(Translated from the German by Dr. J. H. Woods, Harvard University.)
[Ernst Troeltsch, Professor of Systematic Theology, University of Heidelberg, since 1894. b. February 17 1865, Augsburg, Bavaria. Doctor of Theology. Professor University of Bonn, 1892-94. Author of John Gerhard and Melanchthon; Richard Rubbe; The Scientific Attitude and its Demands on Theology; The Absoluteness of Christianity, and of the History of Religion; Political Ethics and Christianity; The Historic Element in Kant's Religious Philosophy.]
The philosophy of religion of to-day is philosophy of religion so far only, and in such a sense, as this word means science of religion or philosophy with reference to religion. The science of religion of former days was first dogmatic theology, deriving its dogmas from the Bible and from Church tradition, expounding them apologetically with the metaphysical speculation of the later period of antiquity, and regarding the non-Christian religions as sinful derangements and obscure fragments of the primitive revelation. This lasted sixteen centuries, and is confined to-day to strictly ecclesiastical circles. Next, science of religion became natural theology, which proved the existence of God by the nature of thought and by the constitution of reality, and also the immortality of the soul by the concept of the soul and by moral demands, thus constructing natural or rational dogmas and putting these dogmas into more or less friendly relations with traditional Christianity. This lasted about two centuries, and is to-day of the not strictly ecclesiastical or pietistic circles, which still wish to hold fast to religion. Both kinds of science of religion exist no longer for the strict science. The first was, in reality, supernaturalistic dogmatics, the second was, in reality, a substitution of philosophy for religion. The first was demolished by the criticism of miracles in the eighteenth century, the second by the criticism of knowledge in the nineteenth century, which, in its turn, rests upon Hume and Kant.
The science of religion of to-day keeps in touch with that which without doubt factually exists and is an object of actual experience, the subjective religious consciousness. The distrust of ecclesiastical and rationalistic dogmas has made, in the thought of the present, every other treatment impossible. So the spirit of empiricism has here as at other points completely prevailed. But empiricism in this field means psychological analysis. This analysis is pursued by the present to the widest extent: on the one side by anthropologists and archæologists, who investigate the life of the soul in primitive peoples and thus indicate the particular function and condition of religion in these states; on the other side, by the modern experimental psychologists and psychological empiricists, who, by self-observation, and especially by the collection of observations by others and of personal testimony, study religion, and then, from the point of view of the concepts of experimental psychology, examine the main phenomena thus found.
Now, such an empirical psychology of religion has been constructed with considerable success. In this German literature, it is true, has coöperated to a slight degree only. The German theologians have held to the older statements of the psychology of Kant, of Schleiermacher, of Hegel, and of Fries, alone, which, in principle, were on the right path, but which combined the purely psychological with metaphysical and epistemological problems to such a degree that it was impossible to reach a really unprejudiced attitude. German psychologists remain, furthermore, under the spell of psycho-physiology and of quantitative statements of measure, and have, consequently, not liked to advance into this field, which is inaccessible to such statements. More productive than the German psychology for this subject is the French, which has attacked the complex facts far more courageously. Here, however, under the predominance of positivism, there prevails, on the whole, the tendency to regard religion, in its essence, anthropologically or medically and pathologically in connection with bodily conditions. This is the confusion of conditions and origins with the essence of the thing itself, which can be determined only by the thing, and is, by no means, bound exclusively to these conditions. Notwithstanding, the works of Marillier, Murisier, and Flournoy have considerably aided the problem. More impartially than all of these, the English and American psychology has investigated our subject. Here we have a masterpiece in the Gifford Lectures of William James, which collects into a single reservoir similar investigations such as have been carried on by Coe and Starbuck. There is here no tendency to a mechanism of consciousness, or to the dogma of the causal and necessary structure of consciousness. And to just this is due the freshness and impartiality of the analyses which James gives out of his enviable knowledge of characteristic cases. James rightly emphasizes the endlessly different intensity of religious experiences, and the great number of points of view and of judgments which thereby results. He also rightly emphasizes the connection of this different intensity with irreducible typical constitutions of the soul's life, with the optimistic and the melancholy disposition; hence there arise constantly, even within the same religion, essentially different types of religiousness. Limiting himself, then, to the most intense experiences, he decides that the characteristic of religious states is the sense of presence of the divine, which one might perhaps describe in other terms, but which still continues the specifically divine, with the opposed emotional effects of a solemn sense of contrast and of enthusiastic exaltation. He pictures these senses of presence, and illustrates them by visionary and hallucinatory representations of the abstract. With this are connected impulsive and inhibitive conditions for the appearance of these senses of presence and of reality, descriptions of the effects upon the emotional life and action, and, above all, the analysis of the event usually called conversion, in which the religious experience out of subconscious antecedents becomes, in various ways, the centre of the soul's life. All this is description, but it is based upon a mass of examples and explained by general psychological categories which, by the occurrence of the religious event only, receive a thoroughly specific coloring. It is a description after the manner of Kirchhoff's mechanics; permanent and similar types, and, likewise, similar conditions for their relations to the rest of the soul's life are sought out everywhere, without maintaining to have proven at the same time, in this way, an intellectual necessity for the connection. But the characteristic peculiarity of religious phenomena is thus conceived as in no other previous analysis.
All this is still, however, nothing more than psychologic. For the science of religion it accomplishes nothing more than the psychological determination of the peculiarity of the phenomenon, of its environment, its relations and consequences. It is evident that the phenomenon occurs in an indefinite number of varieties; and the chosen point of departure, in unusual and excessive cases, frequently diffuses over religion itself the character of the bizarre and abnormal. Consequently nothing whatever is said about the amount of truth or of reality in these cases. This, by the very principles of such a psychology, is impossible. It analyzes, produces types and categories, points out comparatively constant connections and interactions. But this cannot be the last word for the science of religion. It demands, above all, empirical knowledge of the phenomenon; but it demands this only in order, on the basis of this knowledge, to be able to answer the question of the amount of truth. But this leads to an entirely different problem, that of the theory of knowledge, which has its own conditions of solution. It is impossible to stop at a merely empirical psychology. The question is not merely of given facts, but of the amount of knowledge in these facts. But pure empiricism will not succeed in answering this question. The question with regard to the amount of truth is always a question of validity. The question with regard to validity can, however, be decided only by logical and by general, conceptual investigations. Thus we pass over from the ground of empiricism to that of rationalism, and the question is, what the theory of knowledge or rationalism signifies for the science of religion.
Such a synthesis of the rational and irrational, of the psychological and the theory of knowledge, is the main problem raised by the teaching of Kant, and the significance of Kant is that he clearly and once for all raised the problem in this way. He had the same strong mind for the empirical and actual as for the rational and conceptual elements of human knowledge, and constructed science as a balance between the two. (He destroyed forever the a priori speculative rationalism of the necessary ideas of thought, and the analytical deductions from them, which undertakes to call reality out of the necessity of thought as such. He restricted regressive rationalism to metaphysical hypotheses and probabilities, the evidence for which rests upon the inevitability of the logical operations which leads to them, which, however, apply general concepts without reference to experience, and therefore become empty, and thus afford no real knowledge.) On the other hand, he proclaimed the formal, immanent rationalism of experience, in attempting to unite Hume's truth with the truth of Leibnitz and of Plato. In this way he succeeded in grasping the great problem of thought by the root, and in putting attempts at solutions on the right basis. So it is not a mere national custom of German philosophizing, if we take our bearings, for the most part, from this greatest of German thinkers, but it is, absolutely, the most fruitful and keenest way of putting the problem. It is true, the solutions which Kant made, and which are closely connected with the classical mechanics of that time, with the undeveloped condition of the psychology of that time, and with the incompleteness of historical thinking then just beginning, have been, meantime, more than once given up again. A simple return to him is therefore impossible. But the problem was put by him in a fundamental way, and his solutions need nothing more than modification and completion.
Now all this is especially true in the case of the science of religion. Here also Kant took the same course, which seemed to me right for the theoretical knowledge of the natural sciences and for anthropology. In practical philosophy also, to which he rightly counts philosophy of religion, he seeks laws of the practical reason analogous to the laws of theoretical reason, axioms of the ethical, æsthetic, and religious consciousness which are already contained a priori in the elementary appearances in these fields, and, in application to concrete reality, produce just these activities of the reason. Here also one should grasp reason only as contained in life itself, the a priori law itself already effective in the diversity of the appearances should make one's self clear-sighted and so competent for a criticism of the stream of the soul's appearances. Seizing upon itself in the practical reality, the practical reason criticises the psychological complex, rejects as illusion and error that which cannot be comprehended in an a priori law, selects that part of the same which needs basis and centre and requires only clearness with regard to itself, clears the way for revelations of a life consciousness of its own legality and becomes capable of the development of critically purified experience.
If this is, in principle, valid, the Kantian thought, in the further detail, is maintained in principle only and as a whole. The elaboration itself will have to be quite different from that of his own. Even by Kant himself, on this very point, the synthesis of empiricism and rationalism is far from being elaborated with the necessary rigor and consistency. And to-day we have a quite differently developed psychology of religion, in contrast with which that presupposed by Kant is bare and thin. Finally, there remain in the whole method of the critical system unsolved problems; by failure to solve these, or by too hasty solution, science of religion, especially, is affected.
To make clear the present condition of the problem, one ought, above all, to indicate the modifications to which the Kantian theory of religion must submit,—must submit, especially, by reason of a more delicate psychology, such as we have, with remarkable richness, in James and the American psychologists connected with him. There are four points with regard to this question.
The first is the question of the relation of psychology and theory of knowledge in the very establishment of the laws of the theory of knowledge. Are not the search for and discovery of the laws of the theory of knowledge themselves possible only by way of psychological ascertainment of facts, itself then a psychological undertaking and consequently dependent upon all its conditions? It is the much discussed question of the circle which itself lies at the outset of the critical system. The answer to this is that this circle lies in the very being of all knowledge, and must therefore be resolutely committed. It signifies nothing more than the presupposition of all thought, the trust in a reason which establishes itself only by making use of itself. The unmistakable elements of the logical assert themselves as logical in distinction from the psychological, and from this point on reason must be trusted in all its confusions and entanglements to recognize itself within the psychological. It is the courage of thought, as Hegel says, which may presuppose that the self-knowledge of reason may trust itself, presuppose that reason is contained within the psychological; or it is the ethical and teleological presupposition of all thought, as Lotze says, which believes in knowledge and the validity of its laws for the sake of a connected meaning for reality, and which, therefore, trusts to recognize itself out of the psychological mass. The establishment, therefore, of the laws of the theory of knowledge is not itself a psychological analysis, but a knowledge of self by the logical by virtue of which it extricates itself out of the psychological mass. Theory of knowledge, like every rationalism, includes, it is true, very real presuppositions with regard to the significant, rational, and teleologically connective character of reality, and without this presupposition it is untenable; in it lies its root. It is insight of former days, the importance of which, however, must constantly be emphasized anew, that discusses the validity of the rational as opposed to the merely empirical. But still more important than this thesis are several inferences which are given with it.
The establishment of the laws of consciousness, in which we produce experience, is a selection of the laws out of experience itself, a knowledge of itself by the reason contained in the very experience by way of the analysis which extracts it. It is then an endless task, completed by constantly renewed attacks, and always only approximately solvable. The complete separation of the merely psychological and actual and of the logical and necessary will never be completely accomplished, but will always be open to doubt; one can only attempt always to limit more vigorously the field of what is doubtful. And with this something further is connected.
The inexhaustible production of life becomes constantly, in the latent amount of reason, richer than the analysis discerns, or, in other words, the laws which are brought into the light of logic will always be less the amount of reason not brought into consciousness, and conscious logic will always be obliged to correct itself and enrich itself out of the unartificial logical operations arising in contact with the object. So a finished system of a priori principles, but this system will always be in growth, will be obliged unceasingly to correct itself, and to contain open spaces.
Finally, and above all, in case of this separation, there remains within the psychologically conditioned appearance, a residuum, which is either not conceived, but is later reduced to law and thereby a conceived phenomenon, or which never can be so, and is therefore illusion and error. If the psychological and the theoretical for knowledge are to be separated, then that can occur, not merely to show that both must always be together, and form real experience only when together, but there must also be a rejection of that which is merely psychological and not rational since it is illusion and error. The distinction between the apparent and the real was the point of departure which made the whole theory necessary, and, accordingly, the merely psychological must remain appearance and error side by side with that which is psychological and, at the same time, theoretical for knowledge. There always remains in consciousness a residuum of the inconceivable, that is, inconceivable since it is illusion and error. This amounts to saying that reality is never fully rational, but is engaged in a struggle between the rational and anti-rational. The anti-rational or irrational, in the sense of psychological illusion and error, belongs also to the real, and strives against the rational. The true and rational reality to be attained by thought is always in conjunction with the untrue reality, the psychological, that containing illusion and error.
All this signifies that the rationalism of the theory of knowledge must be conditional, partly owing to the corrective and enriching fecundation by primitive and naïve thought, partly owing to never quite separable admixture of illusion and error. So, long ago, the system of categorical forms, as Kant constructed it for theoretical and practical reason, began to change, and can never again acquire the rigidity which Kant's rationalism intended to give it forevermore. And thus the critical system's rational reality of law produced by reason always contains below itself and beside itself the merely psychological reality of the factual, to which also illusion and error belong,—a reality which can never be rationalized, but only set aside. This, too, is also true for the philosophy of religion: the rational reduction of the psychological facts of religion to the general laws of consciousness which prevail among them is a task constantly to be resumed anew by the study of reality, and follows the movements of primitive religion in order to find there first the rational basis; the reduction is, however, always approximate, can comprehend the main points only, and must leave much open, the rational ground for which is not or not yet evident; finally it has unceasingly to reckon with the irrational as illusion and error, which attaches to the rational, and yet is not explainable by it. The two realities, which the critical system must recognize at its very foundation, continue in strife with each other, and this strife as the strife of divine truth with human illusion is for the science of religion of still more importance.
The second correction of the Kantian teaching is only a further consequence from this state of things. If the attitude of psychology and theory of knowledge requires a strict separation, it requires it only for the purpose of more correct relation. The laws of the theory of knowledge are separated from the merely psychological actuality, but still can be produced only out of it. Thus, as a matter of fact, psychological analysis is always the presupposition for the correct conception of all these laws. Psychology is the entrance gate to theory of knowledge. This is true for theoretical logic as well as for the practical logic of the moral, the æsthetical, and the religious. But just at this point the present, on the basis of its psychological investigation, presses far beyond the original form of the Kantian teaching. This is not the place to describe this, more closely, with reference to the first of the subjects just mentioned. But it is important to insist that this is especially true with respect to the Kantian doctrine of religion. The Kantian doctrine of religion is founded on the moral and religious psychology of Deism, which had made the connection, frequent in experience, of moral feelings with religious emotion the sole basis of the philosophy of religion, and had, in the manner of the psychology of the eighteenth century, immediately changed this connection into intellectual reflections, in accord with which the moral law demands its originator and guarantee. Kant accepted this psychology of religion without proof and built upon it his main law of the religious consciousness, in accordance with which a synthetic judgment a priori is operative in religion (arising in the moral experience of freedom), which requires that the world be regarded as subject to the purposes of freedom. It is, however, extremely one-sided, to give religion its place just between the elements, and a rather violent translation of the religious constitution into reflection. The error of this psychology of religion had been discovered and corrected already by Schleiermacher. But Schleiermacher, for his part too, also failed to deny himself an altogether too sudden metaphysical interpretation of the religious a priori which he had demonstrated, since he not only described the a priori judgment of things, from the point of view of absolute dependence upon God, as a vague feeling, but raised this feeling, by reason of the supposed lack of difference, in it, between thought and will, reason and being, to a world-principle, and interpreted the idea of God contained in this feeling in the terms of his Spinozism, the lack of difference between God and Nature within the Absolute. A real theory of knowledge of religion must keep itself much more independent of all metaphysical presuppositions and inferences, and must admit that the essence of the religious a priori is extorted from a thoroughly impartial psychological analysis. And this is always the place where works, such as those of James, come into play. Religion as a special category or form of psychical constitution, the result of a more or less vague presence of the divine in the soul, the feeling of presence and reality with reference to the superhuman or infinite, that is without any doubt a much more correct point of departure for the analysis of the rational a priori of religion, and it remains to make this new psychology fruitful for the theory of knowledge of religion. That will be one of the chief tasks of the future.
The third change relates to the distinction of the empirical and intelligible Ego, which Kant connected closely, almost indissolubly with his main epistemological thought of the formal rationalisms immanent in experience. Kant rationalized the whole outer and inner experience, by means of a priori laws, into a totality, conforming to law, appearing in intuitive forms of space and time, causally and necessarily rigidly connected. The freedom autonomously determining itself out of the logical idea, and contrasting itself with the psychological stream, produces out of the confused psycholican reality this scientific formation of the true reality. The product of thought, however, swallows its own maker. For the same acts of freedom, which autonomously produced the formation of the reality of law, remain themselves in the temporal sequence of psychical events, and, therefore, themselves, with that formation, lapse into the sequence which is under mechanical law. The intelligible Ego creates the world of law, and finds itself therein, with its activity, as empirical Ego, that is, as product of the great world-mechanism and of its causal sequence. It is an intolerable, violent contradiction, and it is no solution of this contradiction to refer the empirical Ego to appearance, and the intelligible Ego to actuality existing in itself, if the operations of the intelligible Ego, also a constituent part of what takes place in the soul, occur in time and so relapse irrecoverably into phenomenality and its mechanism. All the ingenuity of modern interpretation of Kant has not succeeded in making this circle more tolerable, all shifting of one and the same thing to different points of view has only enriched scientific terminology with masterpieces of parenthetical caution, but not removed the objection that two different points of view do not, as a matter of fact, exist side by side, but conflict within the same object.
This circle is especially intolerable for the psychology of religion and its application to the theory of knowledge. The psychology of religion certainly shows us that the deeper feeling of all religion is not a product of the mechanical sequence, but an effect of the supersensuous itself as it is felt there; it believes that it arises in the intelligible Ego by way of some kind of connection with the supersensuous world. This, however, becomes completely impossible for the Kantian theory of the empirical Ego, and all distinctions of a double point of view in no wise change the fact that these points of view are mutually absolutely exclusive. Here we have the results of psychology which the expression of religious emotion confirms, in that religion can be causally reduced to nothing else, totally opposed to the consequences of such a theory of knowledge. Kant had himself often enough practically felt this, and spoke then of freedom as an experience of communion with the supersensuous as a possible but unprovable affair, while all that, in case of a strict adherence to the phenomenality of time and of the theory of the empirical Ego, which is a consequence of it, is completely impossible. Nothing can be of any assistance here except a decisive renunciation of those epistemological positions which contradict the results of psychology, and which are themselves only doctrinaire consequences from other positions. Nothing else is possible but the modification of the phenomenality of time, in such a way that by no means everything which belongs to time belongs also as a matter of course to phenomenality, but that the autonomous rational acts which occur in the time series of consciousness possess their own intelligible time-form. At the same time the concept of causality closely connected with the concept of time is to be modified so that there should be not only an immanent and phenomenal causal connection, but also a regular interaction between phenomenal and intelligible, psychological and rational, conscious reality. At the same time the conclusion is also given up, that the Ego submits unconditionally and directly to phenomenality and to causal necessity, while the same Ego, once more, in the same way, as a whole, from another point of view, is subordinate to freedom and autonomy, that is, self-constitutive through ideas. The two Egos must lie not side by side, but in and over one another. It must be possible that, within the phenomenal Ego by a creative act of the intelligible Ego in it, the personality should be formed and developed as a realization of the autonomous reason, so that the intelligible issues from the phenomenal, the rational from the psychological, the former elaborates and shapes the latter, and between both a relation of regular interaction, but not of causal constraint, takes place. This rather deep, incisive modification is, in its turn, an approach of the Kantian teaching to empiricism, but still at the same time, in the destruction and subordination of the phenomenal and intelligible world, in the emphasis upon the single personality issuing from the act of reason, an adherence to rationalism. But since the distinction and the interrelation between the rational and the empirical forms the point of departure for the critical system, and this point of departure requires at the same time the moulding and shaping of the empirical by the rational and the rejection of the psychological appearance; a mere parallelism is altogether impossible, but an interrelation is included, and a task set for the effort and labor which constantly makes the rational penetrate the empirical. At the very outset we have the exclusion of the parallelism and the assertion of the interrelation. The interrelation, by its very nature, asserts the interruption of the causal necessity and the penetration of autonomous reason in this sequence, without being itself produced by this sequence, although it can be stimulated and helped or inhibited and weakened by it. Thus, in such a case as this, the irrational is recognized by the side of and in the rational. In this case the irrational of the event without causal compulsion by some antecedent, or of the self-determination by the autonomous idea alone, is the irrational of freedom. It is the irrational of the creative procedure which constitutes the idea out of itself and produces the consequences of the reason out of the constituted idea. But this irrational plays everywhere in the whole life of the soul an essential part, and is not less than decisive in the case of religion, which must be quite different from what it is if it did not have the right to maintain that which it declares to be true of itself, namely, that it is an act of freedom and a gift of grace, an effect of the supersensuous permeating the natural phenomenal life of the soul and an act of free devotion the natural motivation.
The fourth problem arises, when we examine the rational law of the religious nature or of the having of religion which lies in the being and organization of the reason. The having of religion may be demonstrated as a law of the normal consciousness from the immanent feeling of necessity and obligation which properly belongs to religion, and from its organic place in the economy of consciousness, which receives its concentration and its relation to an objective world-reason only from religion. But precisely because religion is reduced to this, it is clear that this is only a reduction which abstracts from the empirical actuality just as the categories of pure reason do. This abstraction, then, should under no circumstances itself be regarded as the real religion. It is only the rational a priori of the psychical appearances, but not the replacement of appearances by the truth free from confusion. The psychical reality in which alone the truth is effective should never be forgotten out of regard for the truth. This is, however, the fact in the Kantian theory of religion in two directions.
It is always noticeable that the a priori of the practical reason is treated by Kant quite differently from the theoretical. In case of the latter the main idea of the synthesis, immanent in experience, of rationalism and empiricism, is retained, and the a priori of the pure forms of intuition and of the pure categories is nothing without the contents of concrete reality which become shaped in it. It may be very difficult actually to grasp the coöperation of the a priori and the empirical in the single case, and Kant's theory of the categories may have to be entirely reshaped and approximated to a priori hypotheses requiring verification, but the principle itself is always the disposition of the real and genuine problem of all knowledge. In case of the practical a priori Kant did, it is true, firmly emphasize the formal character of the ethical, æsthetical, and religious law, but, in doing this, does not lose quite out of sight the psychical reality. They appear not as empty forms which attain to their reality only when filled with the concrete ethical tasks, the artistic creations, and the religious states, but as abstract truths of reason, which have to take the place of the intricacies of usual consciousness. At this point one has always been right in feeling a relapse on the part of Kant into the abstract, analytical, conceptual, rationalism, and for this very reason Kant's statements about these things are of great sublimity and rigor of principle, but scanty in content. It is more important in case also of this a priori of the practical reason to keep in mind that it is a purely formal a priori and in reality must constantly be in relation with the psychical content, in order to give this content the firm core of the real and the principle of the critical regulation of self. So the a priori of morals is not to be represented abstractly merely by itself, but it is to be conceived in its relation to all the tasks which we feel as obligatory, and it extends itself from that point outwards over the total expanse of the activity of reason. Likewise the a priori of art is not to be denoted in the abstract idea of the unity of freedom and necessity, but to be shown in the whole expanse which is present to the soul as artistic form or conception. Thus, in especial degree, religion is not to be reduced to the belief of reason in a moral world-order, and simply contrasted with all supposed religion of any other kind, but the religious a priori should only serve in order to establish the essential in the empirical appearance, but without stripping off this appearance altogether, and from this point of the essential to correct the intricacies and narrowness, the errors and false combinations of the psychical situation. Kant, by his original thought of the a priori, was urged in different ways to such a view, and construed epistemologically the empirical psychological religion as imaginary illustrations of the a priori. But that is occasional only and does not dominate Kant's real view of religion. This is and still remains only a translation of the usual moral and theological rationalism from the formula of Locke and Wolff into the formula of the critical philosophy.
The same revision occurs in quite a different direction. If religion is an a priori of reason, it is, once for all, established together with reason, and all religion is everywhere and always religious in the same proposition as it is in any way realized. Schleiermacher expressly stated this in his development of the Kantian theory, and, in so far as the practical reason is always penetrated with freedom, and consequently religion itself is established with the act of moral freedom, this was also asserted by Kant himself. Such an assertion, however, contradicts every psychological observation whatsoever. It is true such observation can prove that religious emotions adjust themselves easily to all activities of reason, but it must sharply distinguish what is nothing more than the religiousness of vague feeling of supersensual regulations, which usually are joined with art and morals, from real and characteristic religiousness, in which, each single time, a purely personal relation of presence to the supersensuous takes place. But this whole problem signifies nothing else than the actualizing of the religious a priori, which actualizing always occurs in quite specific and, in spite of all difference, essentially similar psychical experiences and states. This problem of the actualizing of the religious a priori and of its connection with concrete individual psychical phenomena, Kant completely overlooked in his abstract concept of religion, or rather, deliberately ignored, because, as he wrote to Jacobi, he saw all the dangers of mysticism lurking in it. This fear was justified; for, as a matter of fact, all the specific occurrences of mysticism, from conversion, prayer, and contemplation to enthusiasm, vision, and ecstasy, do lurk in it. But without this mysticism there is no real religion, and the psychology of religion shows most clearly how the real pulse of religion beats in the mystical experiences. A religion without it is only a preliminary step, or a reverberation of real and actual religion. Moreover, the states are easily conceived in a theory of knowledge, if one sees in them the actualizing of the religious a priori, the production of actual religion in the fusion of the rational law with the concrete individual psychical fact. The mysticism recognized as essential by the psychology of religion must find its place in the theory of knowledge, and it finds it as the psychological actualizing of the religious a priori, in which alone that interlacing of the necessary, the rational, the conformable to law, and the factual occurs, which characterizes real religion. The dangers of such a mysticism, which are recognized a thousandfold in experience, cannot be dispelled altogether by the displacement of mysticism, for that would mean to displace religion itself. It would be the same, if one should try to avoid the dangers of illusion and error, by keeping to the pure categories alone, and ceasing to employ them in the actual thinking of experience. Rather, they can be dispelled only in that the actualizing of the rational a priori is recognized in the mystical occurrences, and thus the intricacies and one-sidedness of the mere psychological stream of religiousness be avoided. The psychological reality of religion must always remember the rational substance of religion, and always bring religion as central in the system of consciousness into fruitful and adjusted contact with the total life of the reason. Thus the psychological reality corrects and purifies itself out of its own a priori, without, however, destroying itself; or rather, the actual religion in the psychical category of the mystical occurrences will subside to a more or less degree. Thus we have the irrational prevailing here in its third form, which like the two others was contained in the very outset of the critical system, in the form of the once-occurring, factual, and individual, which, of course, has a rational basis or a rational element in itself, but is besides a pure fact and reality. Just this is the excellence of the rationalism immanent in experience (the critical system), that it makes room for this feature beside the general and conceptual rationality. It did not make room for it to the extent really required, and it especially left no space for it in its abstract philosophy of religion. This space must again be opened by the theory of the actualizing of the religious a priori, and there again lies another improvement of the critical system under the influence of modern psychology.
If we summarize all this, we have a quantity of concessions by the formal epistemological rationalism to the irrationality of the psychological facts and a repeated breaking down of the over-rigorous Kantian rationalism. Contrariwise, however, the pure psychological investigation is also compelled to withdraw from the unlimited quantity and the absolute irrationality of the multifarious (and of the confusion of appearance and truth) to a rational criterium, which can be found in the rational a priori of the reason only, and in the organic position of this a priori in the system of consciousness in general. By this rationalism alone may the true validity of religion be founded, and by this alone the uncultivated psychical life may be critically regulated. Religion will be conceived in its concrete vitality and not mutilated; it will constantly be brought out of the jumble of its distortions, blendings, one-sidedness, narrowness, and exuberance back again to its original content, and to its organic relations to the totality of the life of reason, to the scientific moral and artistic accomplishments. That is everything that science can do for it, but is not this service great enough and indispensable enough to justify the work of such a science? We do not stop with nothing more than "varieties of religious experience" which is the result of James's method; but neither do we stop with nothing more than a rational idea of religion, which overpowers experience, as was still so in the case of Kant. But we must learn how intimately to combine the empirical and psychological with the critical and normative. The ideas of Hume and of Leibnitz must once more be brought into relation with the continuations of Kant's work, and the combination of the Anglo-Saxon sense for reality with the German spirit of speculation is still the task for the new century as well as for the century past.
A short paper was contributed to this Section by Professor Alexander T. Ormond, of Princeton University, on "Some Roots and Factors of Religion." The speaker said that religion, like everything else human, has its rise in man's experience. It has also doubtless had a history that will present the outlines of a development, if but the course of that development can be traced. "But in the case of religion our theory of development will be largely qualified by our judgment as to its origin; while, regarding origin itself, we have to depend on hypotheses constructed from our more or less imperfect acquaintance with the races, and especially the savage races, of the present. The primitive pre-religious man is a construction from present data, and will always remain more or less hypothetical. This will partially explain, and at the same time partially excuse, what we will agree is the unsatisfactory character of the anthropological theories as accounts of the origin of religion. But there are other reasons for this partial failure that are less excusable. One of these is the rather singular failure of the leading anthropologists, in dealing with the origin of religion, to distinguish between fundamental and merely tributary causes. For instance, if we suppose that man has in some way come into possession of a germ of religiousness, many things will become genuine tributaries to its development that when urged as explanations of the germ itself would be obviously futile. There must be a cause for the pretty general failure to note this distinction which is vital to religious theory, and I am convinced that the principal cause is a certain lack of psychological insight and of philosophical grasp in dealing with the problem of the first data and primary roots of religion in man's nature.
"In the first place, it is needful in dealing with the religion of the hypothetical man that we should have some idea of what constitutes religion in the actual man. Now, back of all the outward manifestations of religion, will stand the religious consciousness of the man and the community, and it will be this that will determine the idea of religion in its most essential form. The developed idea of religion, therefore, arising out of this germinal impression, would take the form of a sense (we may now call it concept) of relatedness to some being akin to man himself, and yet transcending him in some real though undetermined respects. Anything short of this would, I think, leave religion in some respects unaccounted for; while anything more would perhaps exclude some genuine manifestations of religion.
"If the idea of religion arises out of an impression, then it will not be possible to deny to it an intellectual root. I make this statement with some diffidence, because if I do not misinterpret them, some recent psychologists have practically denied the intellectual root in their doctrine that religion can have no original intellectual content. If I am not further misled, however, these writers would admit that a content is achieved by the symbolic use of experience. This is perhaps all I need argue for here; since our epistemology is teaching us that the distinction between symbolism and perception is only that between the direct and the indirect; while here it is clear that its use in developing the significance of the religious impression would have all the directness and, therefore, all the cogency of an immediate inference.
"Let us now restore the intellectual and emotional elements of religion to their place in a synthesis; we will then have a concrete religious experience out of which may be analyzed at least two fundamental factors. The first of these is what we may call the personal factor in religion. We are treading in the footsteps of the anthropologists when we find among the most undeveloped savages a tendency to personify the objects of their worship. When it comes to the question of determining the rôle that this personalizing tendency has actually played in the development of religion, the anthropologists divide into two camps, one of these, led by Max Müller, regarding it as a symbolic interpretation put upon the impression of some great natural or cosmic object or phenomenon; while others, including Herbert Spencer and Mr. Tylor, prefer to seek the originals of religion in ancestral dream-images and ghostly apparitions. These writers thus start with completely anthropomorphic terms, and their problem is to de-anthropomorphize the elements to the extent necessary to constitute them data of religion. The second factor standing over against the personal, as its opposite, is that of transcendence. By transcendence I mean that deifying, infinitating process that is ever working contra to the anthropomorphic influence in the sphere of religious conceptions. The School of Spencer regard this as the only legitimate tendency in religion. We do not argue this point here, but agree that it is as legitimate and real a factor as that of personality. The root of this factor, if our diagnosis of the idea of religion be correct, is to be sought in the original impression of religion, and it no doubt has its origin in man's feeling-reaction from that impression. We have pointed to submission as one of the religious emotions. Now submission rests on some deeper feeling-attitude, which some have translated into the feeling or sense of dependence. This, however, is not adequate, since men have the sense of social dependence on finite beings, and we have it with reference to the floor we are standing on. Rather, it seems to me, we must translate it into the stronger and more unconditional feeling of helplessness. One real ground of our religious consciousness is the sense or feeling of helplessness toward God; the sense that we have no standing in being as against the Deity. This radical feeling utters itself in every note of the religious scale, from the lowest superstitious terror to the highest mystical self-annihilation.
"These two factors, the forces of personalization and transcendence, are inseparable. They constitute the terms of a dialectic within the religious consciousness, by virtue of which in one phase our religious conceptions are becoming ever more adequate and satisfying, while from another point of view their insufficiency grows more and more apparent. And, on the broader field of religious history, they embody themselves in a law of tendency, which Spencer has only half-expressed, by virtue of which the objects of religion are on one hand becoming ever more intelligible; on the other, ever more transcendent of our conceptions."
* * * * *
A short paper was read by Professor F. C. French, Professor of Philosophy in the University of Nebraska, on "The Bearing of Certain Aspects of the Newer Psychology on the Philosophy of Religion." The speaker said in part:
"The relation of science to religion has received, to be sure, much study, but to most minds hitherto this has meant the relation of only the physical sciences to religion. The older psychology was largely speculative and metaphysical in character. There were, of course, some who employed the empirical method in psychology, but they were so far from comprehending the full scope of mental phenomena that, at best, their work gave the promise of a science rather than a science itself.
"It is not the fact that the newer psychology takes account of the physiological conditions of mental life; it is not the fact that the subject is now pursued in laboratories with instruments of precision, that gives it its full standing as a science: it is much more the fact that the psychology of to-day has found a place in the natural system of mental things for those strange and relatively unusual phenomena of consciousness which to the scientifically minded seemed totally unreal and to the superstitious manifestations of the supernatural....
"In showing that the abnormal can be explained in terms of the normal, psychology does now for the phenomena of mind what the physical sciences have long done for the phenomena of nature....
"Psychology as a science postulates the reign of natural law in the subjective sphere just as rigorously as physics postulates the reign of law in the objective sphere....
"It is not in the unusual and the abnormal that the reflective mind is to see God. It is not through gaps in nature that we are to get glimpses of the supernatural. Rather is it in the very nature of nature, rational, harmonious, law-conforming, subject to scientific interpretation, that we have the best evidence that the world is made mind-wise, that it is the work of an intelligent mind, that there is a rational spirit at the care of the universe.
"For science the transcendent does not enter into the perceptual realm external or internal. It is, indeed, hard for the religious mind to admit this fact in all its fullness. Until it does, however, religion must always stand more or less in fear of science. Once give up the perceptual, in all its bearings, to science, and religion will find that it has lost a weak support only to gain a stronger one. Ultimately, I believe, we shall find that the full acceptance of science in the mental domain as well as in the physical will strengthen the rational grounds of theistic belief."
(Hall 6, September 22, 10 a. m.)
| Chairman: | Professor George M. Duncan, Yale University. |
| Speakers: | Professor William A. Hammond, Cornell University. |
| Professor Fredrick J. E. Woodbridge, Columbia University. | |
| Secretary: | Dr. W. H. Sheldon, Columbia University. |
The Chairman of this Section, Professor George M. Duncan, Professor of Logic and Mathematics at Yale University, in introducing the speakers spoke briefly of the scope and importance of the subject assigned to the Section; expressed, on behalf of those in attendance, regret at the inability of Professor Wilhelm Windelband to be present and take part in the work of the Section, as had been expected; congratulated the Section on the papers to be presented and the speakers who were to present them; and announced the final programme of the Section.