religion_.
Islam. By the Rt. Hon. AMEER ALI SYED, of the Judicial Committee of His
Majesty's Privy Council, author of _The Spirit of Islam_ and _Ethics of
Islam_.
Magic and Fetishism. By Dr. A. C. HADDON, F.R.S., Lecturer on Ethnology at
Cambridge University.
The Religion of Ancient Egypt. By Professor W. M. FLINDERS PETRIE, F.R.S.
The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria. By THEOPHILUS G. PINCHES, late of
the British Museum.
Early Buddhism. By Professor RHYS DAVIDS, LL.D., late Secretary of The
Royal Asiatic Society.
Hinduism. By Dr. L. D. BARNETT, of the Department of Oriental Printed
Books and MSS., British Museum.
Scandinavian Religion. By WILLIAM A. CRAIGIE, Joint Editor of the _Oxford
English Dictionary_.
Celtic Religion. By Professor ANWYL, Professor of Welsh at University
College, Aberystwyth.
The Mythology of Ancient Britain and Ireland. By CHARLES SQUIRE, author of
_The Mythology of the British Islands_.
Judaism. By ISRAEL ABRAHAMS, Lecturer in Talmudic Literature in Cambridge
University, author of _Jewish Life in the Middle Ages_.
The Religion of Ancient Rome. By CYRIL BAILEY, M.A.
Shinto, The Ancient Religion of Japan. By W. G. ASTON, C. M. G.
The Religion of Ancient Mexico and Peru. By LEWIS SPENCE, M.A.
Early Christianity. By S. B. BLACK, Professor at M'Gill University.
The Psychological Origin and Nature of Religion. By Professor J. H. LEUBA.
The Religion of Ancient Palestine. By STANLEY A. COOK.
Mithraism. By W. J. PHYTHIAN-ADAMS.
PHILOSOPHIES
Early Greek Philosophy. By A. W. BENN, author of _The Philosophy of
Greece, Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century_.
Stoicism. By Professor ST. GEORGE STOCK, author of _Deductive Logic_,
editor of the _Apology of Plato_, etc.
Plato. By Professor A. E. TAYLOR, St. Andrews University, author of _The
Problem of Conduct_.
Scholasticism. By Father RICKABY, S.J.
Hobbes. By Professor A. E. TAYLOR.
Locke. By Professor ALEXANDER, of Owens College.
Comte and Mill. By T. WHITTAKER, author of _The Neoplatonists Apollonius
of Tyana and other Essays_.
Herbert Spencer. By W. H. HUDSON, author of _An Introduction to Spencer's
Philosophy_.
Schopenhauer. By T. WHITTAKER.
Berkeley. By Professor CAMPBELL FRASER, D.C.L., LL.D.
Swedenborg. By Dr. SEWALL.
Nietzsche: His Life and Works. By ANTHONY M. LUDOVICH.
Bergson. By JOSEPH SOLOMON.
Rationalism. By J. M. ROBERTSON.
Pragmatism. By D. L. MURRAY.
Rudolf Eucken. By W. TUDOR-JONES.
Epicurus. By Professor A. E. TAYLOR.
William James. By HOWARD V. KNOX.
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ORIGIN
AND THE NATURE OF RELIGION
By JAMES H. LEUBA
BRYN MAWR COLLEGE, U.S.A.
LONDON
CONSTABLE & COMPANY LTD
10 AND 12 ORANGE STREET LEICESTER SQUARE W.C.2
1921
PREFACE
This little book, the last of a series of similar volumes each containing
an exposition by a recognised authority of one of the many Religions the
world has known, might have been put with as much propriety at the head of
the series, there to show how Religion originated in the mind of man, what
mental powers it presupposes, what is its nature and what its relation to
the non-religious life. But one is, no doubt, better able to take up
profitably these problems after having familiarised oneself with the
several aspects of religious life. Therefore _The Psychological Origin and
the Nature of Religion_ was placed at the end, where it fulfils the
additional purpose of linking the concluded series of Histories of
Religions with a cognate one, now being prepared by the same publishers,
on Ancient and Modern Systems of Philosophy.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. THE FUNDAMENTAL NATURE OF RELIGION, 1
II. THREE TYPES OF BEHAVIOUR DIFFERENTIATED, 11
III. ORIGIN OF THE IDEAS OF GHOSTS, NATURE-BEINGS, AND GODS, 39
IV. MAGIC AND RELIGION, 48
Magic classified, 49
Two Theses maintained: (1) the probable priority of Magic;
(2) the independence of Religion from Magic, 53
Magic and Religion combine, but never fuse, 65
What did Magic contribute to the making of Religion? 68
Magic and the Origin of Science, 74
V. THE ORIGINAL EMOTION OF PRIMITIVE RELIGIOUS LIFE, 80
VI. CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE NATURE AND THE FUNCTION OF
RELIGION, 87
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ORIGIN AND THE NATURE OF RELIGION
CHAPTER I
THE FUNDAMENTAL NATURE OF RELIGION
The opinions advanced in this essay and the arguments with which they are
supported will be more readily appreciated if the fundamental nature of
Religion is set forth in a few introductory pages.
The students of Religion have usually been content to describe it either
in intellectual or in affective terms. 'This particular idea or belief,'
or 'this particular feeling or emotion,' is, they have said, 'the essence'
or the 'vital element' of Religion. So that most of the hundreds of
definitions which have been proposed fall into two classes. We have, on
the one hand, the definitions of Spencer, Max Mueller, Romanes, Goblet
d'Alviella, and others, for whom Religion is 'the recognition of a
mystery pressing for interpretation,' or 'a department of thought,' or 'a
belief in superhuman beings'; and, on the other, the formulas of
Schleiermacher, the Ritschlian theologians, Tiele, etc., who hold that
Religion is 'a feeling of absolute dependence upon God,' or 'that pure and
reverential disposition or frame of mind we call piety.' According to
Tiele, 'the essence of piety, and, therefore, the essence of Religion, is
adoration.'
The recent advance of psychological science and the increasingly careful
and minute work of ethnographists have tended to discredit these one-sided
conceptions. To-day it has become customary to admit that 'in Religion all
sides of the personality participate. Will, feeling, and intelligence are
necessary and inseparable constituents of Religion.' But statements such
as this one do not necessarily imply a correct understanding of the
functional relation of the three aspects of psychic life. One may be
acquainted with the three branches of government--legislative, executive,
and judicial--and nevertheless grossly misunderstand their respective
functions. Pfleiderer, for instance, hastens to add to the sentences last
quoted, 'Of course we must recognise that knowing and willing are here
[in religion] not ends in themselves, as in science and in morality, but
rather subordinate to feeling as the real centre of religious
consciousness.' Thus feeling reappears as _the real centre_ of religious
consciousness. What the author may well have meant here by 'centre,' _I_
do not know. A similar criticism is applicable to Max Mueller and to Guyau.
The latter begins promisingly with a criticism of the one-sided formulas
of Schleiermacher and of Feuerbach, and declares that they should be
combined. 'The religious sentiment,' says he, is 'primarily no doubt a
feeling of dependence. But this feeling of dependence really to give birth
to Religion must provoke in one a reaction--a desire for deliverance.'
Very good, indeed! But, on proceeding, the reader discovers that the
opinion the book defends is that 'Religion is the outcome of an effort to
explain all things--physical, metaphysical, and moral--by analogies drawn
from human society, imaginatively and symbolically considered. In short,
it is a universal, sociological hypothesis, mythical in form.'[1] What is
this but once more the intellectualistic position? Religion arising from
an effort to _explain_; Religion an _hypothesis_! It is Herbert Spencer
over again with an additional statement concerning the way in which man
attempts to explain 'the mystery pressing for interpretation.'
It must be admitted, however, that several of the more recent definitions
have completely broken with this bad psychology. Among these are those of
J. G. Frazer, of A. Sabatier, and of William James. The first understands
by Religion 'propitiation, or conciliation of powers superior to man,
which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human
life.'[2] For A. Sabatier, Religion 'is a commerce, a conscious and willed
relation into which the soul in distress enters with the mysterious power
on which it feels that it and its destiny depend.'[3] William James
expresses his mind thus: 'In broadest and most general terms possible, one
might say that religious life consists in the belief that there is an
unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting
ourselves thereto. This belief and this adjustment are the religious
attitude of the soul. In the ordinary sense of the word, however, no
attitude is accounted religious unless it be grave and serious; the
trifling, sneering attitude of a Voltaire must be thrown out if we would
not strain the ordinary use of language. Moreover, there must be something
solemn, serious, and tender about any attitude which we denominate
Religion. If glad, it must not grin or snigger; if sad, it must not scream
or curse. The sallies of a Schopenhauer and a Nietzsche lack the
purgatorial note which religious sadness gives forth. And finally we must
exclude also the chilling reflections of Marcus Aurelius on the eternal
reason, as well as the passionate outcry of Job.'[4]
But the battle against intellectualistic and affectivistic conceptions of
Religion is not yet won. The recent definitions of Tiele and of Kaftan
show only too clearly how strong the tendency remains to identify Religion
with some feeling or emotion.
* * * * *
As the amazing discrepancies and contradictions offered by authorised
definitions of Religion arise, in my opinion, primarily from a faulty
psychology, a moment may profitably be devoted to an untechnical statement
of the present teaching of that science upon the relation existing
between the three acknowledged modes of consciousness--willing, feeling,
and thinking.
Aristotle characterised man as _thinking-desire_. In swinging back from
Intellectualism to Voluntarism, modern psychology has accepted the
fundamental truth excellently expressed by the Greek philosopher. 'Will is
not merely a function which sometimes accrues to consciousness, and is
sometimes lacking; it is an integral property of consciousness.'[5] Will
without intelligence may be possible; but intelligence without will is
not, not even in the case of so-called disinterested, theoretical
thinking. There is, there can be, no thinking without desire, intention,
or purpose. 'The one thing that stands out,' says, for instance, Professor
Dewey, 'is that thinking is inquiry, and that knowledge as science is the
outcome of systematically directed inquiry.' Thought absolutely undirected
would be not even a dream--mere meaningless, chaotic atoms of thought. It
is _the intention_, _the purpose_, which makes thought what it is; that is
to say, significant. We think because we will. Thought does not exist for
itself; it is the instrument of desire. To discover ways and means of
gratifying proximate or distant desires, needs, cravings, is the function
of intelligence. The psychologist speaks, therefore, of the _instrumental_
character of thought, and considers cognition to be a function of conduct.
The mastery of desire over thought is abundantly illustrated in the
history of belief, and nowhere so strikingly as in Religion.
With regard to the relation of feeling to the will and to the intellect,
it is to be observed that where there is desire for an object, there
liking is present; and, conversely, where there is liking, there actual or
potential desire is felt. As to sentiments and emotions, they involve
ideas and conative elements in addition to sensations and feelings. An
emotion is a reaction, the response of an organism to a situation. It is a
form of action. Aristotle's characterisation of man is thus seen to be
adequate; it does not leave out the feelings, as it might seem at first.
Thinking-desire includes the affection since it is included in desire.
Every pulse of consciousness is psychically compounded of will, feeling,
and thought. Successive moments can differ one from the other neither in
the absence of one or two of these three constituents, nor in the
essential relation they bear to one another--that is fixed and
unchangeable--but only in the intensity and vividness of their respective
components. This, then, is the double teaching of psychology in this
matter:--(1) Will, feeling, and thought enter in some degree into every
moment of consciousness which can be looked upon as an actuality, and not
merely as an abstraction; they are necessary constituents of
consciousness. The unit of conscious life is neither thought, nor feeling,
nor will, but all three in movement towards an object. (2) The will is
primal; or, in other words, conscious life is always oriented towards
something to be secured or avoided immediately or ultimately.
If, with this conception in mind, we turn to Religion, we shall understand
it to be compounded of will, thought, and feeling, bearing to each other
the relation which belongs to them in every department of life. And it
will, moreover, be clear that a purpose or an ideal, _i.e._ something to
be attained or maintained, must always be at the root of it. The outcome
of the application of current psychological teaching to religious life is,
then, to lead us to regard Religion as a particular kind of activity, as a
mode or type of behaviour, and to make it as impossible for us to identify
it with a particular emotion or with a particular belief, as it would be
to identify, let us say, family life with affection, or to define trade
as 'belief in the productivity of exchange'; or commerce as 'greed touched
with a feeling of dependence upon society.' And yet this last definition
is no less informing and adequate than the far-famed formula of Matthew
Arnold, which I forbear to repeat. We shall, however, have to remember
that Religion is multiform, and that certain ideas, emotions, and purposes
appear in it prominently at certain moments, and other ideas, emotions,
and purposes at other times. But neither prominence nor predominance is
synonymous with 'essence' or with 'vital element.'
I do not intend, at this stage of our inquiry, to offer a complete
definition of Religion. But I must guard against a possible
misinterpretation. In speaking of Religion as an activity, or as a type of
behaviour, I would not be understood to exclude from it whatever does not
express itself in overt acts, in rites of propitiation, submission, or
adoration. For, just as man's relations with his fellow-men are not all
directly expressed, or expressible, in actions, so his relations with
gods, or their impersonal substitutes, may not have any visible form; they
may remain purely subjective and none the less exercise a definite guiding
and inspiring influence over his life.
The adjectives _passive_ and _active_ might be used to separate amorphous
from organised Religion, _i.e._ the feeling-attitude from the behaviour.
'Passive,' used in this connection, would mean simply that the person does
not actively seek those advantages the gods might procure, but is content
to be acted upon by them.
_Unorganised religiosity_ must be, it seems, the necessary precursor of
organised Religion; it is its larval stage. But it does not by any means
disappear from society when a system of definite relations with gods, or
with impersonal sources of religious inspiration, has been developed. In
all societies there is always a large number of people who live in the
limbo of organised Religion. They are open to the influence of religious
agents, in which they believe more or less cold-heartedly, without ever
entering into definite and fixed relations with them.