Page:The Harvard Classics Vol. 51; Lectures.djvu/443

Rh "rhythm," its "disconnection," and its characteristic stages. Special psychological importance attaches to religious crises, such as "conversion," and their relation to physiological conditions such as adolescence. Certain religious states border upon hysteria and belong to the domain of abnormal psychology, others illustrate the play of the great social forces of imitation and suggestion. Professor James's great book has given currency to its title "Varieties of Religious Experience," and these varieties are being collected, described, and catalogued by an ever-increasing body of observers.

But both Hobbes and Hume, as we have seen, attempted to name the generic essence of religion. What amid all its varieties external and internal, amid its bewildering manifoldness of ritual, dogma, and mental state, is its common character? Were these authors correct in tracing all religion to man's fear of the influence of the deeper causes of nature on his fortunes? This question is still the interesting question which vitalizes the patient empirical studies in comparative religion and the psychology of religion, and constitutes the problem of philosophy of religion.

THE ORIGIN OF RELIGION

To what universal fact does religion owe its existence? Is it perchance a fact concerning human nature? It has often been taught that man possesses a distinct and original faculty called "the religious consciousness" by which he forms the idea of God. All men, possessing the same mental constitution, will thus agree in conceiving of a God. But this view is based upon an obsolete psychology. It is now generally believed that a man is born with instincts and capacities which enable him to cope with his world, but which do not predetermine his ideas. These result from experience, from the interaction between his instincts and capacities and the environment in which he is called upon to exercise them. As respects religion in particular it has become fairly evident that it calls into play various factors of human nature, such as the instincts of fear or of curiosity, no one of which is in itself peculiarly religious. The religious consciousness, in other words, is complex and derived rather than original; a product of experience rather than an innate possession of the mind. How then is the universality of religion to be accounted