Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/27

1.] i.e., empty and arbitrary subjectivism and a blind, superficial historicism.

We have above described the first object of the Philosophy of Religion to be the comprehension of religion as a fact of experience. Then the question arose, What kind of experience? Is religion, the fact and material of our investigation, to be found in external, historical experience or in the facts of the inner personal life? The answer was, Not exclusively in the one nor the other, but in both as standing in intimate relation to each other. Now the further question arises, How must the philosopher proceed in order to understand this matter of experience so infinitely complicated? He must rationalize the materials of his experience according to the general rules of all scientific investigation. The nearest analogies to this procedure are furnished by the philosophical disciplines of epistemology (logic), ethics, and aesthetics. Just as these sciences reduce the states and processes of the knowing, moral, and emotional consciousness to their fundamental forms and laws, and then seek to explain the manifold and complex content of the mind from the relations and connections of these fundamental forms, in like manner the philosopher of religion must explain the facts of his religious consciousness.

A peculiar difficulty, however, confronts him at the outset. While, in the case of the above-mentioned disciplines, the sphere of the mental life with which they deal is easily determined, the problem is not so simple in the case of religion. Does it belong to the knowing, acting, or feeling consciousness? This question cannot be escaped. As is well known, it has been variously answered; but it is evident that none of the one-sided assumptions that have been made do justice to the matter. For in the religious consciousness all sides of the whole personality participate. Of course we must recognize that knowing and willing are here not ends in themselves, as in science and morality — where they are functions directed upon external objects — but rather subordinated to feeling, as the real centre of religious consciousness. The analysis of religious feeling must, then, form our starting-point. This is not a simple feeling, but a