The psychology of religious belief

Front matter

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Book.

Preface

Although the psychology of religion is still exceedingly young, much valuable work has already been done on several aspects of the religious consciousness, such as conversion, mysticism, certain abnormal phenomena, etc. ; but the important question of religious belief, from the psychological point of view, has received but scant attention. To help break ground in this rich but rather neglected field is the aim of the present work. It does not concern itself with the nature or the defi- 4 y nition of religion, — a question that has resulted in so much smoke and so little light, — but is limited to the much more modest and concrete problem of / the nature of belief in a God or gods and the basis or bases on which this belief really rests.

In order to attain a comprehensive view of this subject, I have not confined myself to psychology, but have made what use I could of the results of anthropology and the history of religion. How far I have succeeded in combining these rather diverse fields, so that they might lend each other mutual assistance in throwing light on our question, must be left to the reader to determine.

My aim has been to write for both the technical and the general reader ; in fact, respecting many

Vlll PREFACE

things, my eye has been on the interests of the latter even more than on those of the former. In spite of this, it may be that the discussions in the early part of the book will seem to some unnecessarily technical. But at any rate I can assure the reader that if he can worry through Chapter I, he need have nothing to fear from the remaining chapters ; they may prove uninteresting and unprofitable, but at least they will be clear.

It is impossible in this place to make suitable acknowledgment to all those who, in one way or another, have aided me in the preparation of this book. I must not, however, neglect at least to mention those who so kindly helped me in the distribution of my questionnaire — especially my mother, without whose assistance the number of my responses, far too small as it is, would have been reduced by a substantial percentage. My thanks are also due to the editors of the Psychological Review and of the American Journal of Religious Psychology and Education for their courtesy in permitting me to make use (in Chapters I and VIII) of material which I published in their journals during the past year. To Professor G. F. Moore of Harvard I am deeply indebted for advice on the historical part of my work. I am also glad of this opportunity to make mention of Professor John E. Russell of Williams College, the Rev. R. Lew Williams of Elmira, and Mr. Percival Henry Truman of Chicago, all of whom read my manuscript and aided me with their wise

PREFACE IX

suggestions. To the kindly criticisms of Mr. Truman, especially, this book owes a great deal.

But most of all am I indebted to the assistance and inspiration of Professor William James. How deeply his " Varieties of Religious Experience " has influenced my thought will be patent to every reader of this book. His " Principles of Psychology " and his "Will to Believe" have been only less influential, while to his lectures and to personal contact with him I owe even more than to his writings. I esteem it a privilege that I have an opportunity thus publicly to acknowledge a debt I can never repay.

WlLLIAMSTOWN, MASSACHUSETTS,

December 19, 1906.

Chapter I

If an inhabitant of Mars (which let us suppose for the moment is an atheistic planet) should suddenly be transported to our earth and should make a tour of inspection, we may imagine his feelings of surprise and wonder at all sorts of institutions and ideas that would for the first time come under his ken. If, for instance, he should land from his aerial car in America and should start his studies by investigating our country and our institutions, he would be struck, we may well suppose, with our mountains and rivers, with the rush of our great cities and our business enterprise, and he would study with surprised interest the wonders of steam and electricity, the feats of engineering, the marvels of applied mechanics, and the beauties and freaks of our art. But the one thing, I apprehend, which would fill him with amazement beyond all others would be the striking discovery that the inhabitants of this great

1 A portion of this chapter appeared, in somewhat different form, in the Psychological Review for January, 1906.

land, almost to a man, believed, and with a good deal of firmness, in a being whom no man had ever seen or hoped to see, whose nature they could but dimly conceive, yet whom they must worship and love, — and whom (for want, apparently, of a better name) they called " God."

If our imaginary Martian should travel to other lands, his amazement at this fact would only increase. On leaving America and Europe and pushing his way into Asia and Africa, he would gradually say farewell to steam and electricity; the sail-boat and canoe would take the place of the steamship, the horse and the camel would be substituted for the express train, and the Bushman's hut and the hollow tree would replace the sky-scraper and the palace; languages and dress, habits of mind and grades of intelligence and of morality, would change with the latitude and longitude ; but go where he might, in Polynesia no less than in Rome and in New York, he would everywhere be confronted with the same firm belief in some kind of superhuman being whom one must worship, supplicate, and adore.

If now to discover the origin of this strange phenomenon he should betake himself to the study of history, he would learn with increasing astonishment, that history knew no more of the origin of this belief than he ; because, as far back as she can go, not a race nor tribe is to be met with, no matter how primitive its ideas and its customs, that has been without this belief. Most other human ideas and institutions, he would find, change with the century as well as with the latitude; but this belief in something which man insists upon calling divine, though constantly altering its form and its expression, would seem to him, after he had finished his investigations, to be one of the few things as natural to man as breathing.

The surprise of our hypothetical visitor is something that we well may share. This universality in belief, this consensus gentium,, has seemed to many a reflective mind full of significance, and at the least is surely one of the most striking of the many odd facts that characterize this strange creature we call man. It is not my purpose, however, to discuss the objective significance of this fact, but to treat it purely from the psychological point of view. Why do men believe as they do ? On what does this belief actually rest ? From what does it draw its strength, and in what region of our psychic life is it mainly intrenched? In short, what are the psychological bases of religious belief? These are questions of the utmost importance, not only to the psychologist and the sociologist, but still more to the minister, the teacher, and the lover of men. And these are the questions which I wish to discuss in the following pages.

For a thorough and satisfactory investigation of this subject we must have recourse to several different fields of inquiry. And first of all, to lay a foundation for the rest of our work, we must now take up what I fear may prove a rather dry study of certain psychological facts. But let the reader be of good cheer and undiscouraged by this first necessary labor of breaking ground ; for in due season, I trust, we shall reap if we faint not.

*C Recent discussions on the psychology of religion have centered attention on the relative importance and value of the " center" as against the " fringe" of consciousness ; of the closely reasoned product of articulate thought, on the one hand, and of the unreasoned intuitional or emotional product of feeling on the other. The antithesis thus suggested is important and points the way, I believe, to a distinction among the elements of psychic life more fundamental and more fruitful than the traditional tripartite division. 1 As the whole of this book will be largely concerned with the relative value in

1 The traditional classification of consciousness into knowing, feeling, and willing is useful for a rough and practical view of the mind, but is unsatisfactory as an exact analysis. If we are seeking for the primary constituents of psychic life which are not further analyzable, if, so to speak, we take a cross section of consciousness and look at it endwise to note the various threads that constitute it, we shall not find will an element in the same sense in which feeling and knowing are elements. In fact, strictly speaking, will is not an element at all. If we take up a writer like Sully, who maintains the elementary character of conation, and read his description of it, the effect is bewildering. One hundred and fifty pages are given to the subject, and a great mass of psychic material is included under the term "conation"; but all this material turns religious belief of these two phases of consciousness, — the clear presentation of thought and the non-rational feeling or instinctive intuition, — it will be well for us at the outset to examine them in some detail, and before dealing with their influence on religion to see what relation each bears to life in general.

If, then, we submit consciousness to a minute, analytic survey, we shall find, I repeat, two chief divisions, two principal kinds of psychic stuff. One of these consists of the definite, describable, communicable elements of consciousness; the rational, the cognitive, the representative; the material,

out to be ultimately either sensation or ideation or feeling; and the will itself, or conation, as distinct from the other psychical elements, always eludes our grasp. The truth is, if you look for will as an element, you can never find it ; for it is a compound — the most inclusive of all psychic compounds. It is a matter of the succession of states of consciousness and is not to be found in any cross section of the stream. You can never single it out from its psychic content, as you can feeling, and say, This is pure will. You can never put your finger on it. It is no more a given matter which you find, than association is. Will and association occur; they are not given. They are processes, not elements. To include will in an enumeration of the elements of psychic life is like saying the competitors in a race were A, B, C, and swiftness ; or like speaking of the circulatory system as containing venous blood, arterial blood, and circulation.

In saying this I do not wish to be interpreted as denying the primacy of volitional, conative life. The whole stream of consciousness may very well be considered a matter of conation; my point is that no one element of it alone can be called conation, to the exclusion of the rest. Activity is a very real thing, but psychological analysis never finds it except in terms of feeling, sensation, etc., all of which it combines with itself.

which may be made public property by means of scientific and exact description. The other class is made up of the indefinite, the indescribable, the peculiarly private mass of subjective experiences which, by their very nature, are not susceptible of communication, and which to be exactly described must be made over so as to lose their characteristic quality and cease to be what they were ; the conscious material that refers to nothing but itself, has no outer reference, does not pretend to be representative, stands for itself alone. 1

As the student of Greek psychology will see, the dual classification here suggested is in line with Aristotle's division of mind into thought and desire. And our first great class, the rational or cognitive, naturally falls apart, as did his, into two subdivisions ; namely, jdealinn and sensory ^ypp nence. For although both of these belong to the^jescribabl^, communicable part of our psychic life, the differences between them are great and must not be overlooked. Not only do they differ in their physiological causes ;

1 Professor Baldwin makes almost the same distinction, for, though retaining the old tripartite division, he includes under feeling all that I have placed in my second or non-cognitive division. This, however, Baldwin does not consider as including only a part of the totality of psychical material (as I have above), but rather as merely one aspect of experience as a whole. The same mental object may be from one point of view affective, from another cognitive. He defines feeling in this broad sense as "the subjective side of any modification whatever of consciousness, or . . . the simple awareness of consciousness" ("Feeling and Will," p. 85).

THE ELEMENTS OF PSYCHIC LIFE g

they differ also in character. As compared with sense perceptions, mental images are uniformly pale, incomplete, poor in content, and fleeting. Nor does this fully state the difference. Images and perceptions may vary, according to Professor Munsterberg, in three ways ; namely, in quality, intensity, and vividness. Will any or all of these variations combined account for the difference between a perception and its corresponding image? Compare the sensation of a gray color to which we pay little attention, and the memory image of it to which we pay much attention. The difference is great; but it is not a difference of vividness, nor of intensity, nor of quality. It is due rather to the presence of something new in kind and is sufficiently great to warrant us in considering sensation and idea, as suggested above, two perfectly distinct divisions within the larger class of the cognitive and communicable.

The second division in the dual classification which we have adopted is less easily analyzed into subdivisions because more amorphous in its nature. We may, however, distinguish within it two kinds of psychic material sufficiently distinct to be kept apart, at least ideally; namely, jjeeiing^and what is known as the phenomena of the background. What I mean by these latter will be sufficiently clear to all students of psychology. 1 Common examples are double images, visual impressions outside the center of vision,

1 Cf. especially James, " Principles of Psychology," Vol. I, pp. 240-264.

IO THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF

the ticking of the clock to which we pay no attention, the whirring of the mill wheels in the miller's ears, or the roar of the ocean in those of the sailor. These things are in the background or fringe region. They are not noetic, objective, defined, and communicable, but subjective and private. As soon as we fix attention upon them and thus take them out of the fringe region, they become noetic and communicable, but not till then. That we are really conscious of them before fixing our attention upon them — i.e. that they belong to the fringe and are not purely physiological and unconscious — is shown by the fact that we notice their cessation. If the clock which we did not "hear" suddenly stops, we feel that something has happened ; our total consciousness undergoes a change. Thus, while still in the fringe region and while as yet unnoticed and unknown, they have an effect upon the general tone of our consciousness, they color our life — and this not in an intellectual, but in an affective way. In this conscious background belong also the fringes which weave themselves about our clearest ideas; " feelings of tendency ".; the vague meanings which are yet no meanings, and which are neither ideas nor feelings; the facts of subconscious mental activity which cannot be denied, — in short, all that heterogeneous mass of rich, subjective, psychic material which surrounds the clearly illuminated focal point of consciousness and owing to its indefinite nature is not susceptible of scientific description. For consciousness cannot be adequately

THE ELEMENTS OF PSYCHIC LIFE II

represented by a geometrical point without extension and with no varying grades of intensity, but should rather be symbolized by the field of vision, 1 which has a focal point of clearest sight and a marginal field extending out from the center indefinitely, with no clearly marked outer limit. 2 If the classification which we have adopted is cor-

1 Cf . Wundt, " Grundziige der Physiolog. Psychologie," Vol. II, p. 267 f. ; also Baldwin, "Senses and Intellect," pp. 63-65, and diagram (p. 68, note) of the field of consciousness in four concentric circles illustrating respectively apperception, attention, diffused consciousness, and the subconscious, the last being encircled by the unconscious (physiological).

2 This is, of course, the common conception of consciousness. It is most directly combated in an excellent article by Dr. Irving King ("The Problem of the Subconscious," Psychological Review, January, 1906), "As far as a conscious process is concerned," writes Dr. King, "it may be said to be best symbolized, for purposes of description, as a point. It does not have extent, neither does it consist of parts, so that, at any moment, it cannot be said to contain elements of varying intensity. Although it may be true that objects do in varying degrees affect consciousness, or that many objects may be in consciousness at a given instant, it does not follow that it itself is composed of states of varying intensities, or that it could be represented, for instance, by a circle of gray, the center of whjch is white and the circumference black, with all intermediate shades of gray between these extremes. That is to say, consciousness does not shade off gradually into unconsciousness. It either exists or it does not exist ; it may be more intense at one moment than at another. It may even at some moments be said to be at a minimum. But at any one moment it is, for purposes of description, a unitary existence without parts which might be thought as clustering about a center with different degrees of intensity and adhesion. That is to say, the 'fringe' conception does not describe a characteristic of the edge of consciousness, in the sense that any conscious state possesses a psychic rect, this fringe region, it will be observed, is much more closely related to feeling than to either ideation or sensation. Between the most clearly differentiated feeling and the vague background there is no cleft but a steady decrease of differentiation in which no line can be drawn. All pleasure -pains, all feelings of tension and relief, of excitement and depression (if we adopt Wundt's classification), have the same lack of clear-cut outlines, the same irrational and private nature, the same subjective and nonrepresentative quality, that characterize the background. "You can know what I know and you can will what I will, but you cannot by any possibility feel what I feel; this is subjectivity, this peculiar and unapproachable isolation of one consciousness from another." x Hoffding defines feeling as "that

halo; it rather symbolically represents the fact that the point of consciousness is modified by outlying neural processes as well as by those most directly concerned in effecting the required adjustment." I must say frankly that in my own experience I fail to find anything that corresponds to this description. Dr. King seems to me to have described a hypothetical entity which, at any rate, is most unlike the content of consciousness. And if we admit (as Dr. King seems in another connection to do) that Professor James is right in identifying consciousness and its content, introspection would seem to show that consciousness is no such "unitary existence without parts," as Dr. King maintains, but that it is "composed of states of varying intensities" and that its parts cluster " about a center with different degrees of intensity and adhesion" — in short that it is best represented, as suggested above, by a field of vision, and that the fringe is a real psychic (not merely neural) fact.

1 Baldwin, "Feeling and Will," p. 85.

in our inward states which cannot by any possibility become an element of a percept or of an image. It is an inward illumination which falls on the stream of sensations and ideas." * If this view be the true one (and I believe it is), feeling will be seen to be very intimately related to the indescribable, non-rational phenomena of the background. It is true that both for feeling and for these other experiences, by an artificial transformation, sensations may in a sense be substituted ; but when this substitution has been made, the real feeling and the real background phenomena have vanished. 2 There is in every complex which involves either of these a factor which simply is not to be objectified or described. So far as accurate, scientific description is concerned, psychology must here " throw up the sponge." In this respect, feeling and the fringe experience differ in toto from sensation and ideation. 3

1 Hoffding, "Outlines of Psychology," p. 89.

2 Cf. Royce, "Outlines of Psychology," pp. 107-112.

3 In an article in the Psychological Review (January, 1906), on which this chapter is largely based, I overemphasized the close relationship between feeling and the fringe, making no clear distinction between the two and proposing that the term " feeling " be used for both. The suggestions of my friend Mr. Truman and further thought of my own upon the matter have led me to modify this formulation of the subject, as indicated in the text. Though feeling and the fringe region are closely related, they should not be identified ; for such a course would not only have the effect of confusing still more the whole vexed problem of feeling (which is already perhaps the most confused and obscure problem in psychology) ; but jt would also ignore the fact that certain feelings

Feeling and the background, therefore, although clearly distinguishable, are, as I have indicated from the outset, very closely related. Together they form the second of the two great divisions in our classification of psychic elements. In the following pages I shall refer to this division of non-rational and non-cognitive fringe and feeling phenomena as the " feeling background," or the " feeling mass," or some equivalent expression.

The character of our first great division of psychic elements — ideation and sensory experience — is clear enough, being described in detail by all textbooks on psychology. The second division of our classification, however, is not dealt with so generally nor so carefully by psychologists. For this reason, therefore, and also because of its important bearing on the religious life, it demands from us especial study. What, then, more in detail, are the characteristics of this vast feeling background ? 1 First of all should be mentioned its intimate and direct relation to the life of the organism. Sensation and ideation relate us to the outer world removed from us by time and space ; the feeling mass of which I speak is indissolubly connected with our vital functions. So far as we are conscious of these functions at all, that consciousness belongs mainly to the affective life. Ccenaesthesia — as the German term

(e.g. intense pleasure-pain) sometimes reach the center of attention. The two must therefore be distinguished, though their close relationship must always be kept in mind.

Gemeingejiihl implies — is a matter of feeling, in the broad sense. The conscious rhythms of the bodily processes — especially as indicating healthy or unhealthy conditions of the organism — are summed in this common marginal feeling. 1 In short, we may say that ideation is man's consciousness so far as he is a rational being ; the affective background is his consciousness so far as he is a living organism. It is this which is in connection with our vital needs. The instinctive desires and impulses have their roots in it, and get their power from it; the inborn reactions upon the environment, so far as they are conscious, the native antipathies and tendencies, our deepest loves and hates — all these are parts of it and grow up out of it. In fact, so inextricably bound up is it with life and all that life means, that it might well be called the vital background.

This vital background seems to be the primary form of consciousness. 2 In all probability the lower

2 " The original awareness of consciousness is an affective state, and as consciousness is the form of all subjectivity, so sensibility, feeling, is its first content." Baldwin, "Feeling and Will," p. 84.

r forms of conscious life have little besides this. Ideation would seem to belong exclusively to the highest vertebrates, and sensation also becomes less varied and less definite as we work down in the scale of consciousness. Our " lower" senses have the most feeling (in the broad sense) and the intellectual ones the least, and ? as Ward points out, our organic sensations, which seem to come nearest to those of the mollusk, lack almost any assignable quale. The infant's consciousness is void of what we know as sensations and ideas; 1 it is a "buzzing blooming confusion." "In place of the many things which we now see and hear," says Ward, "not merely would there then be [i.e. in the infant's consciousness] a confused presentation of the whole field of vision and a mass of undistinguishable sounds, but even the difference between sights and sounds themselves would be without its present distinctness. Thus, the farther back we go, the nearer we approach to a total presentation having the character of one general continuum in which differences are latent." 2

Out of this "continuum," this matrix, this original

1 " All it has at first is feeling, and feeling of one kind. This feeling has no meaning whatever, of any kind." " Feeling and Will," p. 150.

2 Encyclopaedia Britannica, article " Psychology." It will be noticed that in adopting Ward's view of the primitive consciousness instead of Spencer's or Stanley's I have avoided those difficulties which Hoflfding, Tawny, and others urge against the possibility of feeling in the narrower sense being the original form of psychic life.

chaos, big with all the possibilities of conscious life, are gradually differentiated the various forms of sensation and of ideation. Consciousness is not put together from sensations ready made by the outside world; but, from the comparatively homogeneous mass of the feeling background, certain pulses of psychic life more prominent than the rest become more definite, more distinct, and by a gradual process evolve into sensations. 1 The same is true of the differentiation of ideas. The process seems analogous to that of biological evolution, and might very well be described by Spencer's famous definition — "a progress from indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to definite, coherent heterogeneity, through successive differentiations and integrations."

1 Cf. a recent article by Dr. A. E. Davies entitled " An Analysis of Elementary Psychic Processes" {Psychological Review, XII, 166-206), based upon experiments in light perception, in the laboratory of the Ohio State University. Dr. Davies holds that the elementary psychic processes are not cognitive, but rather of the nature of feeling. The first stage of a perceptive process is vague, indefinite, and not to be described further than by saying that it belongs to the affective, rather than to the cognitive life. One of his subjects expresses what seems to have been the common experience of them all by saying, "My feeling for the illumination came before my perception of the object." The conclusion to which Dr. Davies comes he expresses thus, " Our most elementary psychic processes are feeling processes" ; and he adds in another connection that we must "rid ourselves of the false psychology which regards feeling as running its course within a closed circle beginning and ending with the gratification of its own impulses. Feeling, we are warranted in saying, exhibits, no less than conation, 'an inherent tendency to pass beyond itself and become something different.' " c

But while much that in the mollusk and the infant belonged to this feeling mass has with the adult human being developed into clear-cut sense perception and thought, a great part of the most developed human consciousness retains its primitive, rich, undifferentiated character. The logical and orderly mind of the most " cut and dried " logician, who thinks in abstract concepts and reasons in fixed syllogisms of the figure Barbara, has still a great mass of "fringe" and "margin" and "background." The human logic machine is an invention of the imagination ; and the most abstract thinker has always more of the "buzzing blooming confusion" in the back of his mind than he would be willing to confess. And fortunate it is for him that it is so, for without it he would lack one of the most fecund sources of ideas with which human nature is blessed. Thought arising from the feeling background is a common experience of every one. Who has not listened to an argument and jelt its fallacy long before he could put his ringer on the weak spot ? Who has not searched for a lost name and caught the tingle of it, the "feel" of it, long before he could grasp its definite ideational or sensational form? And not only is our general Weltanschauung determined quite as much by the affective life as by logical arguments, but in their very inception also, many of our most inclusive and most important thoughts and systems of thought come to us in a whirl of feeling most vague and indeterminate at first, and have to be worked out afterwards into clear formulation. The logical form is often the last product; the idea germinates in the feeling background and grows up out of it. Probably most philosophers — certainly many of them — feel their thoughts as vague tendencies long before they can express them. "The condition behind discovery is a sense or feeling of harmony or discord among phenomena, and of adjustment or maladjustment between consciousness and its objects." *