I find in William James' "Varieties of Religious Experience", the
following definition of religion: "Religion, therefore, as I
shall ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the
feelings, acts and experiences of individuals in their solitude
so far as they comprehend themselves to stand in relation to
whatever they may consider the divine."
It seems to me the common man would as soon understand Einstein
as this definition. In fact, the religious trends of the men and
women in this world have many sources and are no more unified
than their humor is. Whether all peoples, no matter how low in
culture, have had religion cannot be settled by a study of the
present inhabitants of the world, for every one of these, though
savage, has tradition and some culture. Theoretically, for the
one who accepts some form of evolution as true, at some time in
man's history he has first asked himself some of the questions
answered by religion.
For my part, as I read the anthropologists (whose answers to the
question of the origin of religion I regard as the only valid
ones, since they are the only ones without prejudice and with
some regard for scientific method), it is the practical needs of
man, his curiosity and his tendency to explain by human force,
which are the first sources of the religions. How to get good
crops, how to catch fish and game, how to win over enemies, how
and whom to marry, what to do to be strong and successful as
individual and group, found various answers in the taboo, the
prayer, the ceremony and the priest, magician and scientist.
Curiosity as to what was behind each phenomenon of nature and the
tendency of man to personalize all force, as well as the awe and
admiration aroused by the strong, wise and crafty contemporary
and ancestor brought into the world the "old man-cult," ancestor-
worship, gods and goddesses of ranging degrees and power, but
very much like men and women except for power and longevity.
Certain natural phenomena--death, sleep, trance, epileptic
attack--all played their part, bringing about ideas of the soul,
immortality, possession, etc. With culture and the growth of
inhibition and knowledge and the use of art and symbols, the
primitive beliefs modified their nature; the gods became one God,
who was gradually stripped of his human desires, wishes,
partialities and attributes until for the majority of the
cultivated he becomes Nature, which in the end is a collection of
laws in which one HOPES there is a unifying purpose. But the vast
majority of the world, even in the so-called civilized countries,
worship taboos, symbols, have a modified polytheistic belief or a
personalized God, still attempt to persuade the Power in their
own behalf, to act favorably to their own purposes and follow
those who claim knowledge of the divine and inscrutable,--the
priest, minister, rabbi, the man of God, in a phrase.
A part of religious feeling arises in civilized man, at least,
from the feeling of awe in the presence of the vast forces of
nature. Here science has contributed to religious feeling, for as
one looks at the stars, his soul bows in worship mainly because
the astronomer, the scientist, has told him that every twinkling
point is a great sun surrounded by planets, and that the light
from them must travel unimaginable millions of miles to reach
him. As the world forces become impersonal they become more
majestic, and a deeper feeling is evoked in their presence.
Science aids true religion by increasing awe, by increasing
knowledge.
A great factor in religion is the longing to compensate for death
and suffering. Religion represents a reaction against fear,
horror and humiliation. It is a cry of triumph in the face of
what otherwise is disaster "I am not man, the worm, sick, old,
doomed to die; I am the heir of the divine and will live forever,
happy and blessed." Whether religious teaching is true or not,
its great value lies in the happiness and surety of those who
believe.
In its very highest sense the religious life is an effort to
identify oneself with the largest purpose in the world. All
cooperative purposes are thus religious, all competitive
nonreligious. The selfish is therefore opposed to the altruistic
purpose, the narrow to the broad. Good is the symbol for the
purposes that seek the welfare of all: evil is the symbol of
those who seek the welfare of a person or a group, regardless of
the rest.
If this definition is correct, then every reformer is religious
and every self-seeker, though he wear all the symbols of a
religion and pray three times a day, is irreligious. I admit no
man or woman to the fellowship of the religious unless in his
heart he seeks some purpose that will lift the world out of
discord and into harmony.
The power of the human being to believe in the face of opposed
fact, inconsistency and unfavorable result is nowhere so well
exemplified as in religion. I do not speak of the untold crimes
and inhumanities done in the name of religion, of human
sacrifice, persecution, religious war,--these are parts of a
chapter in human history outside of the province of this book and
almost too horrible to be contemplated. But men have believed
(and do believe) that some among them knew what God wanted, that
certain procedures, tricks and ceremonies conveyed sanctity and
surety; that cosmic events like storms, droughts, eclipses and
epidemics had personal human meanings, that Infinite Wisdom would
be guided in action by the prayers of ignorance, self-seeking and
hatred, etc., etc. The savage who believes that his medicine
man's antics, paint and feathers will bring rain and fertile soil
has his counterpart in the civilized man who believes that this
or that ceremonial and professed belief insures salvation. Faith
is beautiful in the abstract, but in the concrete it is often the
origin of superstition and amazing folly.[1] However crudely
intelligence and honest scientific effort may work, they soar in
a heaven far above the abyss of credulity.
[1] It would be amusing were it not sad to see how remarkably
well some philosophers use their intelligence and logic to prove
the invalidity of intelligence and logic. They praise emotion,
instinct and "intuition" and such modes of knowing and acting,
yet their works are closely argued, reasoned and appeal
throughout to the intelligence of their readers for acceptance.
True religion in the sense I have used the word has faith in it,
the faith that there is a purpose in the universe, though it
seems impossible for us to discover it. In the personal character
it seeks to establish altruistic feeling and conduct, though it
does not rule out as unworthy self-feeling or seeking. It merely
subordinates them. It does not deny the validity of pleasure, of
the sensuous pleasures; it does not set its face against
drinking, eating, sexual love, play and entertainment, but it
urges a valid purpose as necessary for happiness and morality. It
does not glorify faith as against reason, emotion as against
intelligence; on the contrary, it holds that reason and
intelligence are the governing factors in human life and only by
use of them do we rise from the beast.
So the religious life of those we study will be of great
importance to us. In the majority of cases we shall find that
social heredity, tradition and backing will play the dominant
role, in that most, in name at least, live and die in the faith
in which they were born. We find those who identify form and
ceremonial with religion (the majority), others who identify it
with ethics and morality, and who can conceive no righteousness
out of it. Then there is the strictly modern type of person to
whom right conduct is held to have nothing to do with religious
belief and who measures Christian, Jew, Mohammedan and agnostic
by their acts and not at all by their dogma, and who thus
relegates religion, in the ordinary use of the word, to a rather
useless place in human life. Orthodoxy, piety, tolerance and
skepticism represent attitudes towards organized religion:
altruism, sympathy, good will, and fellowship are the
measurements of the unorganized religion whose mission it is to
find the purpose of life.
We have spoken throughout of man as a mosaic of character, and we
must modify this statement. A mosaic is a static collection,
whereas a man has character struggles, balance and overbalance.
Really to know a man is to get at the proportionate power of his
various trends, to understand his harmonies and disharmonies.
Character development is the story of the unification of the
traits or characters. Disharmony, disproportion of traits and
characters may be progressive and lead to disaster and mental
disease, or a balance may be reached after a struggle and what we
call reform takes place. Though our social life tends to narrow
and repress character, it also tends to harmonize it by the
preventing of excess development of certain traits. The social
person is on the whole well balanced, though he may be mediocre.
On the other hand, the non-social person usually tends to
unbalance in the sense that he becomes odd and eccentric.
What are the chief disharmonies? I mean, of course, glaring
disharmonies, for no one is of harmonious development, with
intelligence, emotions, instincts, desires, purposes in
cooperation with each other. This I propose to consider in more
detail in the next chapter, on some character types, but it will
be of use to sketch the great disharmonies.
Character is dynamic, and a fundamental disharmony, even if not
noticeable early in life, may progress to the point of disruption
of the personality. Thus an individual who is strongly egoistic
in his purposes and aims may succeed if at the same time he is
determined intelligent and shrewd. But let us suppose he has a
son who is as strongly egoistic, is as determined, but lacks
intelligence and shrewdness. Not becoming successful, this person
ascribes his failure to others and develops ideas of persecution.
Again, a true poet is a person of keen sensibilities, but he must
possess at the same time imaginative intelligence and the power
of words. Let these be joined in proper proportions, and his
verse becomes ours and we hail him as a poet. But let him lack
the power of words, and though he sweat with a desire to write he
is a failure or a hack poet, making up by industry what he lacks
in beauty. Suppose there is a man deeply passionate, thrilled by
the beauty of women and desiring them with a fierce ardor, and
yet he has strong inhibitions, great purposes which hold him
steady. Then throughout life he seems calm, chaste and
controlled, and no one knows of the turmoil and battle within
him. We may suppose that old age[1] or a sickness lowers his
inhibiting qualities, and a startling change in conduct results,
one that we can scarcely believe and which we are inclined to
call a complete transformation of personality. In reality, a
disharmony has occurred, some trend has been released, and
conduct, which is a resultant, changes its direction.
[1] Sexual misdemeanor is not uncommon in old men who have
hitherto been of hallowed reputation.
Inhibition control, may develop later than it should, as I have
already mentioned. At adolescence sex desire comes suddenly into
play, but usually in one way or another there are checks upon its
effects already established. But often there is not, and the boy
or girl plunges into a sex life that brings them into violent
conflict with themselves and society. Despite their efforts the
non-ethical conduct continues; despite their tears and vows to
reform they are swept by "temptation" into difficulty. Then
suddenly or gradually, perhaps long after every one despairs of
them, the inhibition appears, and they settle down to a
controlled life. What has happened? We cannot say in anatomical
terms, but from a psychological standpoint the function of
inhibition, delayed in its appearance, finally comes on the
scene. We see this delay in other phases of character; there is
often delay in sex feeling, in the interest in work, in love of
the beautiful, in control of anger, etc. Take the last mentioned:
an irascible child grows into an irascible adolescent and even
into a similar adult, flaring up under the least provocation, to
the dismay and disgust of others and himself. "He can't control
himself," so say others, and so thinks he. He vows reform, but
nothing seems to help. Then like a miracle comes the longed-for
inhibition; anger is still there when his will is crossed or his
opinion scouted, but a firm hand is on it, and he maintains a
calm he had despaired of reaching.
Man is a bundle of disharmonies, as the great Eli Metchnikoff
pointed out, physically, psychologically and sociologically. When
these disharmonies are within average limits we do not notice
them; when they are greater in degree they bring about conduct
that at once claims attention. Sometimes a disharmony is merely
an excess development of some ability, in which case, if the
ability is socially valuable, we have the talented person or the
genius. This is often the case with the artistic abilities and
also with the physical powers. If the disharmony involve an
instinct, an emotion or certain phases of the intelligence, we
are brought face to face with the abnormal.
There is, of course, disharmony through ordinary defect as in
feeble-mindedness, as in absence of some essential emotion or
instinct. These are hopeless situations and belong in the grim
field of psychopathology. Often what seems to be a defect is a
"sleeping" quality, and one that will awaken under appropriate
circumstance. Conspicuously, maternal love is of this nature. One
sees a girl who has no interest in children, considers them bores
and nuisances, who marries with the hope she will be childless,
and with the first baby becomes a passionately devoted mother,
even fiercely maternal.
In the following pages I shall sketch some prominent character
types. This has been done by such masters as Aristotle, Spinoza,
Kant, La Bruyere, Stewart, Ribot, Mill, etc., but with a
different purpose and starting point than mine.
Every great novelist is a professor of character depiction.
Witness Scrooge, Pecksniff, Mark Tapley, Pickwick, Sam Weller and
his father, created by Dickens; the four musketeers, especially
D'Artagnon, of Dumas; Amelia and Rebecca Sharp, George, and the
Major of Thackeray; Jane Austen's heroines and George Eliot's men
and women; the narrators in the famous Canterbury Inn, the
soldiers of Kipling, the Shylocks, Macbeths, Rosalinds and
Falstaffs of the greatest dramatist; the thousand and one
fictitious and yet real figures of literature.
The temperament studies by the psychologists and philosophers
have been too broad and too classical to be of practical value.
Sanguine and choleric temperament, the bilious, the nervous and
the phlegmatic, the quick and the slow, all these are broad
divisions, and no man really exemplifies them. What I propose to
do is less ambitious, but perhaps more practical. I shall take a
few of the qualities with which the previous pages have concerned
themselves and show how they work out in individuals mainly
sketched from life.
It will seem that perhaps a disproportionate number are
pathological, but I wish to insist that there is no sharp line
between the "normal" and "pathological" in character. In fact,
normality is an abstract conception, an ideal never reached or
seen, and each of us only approaches that ideal in greater or
lesser degree. Moreover, certain deviations from the normal are
useful, as the assemblage of qualities that make the genius or
the reformer of certain types. Others are not useful, or at least
not useful in the environment and age in which the deviated
person finds himself. Undoubtedly the abnormal have helped found
religions, for one who "hears" God and "sees" him as do many of
the insane, if intelligent and eloquent at the same time, easily
convinces others; but if such a person occurs in a group with
well-established belief and resistant to the new, the insane
hospital soon lodges the new apostle.
I shall not attempt to consider all the varied shades of harmony
and disharmony, the extraordinary variety of types. There are as
many varieties of persons as there are people, and the
mathematical possibilities exceed computation. Those depicted are
some of the outstanding types, in whom qualities and combinations
of qualities can easily be seen at work.