GROUP THEORIES OF RELIGION; AMD imjMDWIDyAL CLEMENT D.J. WEBB BL SI BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF 34&nr|3 W. Sage 9306 ■3..L3J % DATE DUE ip 2 6 m r Cornell University Library BL51 .W36 Group theories of reMo" ,a"l^ olin 3 1924 029 208 240 GROUP THEORIES OF RELIGION AND THE INDIVIDUAL Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029208240 GROUP THEORIES OF RELIGION AND THE INDIVIDUAL BY CLEMENT C. J. WEBB FELLOW OF MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD LATE WILDE LECTURER ON NATURAL AND COMPARATIVE RELIGION IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD LONDON : GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD. RUSKIN HOUSE 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C. NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY First published in igi6 i {All rights reserved) Page 28, line \2,for eiScSv read €iSo>V. Page 88, line 9, add inverted commas after "indScont- posables." Page 172, last three lines should read " not one which {a.% unless I misunderstand her picturesque language in the Introduction to Themis, she supposes) has no such abiding significance." PREFACE The following pages contain the substance of a course of lectures delivered by me in the summer term of 19 14 as Wilde Lecturer on Natural and Comparative Religion in the University of Oxford. They are devoted to an examination of certain theories as to the nature of Religion put forward by a group of French scholars^ of whom the most promi- nent are M. Durkheim and M. L^vy Bruhl^ as stateid in such volumes of their organ, VAnnee Sociologique, as had been pub- lished up to the time at which these lectures were composed, in M. L^vy Bruhrs Les Fonctions MentaLes dans les SocieUs Inf^ri- eureSy and in certain articles contributed by M. Durkheim to the Revue de Metaphysique 5 Preface et Morale, one of which has since been for the most part incorporated in a book called Les Formes EUmentcdres de la Vie Religieuse, which was originally published at Paris in 191 2, and has lately appeared in an English dress. This work I had not before me when I wrote my lectures,^ and I have thought it best, as I find that my j udgment of M . Durkheim's work, so far as I was then acquainted with it, has not been in any important way affected by my study of the completed account of his views which is now accessible, to leave my criticism's as they stand, adding occasionally in a footnote a reference to his book, and supplying, where I had cited the introductory article which appeared in the Revue de Metaphysique et Morale, the corresponding page of the Eng- lish translation of Les Formes Elementaires de la Vie Religieuse. The lectures upon which this book is based were delivered in what now seems the remote period before the European War. Even in 6 Preface that '* world-earthquake " the republic of letters remains, at least to the eye of faith, one and indivisible ; and it would be treason to that great fellowship were national enmity suffered to deflect a scholar's judgment. Yet I may be permitted to count it a fortunate circumstance that I have not been saddened, while preparing my book for the press, by the thought that those whom I was discuss- ing were now on the opposite side in a quarrel in which I am whole-heartedly per- suaded that my country is fighting on the side of justice and of liberty ; and that I am able to salute the scholars whose names most often occur in my pages, not only as fellow- students, but as allies in the great conflict which is now never absent from our thoughts. It is true that I have here come forward, not as in the main a sympathizer with the con- clusions of those whose views I have under- taken to examine, but rather as a critic of their methods and results . But, whatever may be the case in other fields, in that of 7 Preface science criticism is no hostile act, but a wel- come form of co-operation in that pursuit of truth to which both critics and criticized alike have dedicated their lives. OxroRD, January 191 6. CONTENTS PAOE PREFACE ...... 5 CHAPTER I. SOCIOLOGY . . . . .11 H. THE LAWS OF CONTRADICTION AND PARTICIPA- TION .... .20 III. M. DURKHEIM's DEFINITION OF RELIGION . 37 IV. CRITICISM OF THE SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY OF RELIGION . . . . .61 V. THE SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY OF CATEGORIES . 7 1 VI. THE THEORY OF PRELOGICAL MENTALITY . 86 VII, THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THE THEORIES OF THE SOCIOLOGISTS . . -137 VIII. M. DURKHEIM's PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION . 155 IX. GROUP THEORIES OF RELIGION AND INDIVIDUAL RELIGION . -174 X. CONCLUSION . . .191 INDEX ...... 207 9 Group Theories of Religion and the Individual CHAPTER I SOCIOLOGY The purpose of these lectures is to examine, in the first place, the theory respecting the nature of Religion which is associated with the names of M. fimile Durkheim and his collaborators in U Annie Socialogique . This examination will be here undertaken with the special object in view of inquiring how far this theory adequately explains or expresses the nature of the religious experience as it exists in the souls of individuals who have reached the stage in their intellectual de- velopment at which the opposition between the claims of society and of the individual has II Group Theories of Religion emerged into consciousness as a conflict of rights. The Statute estabhshing the Wilde Lectureship directs the attention of the Lec- turer to the higher religions of the world as distinguished from those of what is often called *' the lower culture " ; and it is to a stage of intellectual development at which the opposition I have mentioned has emerged that these religions belong. I shall, there- fore, in treating of the theory or theories of M. Durkheim and his colleagues have the higher religions mainly in view, although these writers themselves prefer, on the whole, to take the majority of their illustrations from the religions of the lower culture. They have their reasons for this preference ; but their theories are by them certainly intended to apply to the higher religions as well ; nor do they by any means neglect the considera- tion of them altogether . The remarkably well-informed pages in which contributors to LAnnee Sociologique year by year record, and, in the case of the more important works, 12 Sociology briefly, review, a host of new books bearing on their studies, contain the names of almost as many dealing with the higher religions as with the lower. I shall begin with the attempt to set forth in my own words, so far as I have grasped it, ' the general theory respecting the nature of Religion defended by M. Durkheim and his collaborators. The chief of these are M. L6vy Bruhl, who is the author of a notable work on Les Fonctions Mentales dans les SocieUs Inferieures, and MM. Hubert and Mauss, who have in conjiuiction produced certain studies on the important subjects of Sacrifice and of Magic, which enjoy a high reputation among students of comparative religion. I shall rely for my facts with respect to the views of these scholars on the volumes which have appeared of their organ, UAnnee Sociologiqae, on M. L6vy Bruhl's above-mentioned work, and also his work on Ethics, ^ and on certain articles of M. Durkheim's published in the Revue de ^ English translation by Elizabeth Lee, 1905. 13 Group Theories of Religion Mitaphysiqwe et Morale^ and forming an in- troduction to a large work which he has planned, and has begun to execute, on the elementary forms of religious thought and life. I It is especially in these last articles that, as I shall afterwards try to point out, M. Durkheim seems to me to take a some- what different line from that of some of his principal collaborators in L Annie Sociolo- gique (though not, I think, inconsistent with what I have read elsewhere of his own writing), and one which is, in my judgment^ a more sound and reasonable one than that to which M. L6vy Bruhl and M. Mauss, at any rate, appear to be committed. Though I am^ here concerned only with the attitude of the French sociologists to the study of Religion, it must be borne in mind that this is only part of a general theory of the nature and scope of what they call Sociology. ^ This work has since appeared. A translation into English by Mr. J, W. Swain has been published by Messrs. George Allen and Unwin. 14 Sociology This is conceived by them to be, like the TToXtn/cTj of Aristotle, the master -science, to which all the sciences concerned with things human are subsidiary or auxiliary. Just, then, as the individual human con- sciousness, although resulting from the co- operation of many distinct brain-cells, has yet its own laws, which constitute the subjegt- matter of Psychology, and which could not be deduced or inferred from the physiological laws determining the nature of the separate cells, but must be ascertained by observation of the behaviour of individual human beings ; so, too, there must be recognized a collective consciousness, resulting from the co-operation of individual human beings, which has in turn laws of its own, laws which are not to be inferred from those of individual psychology, but to be discovered by observation of the behaviour of human groups or societies. These laws of the consciousness of groups or societies constitute the subject-matter of Sociology. While, in every department, the develop- Group Theories of Religion ment of the intellect in individuals is condi- tioned by their social background, so that the source of our notions of time and space, of cause and substance, and so forth, is to be sought in what these writers call ** collective representations," certain other notions, among which are included those which are used in Religion, have reference to no other object than to such ** collective] representations," What is meant by this phrase '* collective representations"? It is important to under- stand this, since the whole sociological theory of our authors hinges upon it. It is, at present, our task rather to explain the phrase than to criticize it. But it is neces- sary to point out that (whether this is realized or not by those who use it) it implies the attempt, so common with psychologists, and so often assumed by thern to be beyond ques- tion legitimate, to start not with objects of consciousness, but with internal facts of con- sciousness, ideas, Vorstellungen, representa- tions, call them what you will, which come i6 Sociology somehow to be afterwards interpreted either as themselves objects independent of the con- sciousness which we have of them, or as representative (whence the word favoured by the French sociologists) of such independent objects. As I doubt whether this attempt, so usual among psychologists, is legitimate, I necessarily doubt also whether there does not lurk in the use of the word ** representations " a misleading assumption. In the last resort, as is illustrated by the development of English philosophy from Locke to Berkeley and to Hume, those who take this starting-point will be led towards doubt or denial of the exist- ence of objects of consciousness independent of our consciousness of them. Our sociolo- gists, however, do not, if I understand them, doubt that there really exist objects inde- pendent of our consciousness ; but they sup- pose that thdse are not at first perceived as they really exist. Eor there is at first per- ceived— or rather (as from a later point of view we should say) imagined—ialong with 17 B Group Theories of Religion them much that we should not imiagine except under the contagious influence of the other members of our group. What is thus imagined^ then, by many members of a group, each under the influence of the rest/ is a ** collective representation/' I do not find in our authors any great light thrown on the problem, which suggests itself at once, of the origination of these " collec- tive representations/' It is the theme of M. L6vy Bruhl's Les Fonctions Mentales dans les Sociites Inferieures ' that the minds of mem- bers of primitive groups work quite differ- ently from ours. I shall discuss shortly some of the salient features of this doctrine. But before doing so I wish to call attention to the fact that it obviously enables this ques- tion of the origination of these ** collective representations " to remain unanswered. With ourselves the delusions which excite a mul- titude are started by somebody, though it may very often be difficult afterwards to discover ' Second edition, Paris, 1912. 18 Sociology who it was, and though the conviction of their reality grows under the influence of mutual suggestion and may even cause actual hallu- cination. But M. L6vy Bruhl may hold (I do not remember that he says) that, at a stage of human development where the sense of indi- vidual distinction from the group is far weaker than with us, there is no need to suppose an individual originator . Since I do not myself hold that primitive minds are as dif- ferent from ours as M. L^vy Bruhl contends that they are, I do not feel comp-letely satis- fied in dispensing altogether with individual origination of *' collective representations." But I do not question the influence of " collective representations " over the imagi- nation of individuals of a group ; nor do I doubt that this is likely to be most complete where the sense of individuality is least de- veloped and the habit of doubt and criticism rarest, as they would be, no doubt, in what M. L6vy Bruhl calls les soci^tis inf^rieures. 19 CHAPTER II THE LAWS OF CONTRADICTION AND PARTICIPATION I NOW propose to examine, so far as it con- cerns us here, this doctrine, which I have mentioned as advanced by M. L^vy Bruhl in his work on The Mental Functions in Societies of the Lower Culture, that the minds of primi- tive men work very differently from ours. It is clear that such a doctrine will afford a basis for a theory of Religion as essentially belonging to a stage of mental development which the civilized European has outgrown, but the products of which he is for that very reason apt to misunderstand . For he is naturally inclined to suppose that religious doctrines must rest upon perceptions such as he might have had himself, that they are 20 Contradiction and Participation amenable to the logical method's which he is accustomed to use, and that they can be legitimately discussed as he would discuss a scientific theory or hypothesis of to-day. Hence we have a Philosophy of Religion and a religious Psychology which are alike, in M. L6vy Bruhl's judgment, vitiated from the outset by ignoring the origin of religious doctrines in ** collective representations " be- longing to a pre-logical stage of mental de- velopment, and essentially inconsistent with the methods of a modern philosopher or psychologist. The now familiar distinction of " judgments of value " from' ** judgments of existence," by which many thinkers have sought to express a difference between the subject-matter of Moral Philosophy or Philo- sophy of Religion and that of Natural Science, appears to him to be an evasion. ** Judgments of value " are merely " sentimental aphorisms." Their source is in ** collective representa- tions/' and apart from a knowledge of the constitution of the group in which any such 21 Group Theories of Religion ** collective representation " originated it can- not be understood. So, too, the religious experiences studied by writers like Professor Starbuck and the late Professor William James are, according to M . MausSj in a review of the latter*s celebrated Varieties ^f Religious Experiences'^ wrongly described by a word which, like ** experience," seems to rank them with our perceptions of the material world. The champions of vigorous traditional orthodoxy (the Vatican, for example, in its condemnation of Roman Catholic Modernism) are in the right in their conviction that the spirit of free investigation is incompatible with that of the surrender to collective sug- gestion which is of the essence of Religion, and which may be fairly described by the old-fashioned names of ** faith '' or *' belief," but not without great risk of confusion by the newfangled name of ** religious experi- ence," dear to certain philosophers and psychologists of to -day . ' UAnnee Sociologique^ vii. 204 foil. 22 Contradiction and Participation The chief distinction which M. L6vy Bruhl holds to exist between the mental functions in les socUUs inferieures, and those which are at any rate predominant in the civilized world that we know, is expressed by him in the form of a contrast between the Law of Contradictiqn which dominates our thinking and the Law of ParUcipatioHy as he calls it, which dominates that of more primitive men. A stage of mental development, we may admit, which did not, I do not say acknow- ledge, but use the Law of Contradiction, would be rightly called by M. L6vy Bruhl's favourite designation of ** pre -logical." But a careful study of M. L6yy Bruhl's elaboration of his theme suggests serious doubts as to his appreciation either of the meaning of the Law of Contradiction or of the nature of some of the most important problems which are in- volved by our logic, the logic of the modern civilized man. For by the Law of Contradiction M. L^vy Bruhl seems always to mean, not the law that 23 Group Theories of Religion nothing can at once be and not be A, but an imagined law that nothing can be at once A and also B (which is other than A). It is quite true that he often alleges, as breaches of the Law of Contradiction by primitive thought, instances in which primitive man supposes (if we may, for the moment, describe his supposition for our own convenience in the technical language of logic) that the same thing may have at once two predicates which we have reason to suppose mutually incom- patible. No doubt in such cases we should support our view by saying " X cannot both be A and B (e.g. a human being and a wolf) ; for the nature of B may be shown tx) exclude the nature of A, and therefore the Law of Contradiction forbids their co-existence in the same subject." But this must be shown by an argument addressed to the particular com- patibility alleged. The Law of Contradiction as such, apart from an investigation of what the natures of *' man '* and '* wolf " imply, no more forbids us to entertain the suggestion 24 Contradiction and Participation that a man may be a wolf than it does the suggestion that a banker may be a historian, like Grote, or a school inspector a poet, like Matthew Arnold. In fact, the denial of the mutual exclusive - ness of particular natures is perfectly com- patible with full acknowledgment of the Law of Contradiction as a law of thought ; and, in fact, hesitation to allow that two particular natures are predicable together or are other than absolutely opposed to one another may arise, no less than over -readiness to believe two particular natures compatible, from habit, suggestion, or (if the phrase be preferred) *' collective representations " en- forced by the tradition of a society . The reluctance of many to entertain the possibility suggested by Darwin's Origin of Species that certain very diverse forms of life are actually related by descent is an instance, in point . The Law of Contradiction has nothing to do with the case. It is not the Law of Contra- diction that either, on the one hand, forbids 25 Group Theories of Religion us to accept the kinship of an Australian blackfellow with his totem emu or kangaroo, or, on the other hand, warrants us in accept- ing his and our inclusion in the same natural order with the monkeys and the lemurs. And if M. L^vy Bruhl seems to interpret the Law of Contradiction in a quite unwar- ranted way, what are we to say of the rival Law of Participation, which, as we learn from him, obtains in the ** pre -logical '* stage of human development ? I am constrained to say that it seems to me to be a mere chimera. I do not mean that there is no such " par- ticipation " as he speaks of in describing it. That is what he would himself say— and on that very account would place the ** law " of it outside the sphere of our thinking'. What I mean is rather that such ** participation " is perfectly real, though not perhaps in the instances which he gives from the beliefs of primitive men. The whole question is not " Is there participation? " but " What par- ticipates in what?" And the answer to this 26 Contradiction and Participation question belongs in each case, not to ** logic/* but to the particular science or branch of knowledge that concerns itself with the par- ticular thing of which we happen to be speaking. Apart from something which may- be called ** participation '* (though, as Plato and Aristotle long ago showed, ^ it is not always a satisfactory name), the principal questions connected with predication, such as the question of the relation of the particular to the universal, or the question to which Aristotle's list of Categories was an attempt to supply an answer, would be meaningless. But will any serious logician say that these questions are themselves meaningless ? I should not wonder, however, if M . L6vy Bruhl would say that they were, or if he were to give the discussion of such problems the bad name of ** metaphysics " and let it go hang. Or perhaps, in his preoccupation with the ingenious theory (to which I shall return), favoured by several of the French * See Plato, Farm, 131 ; Aristotle, Metaph, A. 9. 990^, 991. 27 Group Theories of Religion sociologists, which seeks in tribal divisions the origin of the notion of Categories, he may have overlooked the necessity, if we are to understand not primitive ** prelogical " thought only, but our own civilized logical thought as well, of drawing a distinction between different Categories or kinds of predicate . All through men's mental development there are and must be present both the Law of Contradiction and also what M. L6vy Bruhl calls the Law of Participation, the recognition of a Koij/covCa etSwv,^ a participation of natures, implied in the simplest act of predication, which says, not ** A is A " (for that tells one nothing) but *' A is B." The formulation of such laws in abstraction from particular instances of them is, of course, the work of a more advanced reflection . But what the laws express in abstracto must have been present in concreto as far back as we can speak of human minds at all. There is no justification for a sharp contrast, such as ^ See Plato, Soph. 251 a foil. 28 Contradiction and Participation M. L6vy Bruhl would have us acknowledge, between a ** prelogical " age in which the Law of Participation reigned supTeme and the Law of Contradiction was unknown, and a "logical'* age in which the Law of Con- tradiction has ousted its rival, and the de- posed sovereign continues only to lurk, as it were, in the congenial gloom of the sanctuary and the law-court. Our present concern is with the sanctuary. No doubt Religion is full of doctrines discon- certing to a view of reality which discards Participation and, like the ancient Cynics, cannot find it in its heart to say that A is B, since B is confessed to be other than A, so that the Law of Contradiction (understood as M. L6vy Bruhl understands it) would be violated. We hear of men rich in merits which other men (as we should say) have accumulated, of men with a sense of respon- sibility for what not they but others have done, of men becoming gods, of God be- coming man . It is easy to find savage 29 Group Theories of Religion parallels for these beliefs (which I have taken from more than one *' higher " religion), and say that here we have mere traditions which the power of collective suggestion has kept alive from an age in which our prede- cessors' mental operations were different from ours, But^ after all (as M. L6vy Bruhl and his collaborators are quite ready to admit )^ many of the notions which we use in Natural Science have a pedigree of the same sort as the dogmas of Religion. This fact is upon occasion, indeed, insisted upon by our authors, in reinforcement of the view associated with the most celebrated name among philosophers of their country in the last century, that of Auguste Comte — the view that true science is strictly " positive,'* and that ** metaphysical " notions like those of ** substance " and ** cause " are only shadowy survivals of the ** theological '* conceptions belonging to an earlier stage of the history of the human mind. MM. Hubert and Mauss, indeed, in their dis- sertation on Magic to which I have already 30 Contradiction and Participation referred, expressly say : ** We should not be rash in thinking that, tO' a considerable extent, whatever there is still left in the notions of force, cause, end, substance that is not 'positive* [no doubt in Comte's sense of the word], but mystical and poetical, belongs to the old habit of mind to which Magic owed its existence and of which the human mind is slow in disembarrassing itself." ' Still, it would not, I imagine, be denied that these latter notions had proved useful in the de- velopment of what they are apt to call the "lay" view of the world.2 Why should we not admit that there are facts of experience which we recognize these religious doctrines as intended to express, and as in part ex- pressing, although their phraseology may have been crystallized at a period when the analysis of these facts was as yet very * L Annie Soczologtgue, vii. 146. =" I will only refer here in passing to some just observations of Dr. Figgis in his interesting book Tke Churches in the Modem State on the modern French use of the word laique^ which so frequently recurs in the pages oiL' Annie Sociologique, 31 Group Theories of Religion imperfect, and when they were mixed up with much which we should now regard as illusory ? MM. Hubert and Mauss in the same study of Magic which I have just quoted observe ' that Magic has a certain affinity on the one side to the arts and sciences, on the other to Religion. The *' lay " life (as they call it) is indebted to Magic on its former, or tech- nical, side ; and this, it is pjain, makes it, on the whole, for them a mtore valuable pro- duct of primitive ways of thinking than its cousin on the other side, Religion, which is orientated ( as they put it ) not towards the *' lay " life but towards Metaphysics, the Comtist tradition of hostility to which these writers for the most part maintain. I have already referred to M, Mauss's ob- jection to the use of the expression ** religious experience " instead of what he takes to be the more appropriate words, ** faith '* and *' belief." If all that was meant here was to suggest that the association of the word " ex- ^ Loc. supra cit, 32 Contradiction and Participation perience" in the phraseology of the school of Locke with experience by way of sense perception makes it unfit for the less restricted use which has become usual in philosophical literature during the last half-century, there might be something to be said for the con- tention. But plainly more than this is meant. \ The words " faith " and '* belief " are preferred because they create a prejudice against the claim of the religious consciousness to be the organ by which we apprehend any features of reality which are other than phenomena of organic life upon this planet. For social phenomena^ as understood by the Erench sociologists, are certainly to be reckoned among the phenomena of organic life upon this planet. But, as we have seen^ the foun- dation of the view of religion which we found in M. L6vy Bruhl is laid in his theory of the depiendence of religious doctrine on the '* Law of Participation/' which presides over the '* prelogical " stage of human mental develop- ment. This doctrine of the *' prelogical '* 33 c Group Theories of Religion character of the *' Law of Participation,** if cojisistently carried out^ can, however, as has been suggested above, conduct us nowhere except to the barren Nominalism of the ancient Cynics, for which all genuine predication is illegitimate. M. Durkheim, indeed, expressly denies, in an article to which I shall refer again, piublished not in V Annee Sociologique but in the Revue de Metaphysique et Morale, the imputation of Nominalism. But it is poissible, as I have hinted, that M. Durk- heim's views are not quite the same as those of M. Levy Bruhl and some other of his collaborators in L Annee Sociologique, I have not, indeed, found any recognition in such of their writings as I have read of such divergence ; but then it is very plain from' a study of the volumes of L Annee Sociolo- gique that the group consciousness in this band of scholars is very potent, and tends to render obligatory upon its members a number of common beliefs •-- beliefs bien enteadu of a '*lay" (that is, an anti-clerical) 34 Contradiction and Participation character—dissent from which would incur suspicion of heresy. Still, M. Durkheim, in an article published not in LAnnee Sociolo- gique but in the Revue de Metaphysique et Morale,^ where he perhaps feels less strongly the influence of the sociological group-con- sciousness, does say quite clearly that Religion is, in his judgment at any rate, a pertnanent feature of human life, and complains that sociological study of primitive religious insti- tutions should be supposed to be inimical to the existence of religion in the civilized society of to-day or of the future. I certainly do not think it need in itself be supposed to be so. Nor should one expect to find it so in the hands of a writer who, can say, as M'. Durkheim does in the article in the Revue 4e Metaphysique et Morah,^ that no per- manent human institution (such as Religion) can rest on error or falsehood; that all religions are true in their way ; and that ,if ^ Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Eng. tr., p. 2. * Ibid., pp. 2 foil. 35 Group Theories of Religion those of more primitive groups are chosen by him' for special study, this is purely for reasons of method, and on account of their greater homogeneity^ which facilitates the task of generalization. But some of the collaborators of L Annee Sociologique express themselves very far from clearly if they do not mean to be understood as suggesting that the religious sentiment has no future before it in the '* lay *' civilization which will take its notion of the real world exclusively from " science "—as that word is understood in positivist and secularist circles. Hence the astonishment which we find expressed at what seems from this point of view the strange phenomenon of the obstinate persistence of the ** religious senti- ment " in the very modern civilization of the United States of America. 36 CHAPTER III M. DURKHEIM'S DEFINITION OF RELIGION We will, however, turn now to M. Durkheim^ who (we have seen) is less committed than some of his coUeagiies appear to be to a view which would make Religion a vanishing factor in human life. He has devoted con- siderable attention to the definition, as he puts it, of the religious phenomenon . I have argued elsewhere ^ that a definition of Religion is needless and impossible. But it will be useful to examine that put forward b,j^ M . Durkheim ; we shall find it, if not satisfactory, yet on many accounts instructive .3 ' Problems in the Relations of God and Man, p. 3. ^ See L Annie Sociologique^ ii. i foil. Another definition has since been given by M. Durkheim in his book (see 37 Group Theories of Religion At the outset M. Durkheim frankly separ- ates himself from those who approach the inquiry after a definition of Religion from the side of the most advanced fortos of it. He takes as examples of those who do this two British thinkers, the late Edward Caird, Master of Balliol, and Dr. Jevons of Durham. He cannot conceive any explanation of such a procedure on their part except what he calls ** theological and confessional prejudice." They are resolved to take Christianity — the religion in which they themselves were brought up — as the standard. But how do they know even that this is the most advanced form of Religion ? It cannot be because it is the most recent in its origin, even if we could hold that the latest products of an evolution are always the highest — for Islam is younger than it. Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, Eng. tr., pp. 23 foil.). The modifications, however, which he has here introduced into his original definition "imply," he tells us, "no essential change in the conception of the fact.'' 38 M, Durkheim's Definition of Religion The whole of this argument of M. Dufk- heixn's appears to me misplaced. The Aris- totelian principle that a process of development can only be understood in view of its outcome, its reXo?, is, I am surie, a soimd one. Nor do I suppose that in judging of the relative elevation of forms of religion, tnorality, art, government, or anything else, Caird or Dr. Jevons would for a moment have thought chronology a sufficient guide. They would, no doubt, have admitted that there were a priori ground's, or what M. Durkheim would call such, for their valuation. But, after all, it is probably impossible to find any one who deals with these subjects axid does not, a^ a matter of fact, classifyj the forms of religion, morality, art, and so on in some kind of scale of value, and who is not, as a matter of fact, guided by a priori considerations in so doing . It is, of course, not to be denied that there is a danger in such valuation of being in- fluenced by irrelevant associations, and no 39 Group Theories of Religion doubt it is true that the study of lower forms is apt very much to enlarge the notion of the possibility of variation in religion, morality, and the rest which one may have formed from the study only of higher de- velopments. This study is certainly one of the causes of our hesitation to-day to agree with those philosophers of an earlier time who' found in God, Freedom, and Immortality the irreducible minimum of a religious creed. This very instance, however, is sufficient to show that the study of primitive religion here only reinforces what might have been learned from the study of admittedly higher religions other than those with which European theo- logians of the seventeenth century were familiar . I am thus not convinced by M. Durkheim's polemic against Edward Caird and Dr. Jevons. Nor do I feel that the last word is said when he goes on to object to certain suggestivie definitions of Max Miiller's that a reference to mystery cannot be admitted into a defini- 40 M. Durkheim's Definition of Religion tion of religion, because wlmt seems mysterious to us in primitive religion is not at all so to primitive man. Against this observation I would appeal to M. Durkheim's collaborator, M. L^vy Bruhl. It is with him an essential point of difference between the perceptions of primitive men and ours that as far as regards the majority of objects with which we have to do our perceptions have shed, as it were, what he, not inappropriately, calls the " mystic " elements of emotion, which in primi- tive men are inseparably associated with the perceptions of any object, and that in the ** collective representations " with which re- ligion is concerned these mystic elements are not shed. I am not here porepared to defend the whole of M:. L6vy Bruhl's statements on the subject. Wordsworth's Peter Bell, of whom it is said : — A primrose by a river's brim A yellow primrose was to him, And it was nothing more, surely represents a type P|f mental develop - 41 Group Theories of Religion ment inferior to that exemplified in the poet himself, to whom— the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." But at least we may grant to M. L^vy Bruhl that primitive men, in their religion at any rate, were not like Peter Bell, and that the objects which they regarded as sacred were to them in a genuine sense mystical or mys- terious. No doubt Wordsworth could distin- guish, as (presumably) priniitive man could not, the perception of the yellow primrose as just that and nothing more from' his poetical apprehension of it as representative and sym- bolical of the power behind and below all life and all existence. And no doubt this very power of distinction which renders it possible to treat, when desirable, in a purely scientific and dispassionate manner an object which may ^Iso stir the profoundest emotions^ may also conversely render the mystical or mysterious ^ Ode on Intimations of Immortality. 42 M. Durkheim's Definition of Religion element in our experience more mysterious^ by detaching from it what is not mysterious. One is here treading on treacherous ground, for it is very hard— for you or for me or for the French sociologists— to be certain how far one has imaginatively realized the sentiments of savage or primitive man. Still, nothing that one reads of him seem's to suggest that his religion has in it for him no element of the mysterious, though there is a good deal to suggest that the mysterious is for him less closely associated than it is for us, except in our more reflective moments, with the un- precedented or the very exceptional. M. Durkheim's definition qf Religion will then, we now understand, abstract from all that belongs especially to the higher religions, and will also contain no reference to mystery. It may seem that we aught not to quarrel with him on the former score, for plainly a definition of Religion (if such be possible) must apply to all religions^ higher and lower alike. Yet, unless it is to be what may be 43 Group Theories of Religion called a minimum definition, without any indi- cation of the general tendency or direction of development (and without some such indica- tion how can the nature of a thing that does evolve or develop be effectively described?), it ought surely to consider both whether the existence of the higher kind of religion may not reveal the presence of something in the lower kind from which presumably it has de- veloped, just as the existence of the lower kind prevents us from taking all that we find in the higher as incapable of appearing in any other form than that which it there assumes . It would obviously be as incon- sistent with the character of a minimum definition to include characteristics possessed by lower but not by higher religions as to include characteristics possessed by higher but not by lower. I think that there are good grounds (as we shall see when we come to the actual formula proposed by M . Durk- heim) for doubting -v^h ether he has been as careful to avoid the former error as the latter, 44 M. Durkheim's Definition of Religion and I even question whether he would not admit this, since ( however this may agree with his statement elsewhere ^ that Religion is a permanent feature of htim'an life) in framing this definition he has frankly adopted the view that in primitive religion we see what religion really is, and that where higher religion de- parts from the form' of primitive religion, this is evisceration rather than evolution. But the omission of all reference to mystery is perhaps more serious. '* The sacred (le sacre),'' says M. Durkheim, *' is distinguished from the profane not simply in degree but in kind (non simplement de grandeur, mais de qualite),'' This is quite true, but does ** mys- tery] " not enter into the notion of *' the sacred ",? However, when we come to the definition, despite this pronoiuncement, we hear nothing of le sacre,'^ and hence, at any rate, we ^ Revue de Mitaphydque et Morale^ xvii. (Nov. 1909) P- 733 J Elementary Forms, Eng. tr., p. 2. ^ This is not true of his later definition. See E. R, Eng. tr., p. 47. 45 Group Theories of Religion avoid the notorious circularity of M. Salomon Reinach's celebrated definition of Religion in his Orpheus ^ as ** a collection of scruples which impede the free exercise of our facul- ties," which scruples turn out in his discus- sion to be, not any scruples, but those which arise from taboos— i.e. ''sacred" or religious scruples. 2 I do not myself think^ as I said, that any definition of Religion can be given which does not, by the use of some word im- plying that unique quality (as M. Durkheim puts it) which distinguishes the sacred from the profane, imply that its nature is already known . * M. Durkheim, however, himself gives us a definition of Religion (or rather of religious phenomena) which does not mention le sacre at all. It is this : Les phenomenes dits religleux consistent en croyances obligatoires connexes de pratiques definies qui se rap- portent a des objets donnes dans ces croy- ^ P. 4. 2 Cp. Problems in the Relations of God and Man^ p. 5. 46 M. Durkheim's Definition of Religion ancesr ''The phenomena which we call religious are those which consist in obligatory beliefs connected with definite practices relating to objects given in these beliefs." I propose to devote some atten- tion to the examination of this definition in order to see whether it really throws any light worth speaking of on the nature of that which it professes to define. We shall see after- wards that^ having reached it, M. Durkheim finds himself compelled in the same article to add an appendix which very seriously modifies it . But for the present I confine myself to th^ definition as given above. In the first place, we observe that there are two distinct kinds of phenomena to which the term *' religious '* may properly, according to M. Durkheim, be applied— -te/zV/s and prac- tices. In both cases only those beliefs and practices are religious which are obligatory ; but, as he explains in the discussion which leads up to the establishment of his definition, not all obligatory beliefs are religious, nor all 47 Group Theories of Religion obligatory practices^ but only those obligatory beliefs to which' practices are annexed and those obligatory practices which presuppose obligatory beliefs. We are given examples of obligatory beliefs which are not religious because no obligatory practices are connected with them, and also of obligatory practices which do not presuppose obligatory beliefs. It will repay us to examine these. I think we shall find as a result that here, as not un- frequently in the " sociology " of the authors we are considering, the whole appearance of exactness and precision imparted by the reiterated claim to be scientific, and the con- stant use of scientific and quasi-scientific lan- guage is no more than an illusory appearance. It vanishes on any attempt to probe the meaning of their most confident statements. Obligatory practices which are not connected with obligatory beliefs are those of ** law and morality." No confusion ( so M'. Durkheim tells us) is possible of religious phenomena with these. This is at first sight a surprising 48 M. Durkheim's Definition of Religion statement enough. One would have thought that such confusion was not only possible but had frequently occurred. Nevertheless I am quite of M. Durkheim's mind that Religion ought not to be confounded with either the one or the other, though not by any means on the grounds which M. Durkheim suggests. Presumably M. Durkheim means that a society may require its mem'bers to obey the law or to, observe certain rules of conduct without requiring them to hold any belief at all. Thus theoretical anarchism, or a belief that the conduct required by the community as moral is irrational and even undesirable, is freely tolerated in a modem State so long as the law. is actually (for whatever motive) observed. Now, it is very far from being as clear as M. Durkheim says that this fact differentiates law and morality from Religion. For it is surely the case, on the one hand, that in many communities— for example, to take well-knorwn instances, in those of classical antiquity— there 49 D Group Theories of Religion was little objection taken to religious unbelief except so far as it was thought to tend to a neglect of religious practices (or an indulg- ence in irreligious practices) which might call down divine vengeance upon the State. As Professor Burnet well puts it : ' ** Ancient religion had properly no doctrine at all. . . . Nothing was required but that the ritual should be correctly perfortoed, and the worshipper was free to give any explanation of it he pleased. It might be as exalted as that of Pindar and Sophokles, or as material as that of the itinerant mystery-mongers described by Plato in the Republic. The essential thing was that he should duly sacrifice his pig." It could hardly be said that the beliefs here were obligatory, so long as the practices were carried out. And, on the other h^id, if it be said that these societies did put some pressure on belief, if less than on practice, can it be said that any society is wholly indifferent to the belief of its members in the sanctity of the ^ Early Greek Philosophy^ P- 9i- SO M. Durkheim's Definition of Religion law and m<3rality which it enforces ? Only so far as theoretical unbelief in the binding char- acter of these is supposed likely to be without any practical result can it be said that any society would not discourage it. It is not easy to see on what grounds, except on that of anti -theological and anti-confessional pre- judice—to invert the phraseology which he applies to others— M. Durkheim treats "law" and "morality'* divorced from their pprimitive religious sanctions as obviously quite other than religious in character ; while^ wherever (as often in modern Europe and Am'erica) Religion assumes the character of an individual experience, verifying as the obj ect of indi- vidual consciousness and rational reflection what was first given as the " collective repre- sentation '* of a religious society, it is to be dismissed without ceremony as a mere echo of what can in its true nature hav^e no, sig- nificance except for the mem'ber of a par- ticular group who has not yet achieved his independence as a citizen of the modern State. SI Group Theories of Religion As there are, according to M. Durkheim, obligatory practices which are not connected with obligatory beliefs, and which on this account are not entitled to be called religious, so he can point to obligatory beliefs which also, since they are not connected with obli- gatory practices, have no right to the name. These are beliefs in certain ob j ects laiques en apparence — his instances are the flag', the country, the French Revolution, Joan of Arc — which can only be denied the name of religious by reference to the obligatory prac- tices which are always connected with religious beliefs, while with these no such practices are connected. Could anything be more arbitrary, more (one may say) opportunist? Even sup- posing M. Durkheim to be ready to admit that these objects laiques em apparence, in fwhich it is obligatory on Frenchmen to be- lieve, would become genuinely religious if some kind of ritual expression of the public reverence for such objects were invented and imppsed by legal or social pressure upon 52 M. Durkheim's Definition of Religion Frenchmen, is it not plain that this would either prove the whole conception of the "religion" advanced by M'. Durkheim to be to the last degree technical and superficial, or else would reveal the fact that (under the influence of considerations wholly relative to the political and' ecclesiastical circumstances of contemporary France) he really identifies " religious " with " clerical," an identification already implied in his use of laique ? It would be interesting to know how M. Durkheim would deal with the now annual commemora- tion of the *' birthday of Rome," the observ- ance of the ceremonies connected with which is considered as proof of loyalty to the present Italian State, and therefore, in the eyes of strict Vaticanists, of disloyalty to the Church. Here we have an object precisely of the sort, laique en apparence, in which, according to M. Durkheim, it is obligatory on the citizen to believe ; and a practice obligatory in ex- actly the same sense is associated with it. It is therefore fully entitled, on M. Durkheim's S3 Group Theories of Religion showing, to the title of ** religious," while it remains as laique en apparence as ever. If, however, there is such a possibility (as there surely is) of such a religion laique^ do not a great part of the assumptions implied in M. Durkheim's search for a definition of the " religious phenomenon '* become quite irrele- vant to the issue before him? In fact, the charge of confessional prejudice, which the writers of L Annee Sociologique are constantly bringing against English and American writers on comparative religion, may be retorted in their full force upon the editor of L Annee Sociologique himself. The Etat laique as an object of obligatory belief is constantly before him; and the absence of obligatory practices connected with this object is purely accidental and strictly comparable to the absence from the religious life of som^ modern men of a determinate *' group " with whose collective representations it is connected . Incidentally it is explained by M. Durk- heim that our belief in science is not obli- 54 M. Durkheim's Definition of Religion gatory because^ although science (like religion) consists of representations and of collective representations, yet belief in it is regarded only as sensible (sense), not as obligatory. Is this as fundamental a difference as M. Durk- heim supposes ? Would not evidence that a man did not believe in some of the more fundamental idoctrines of arithinetic and geometry be considered a ground for treat- ing him as insane or incapable of functioning as a member of society? and would not this be thought all the more justified if his dis- belief were tO; lead him to practices— say in regard to money— based upon these arith- metical heresies? I am not contending, be it obsei-ved, that there is no distinction be- tween our way of looking' at disbelief in science and our way of looking at dis - belief in religion: but only that M. Durk- heim's definition of religious phenomena gives us no principle on which to distinguish them. But we have not yet compjeted our study 55 Group Theories of Religion of M. Durkheim's professed definition of the religious phenomenon . We know that the intention of the author is to give expression to a ** group theory " of Religion. Yet in the definition no mention is made of a ** group" at all. This may, at first si^ht surprise us; but M. Durkheim goes on to tell us that "whatever is obligatory is of social origin. For an obligation implies a command, and consequently an authority which commands. We do not/* he continues, ** defer spontane- ously to any orders unless they come from something more exalted than ourselves. But if one does not allow oneself to pass beyond the domain of experience^ there is no moral power above the individual except that of the group to which he belongs. Fjor empirical science the only thinking being which is greater than man is society." Hence to speak of the obligatory character of dogmas and rites is tOi speak of them as the product of the life of that fgroup to which he belongs. ' ' 56 M. Durkheim's Definition of Religion But who does not see that, if the " group theory" of religion is put forward (as in VAnnee Sociologique it continually is) as a rival to any which would admit the possibility of a religious relation between the individual human soul and an objectively real God or divine order of being, this definition of the religious phenomenon is a glaring petitio prin- cipii? It is assumed that to recognize a divine imponent of obligation on the individual is to transcend the realm of experience ; or, if it be said that " experience " is taken in a limited sense, then it is assunied that '* experi- ence " in this limited sense is coextensive with the real contents of the human mind. The recognition of an absolute obligation, such as is that of th^ categorical imperative of morality in Kant's philosophy, is assumed to be illusory. The question which at once occurs to the mind, " What is the obligation tO' obey the group?'* is by implication and without argument treated as merely meaningless. A more arrogant dogmatism it would not be 57 Group Theories of Religion possible to find in any '' theological ** or ''confessional" treatise. Whatever prejudices^ however, empiricist or anti- clerical, may reign in the mind of M. Durkheim, he is not the man to deny a fact which stares him' in the face within what he himself recognizes as the domain of experi- ence. And accordingly, when confronted with the fact of the existence, even from' the earliest stages of social development of which we know, of private rites, totems, and so forth, he meets it with an emendation of his defini- tion by the addition to it of this note ^ : '' Subsidiairementy in a secondary sense, one also classes as religious phenomena beliefs and practices which are optional^ but which concern objects similar or assimilated to those already mentioned..*' This is surely the very bankruptcy of definition. In what respect are these objects similar or assimilated to the objects of public religion? Surely in their sacred or religious character, and only so; ^ L'A. 5., ii. 28, S8 M. Durkheim's Definition of Religion and in this case this character ca,nnot even include that of being' *' obligatory " in the sense given by M. Durkheim to the word; for these beliefs and practices are expressly said to be facaltatifs, and this word is obviously used as the antithesis of obliga- toires, I should myself be prepared to admit that these private beliefs, rites, etc., are re- garded as obligatory by those who hold or practise them ; but then I think the group theory of obligation at the most an account of the history of its development, and not an explanation of its nature. Nor do I complain of M. Durkheim for failing to define Religion satisfactorily, but only for claiming to have done so. I do not myself believe that Religion can be defined. We all know what we mea,n by holding a thing to be sacred (though we may not all regard the same things as sacred ) better than any definition can tell us, as we all know what we mean by calling things beautiful (though we do not all agi-ee in what we think beautiful) better than any definition 59 Group Theories of Religion of beauty can tell us. But on this point I have dwelt elsewhere/ and will not enlarge upon it further here .2 ^ See Problems i?i the Relations of God and Man^ p. 4. ^ M. Durkheim's later definition of religion runs thus {Elementary Forms^ Eng. tn, p. 47) : " A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things^ that is to sayy things set apart and forbidden — beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church all those who adhere to them^ This new definition seems to be exposed, as regards the explanation of " sacred," to the charge of circularity already brought above against that of M. Salomon Reinach in his Orpheus^ The note of obliga- torinesSy so much insisted upon in the earlier definition, no longer appears ; because, as we are told, " this obligation evidently comes from the fact that these beliefs are the possession of a group which imposes them upon its mem- bers." It is hard to see in what way the new definition is (as it claims to be) less " formal " and more regardful of the "contents of the religious representations'' than its predecessor. 60 CHAPTER IV CRITICISM OF THE SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY OF RELIGION After these attempts to prdbe here and there the generalizations of M. Durkheim and his collaborators, we shall perhaps be prepared for the conclusion that their theory of Religion is by no means satisfactory . The fact that it was the existence of private religious beliefs and practices, even among the primitive societies to which he looks by choice for light on the nature of Religion, which led M. Durkheim to spoil his definition by a note appended, is significant of the weakness of the French sociologists in dealing with Religion as it exists in the individual, when once he has come to realize the possibility of a diverg- ence between his own beliefs (or, if the word 6i Group Theories of Religion be preferred^ representations) and those of the group to which he notwithstanding acknow- ledges himself to belong. The French sociologists have, indeed, done a service to the philosophy of religion by in- sisting on the evidence borne by history to the social character of religion. I find myself often in sympathy with them' in certain criti- cisms which they are led by their point of view to make on some philosophical and psychological accounts of religion which ab- stract unduly from the historical facts of religious development, I should agree with M. Mauss I that sometimes the orthodox have preserved better than liberal theologians of the type of Auguste Sabatier what he calls " the sense of necessities inherent in all religion." The combined influence of two traditions has often, no doubt, distracted the minds of thinkers who have occupied them- selves with this subject from the intimate his- torical connection between social conditions ' LA. S.J vii. 201. 62 The Sociological Theory of Religion and religious faith and practice, which a keener appreciation of the importance of the institutional element in religion would have helped them to detect. One of these is the tradition of the deistic Natural Theology associated with the abstract rationalism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ; and the other is the Protestant tradition of insistence on private judg!ment and individual faith, of appeal from the visible Church (an actually, existing^ graup) to an invisible or ideal Church nowhere actu- ally to be found on earths Again, M, Mauss is not alone among critics of William' James's celebrated lectures on the Varieties of Religious Experience in recognizing 2 that his purview was exclusively, that of the American Protest- ant of the conversionist type (if I may coin this expression), and that he was thus, with- out fully recognizing it, dealing rather with the religious experience of a particular group ' Cp. Studies in the History of Natural Theology, p. 346. = L'A, S.J vii. 209. 63 Group Theories of Religion than with rehgious experience in general. I should even go with the Erench sociologists in holding that one has^ at any rate primarily, to do, not with religion in general at all, but rather with religions. Of course they them- selves are con tinually generalizing about religion, and when M . Hubert impatiently exclaims ^ in a review of Miss Harrison's Prole- gomena to ihe Study of Greek Religion, ** Would to Heaven they [the anthropologists J would abstain from generalizing ! " one would even gather that generalization was a privilege reserved, in his view, for orthodox sociologists of the group AVhose high priest is Mi. Durk- heim. But I should agree with them^ that we must begin with Religions in order to dis- cover what Religion is, and that we should not make it the sole or main object of our study of Religions to abstract the common element in them. I should differ, however, from what I suppose would be the view at any rate ^ L'A. S., viii. 276. 64 4 The Sociological Theory of Religion of most of them^ that there is no possibility of there coming into being a universal religious fellowship, a human group with a human religion, just as there is already in existence a universal scientific fellowship ; because, at the stage of mental development at which the uni- versal scientific fellowship becomes possible, Religion, in any sense which can properly bear the same name as the historical religions of the world, can only exist as a *' survival," with no real place of its own in the "lay" civiliza- tion of the future, except p^resumably as the subject of art and poetry^ which are admit- tedly imaginative and not realistic. While agreeing with the French sociologists to the extent which I have described in their criticism of any tendency, whether in the philosophy or in the psychology of religion, towards neglect of the facts of the^Tstorical development of religion, or towards ignoring the close correlation which exists between the content of any religious experience (we may be allowed, for the nonce, the use of this 6s E Group Theories of Religion expression), and the society to which the subject of that experience belongs or has belonged, I must here observe that it would be a serious error to impute such a tendency to all the chief representatives of the Philo- sophy of Religion in Europe during the past hundred years. The Hegelian philosophy of religion sees in the history of Religion the process of the divine self -revelation^ and in every god the spirit of the community which worships it. And if we turn to the schools of thought that owe their origin to the reaction against Hegelianism which took place in Germany in the middle of the nineteenth century, we shall find the Ritschlians pushing' even to exaggeration the doctrine of the dependence of personal religion on the religious community. This characteristic of Ritschlianism may be seen in an extreme form in a book by Professor Wilhelm Hermann, well known to students of religious thought in England, and translated into our language under the title of Th^ 66 The Sociological Theory of Religion Communion of the Christian with God. For Professor Hermann, w^hile he does not deny that there is communion with God outside of Christianity, does deny that we can possibly, enter into: the religious life of non-Christians. Only through the comtnunity to which we belong (i.e., in the case of Christians, through the Christian Church) is such comtnunion * possible or really intelligible to us. Even into the religious life of a pious Israelite the writer tells us we cannot enter fully, because an Israelite was in a relation of comtnunion with God as belonging to a particular nation which was God's people. Hence he (not we) *' was able to grasp as revelations of God those features in the course of Hebrew history which he did so apprehend." ** Our position/' he says again, *' is diflferent ; we stand in such historical relations that Jesus Christ alone can be grasped by us as the fact in which God reveals himself. . . . The know- ledge of God and the religion which have ^ Communion with God, p. 62. 67 Group Theories of Religion been and which are possible to men placed in other historical conditions are impossible to us." As to the savages of Australia, we do not even (according to Professor Hermann) know through what medium comes to them any knowledge of and comtnunion with God that they may enjoy. This doctrine, at any rate— and it only carries out a principle inherent in the Ritschlian philosophy of religion— is as thoroughgoing a ** group theory " of religion as the most ardent of the French sociologists could desire. The objection I should make to it, as to the doctrine of the French sociologists them- selves, is that it ignores the claim to universal validity and objectivity which (as I should say ) it is the very nature of the human mind to make for its apprehensions . No doubt the assertion of the sociologists that they lean study Religion apart from any sharing, even by v^ay of sympathy, of the religious sentiments of any group, does implicitly make that claim. But it does it at the expense of 68 The Sociological Theory of Religion denying to the properly religious elements in Religion any rational justification. The aims of religious groups^ so far as they are rational, would be better attained by *' lay '*--that is, non -religious— science and art. The suggestion by any writer (as by Mr. Morris Jastrow or by William James) of the need in a student of Religion of some sympathy with religious sentiments is apt tO; be sternly repudiated by the reviewers in VAnnee Sociologiqae.^ Renan 2 thought, indeed, that the historian of a religion should not be a believer at the time of writing ; but that he should have been a believer (as he himself had been in respect of Christianity) he regarded as an advantage. The sociologists, or some of them, would prefer that the historian of Religion should never have believed. Now, I do not wish to deny that a man without ever having enter- tained religious sentiments may make valuable contributions to the knowledge of the history ^ See L^A. 5., vi. 167 ; vii. 206. ^ Vie dejisus^ Introd. 69 Group Theories of Religion of Religion, but I find it as difficult to think that a complete stranger to such sentiments is the ideal historian of Religion as to suppose the lack of any musical taste a qualification for writing, the history of Music. Such facts, indeed, as those relating to the development of the musical bow from the bow used as a weapon might very well be traced' out by a wholly unmusical person ; but such a discussion is only accessory to the real history of Music itself. The French sociologists' distrust of meta- physics has, I think, deterred them from a sufficiently thorough examination, philosophical as well as historical, of the relation of the human individual to the community of which he is a member. The lack of this has pro- duced an undeniable vagueness as to the place of ''collective representations'* in science. 70 CHAPTER V THE SOCIOLOGICAL THEORIES OF CATEGORIES We will n<^w turn our attention to this subject, which will be found to lead naturally to that which we set out to consider, thfe bearing of the group theory of Religion on the view to be taken of Religion as it exists in the in- dividual who has reached a stage at which he can contrast his own interest with that of his group. The French sociologists are prepared to sug'gest that a new epistemology or theory of knowledge may be based upon their socio- logical researches. Those objects or forms (we should call them one or the other, according as our view is, in Kant's phrase- ology, *' dogmatic *' or "critical") of percep- 71 Group Theories of Religion tion and thought, such as time, space, cause, substance, and so forth, which seem to impose themselves upon our minds as necessary con- ceptions, -with which we cannot dispense, may perhaps be traced back to *' collective representations,'' which, having imposed them- selves, like all other products of collective thinking, upon individual members of human groups in the long distant past, exercised over those who first began to think for themselves an influence of the same sort as that which religious representations exercise, and were thus taken for granted from the first in the history of independent thinking, of philosophy and science. Readers of Mr, Cornford's book From Religion to Philosophy will here recognize a thought which, as applied to the history of Greek speculation, is the them'e of that work, to which I shall make some further reference hereafter. Without wishing to deny the interest and importance for what may be called the history of ideas of much that the observatiom 72 Sociological Theories of Categories of primitive men has brought to light re - specting their modes of envisaging the course of time, the disposition of the world in space, or the constitution of the universe, it may be doubted whether anthropologists or sociolo- gists have not in respect of it yielded to a temptation, noted by Bacon ' as apt 'to beset scientific investigators, of trying to explain everything in the universe from the point of view of their special studies . In dealing with this subject I shall, in the first place, point out in what way it seems to me that the fact on which the French sociologists rely, when they talk of the categories having a religious origin, may really throw light upon the origin of som'e of the phraseology which we employ in philosophy and in science . Next I shall indicate the reasons which lead me to disagree with the suggestion that these facts can help us to solve the real problems of logic and epistemology. Lastly I shall advert to the treatment of the matter in the ' Nov* Org, i. § 54. 73 Group Theories of Religion article by M. Durkbeim in the Revue de Metaphysique et Morale,^ to which I have already several times referred, a treat- ment which seems to conduct us in a direction more hopeful than that taken by some of his collaborators. Pursuing the direction which our discussion of M. Durkheim will indicate, we shall, I think, find ourselves approxi- niating to a philosophical theory of a very different character to that which dominates the minds of the writers in VAnnie Sociologique, but which may without absurdity be also called a *' group theory of religion/' namely, a *' philosophy of loyalty/' such as is expounded by Professor Royce in his recent lectures on the Problem of Christianity, The fundamental principle of the doctrine or doctrines we have now to discuss is stated by Messrs. Durkheim and Mauss in an article on Classifications primitives ^ in these words : ^ Now the Introduction to Elementary Forms of Religious Life. « rA, S., vi. 6^. 74 Sociological Theories of Categories *' Thus the logical hierarchy is but an aspect of the social hierarchy, and the unity of thought is nothing else than the unity of the collective life of a society {de la collectMU) extended to the universe .... Logical relations are thus in a sense domestic relations." AVhat does this mean? What it means is, I think, no more than this (but no doubt this is a fact of very high interest and im- portance), that when man begins to concern himlself with the universe— and it is the fundamental mark of human intelligence that it does so concern itself, that it forins the conceptions of an all-including whole, and looks upon the incidents of the man's own life, as it were, against the background of such an all -including whole— it is froni th^e point of view of his society, his " group.'* The consciousness of the world, as we may put it, is mediated to him through the con- sciousness of his group. It is in becoming aware of himself as a member of a group, 75 Group Theories of Religion as living iti it a life which he distinguishes from' his individual life as larger, more per- manent, more sacred, that he starts out on the way that will eventually lead him on to the adventures of science and of philosophy. In the pursuit of these adventures he will scan afar ofif horizons which he knows that not only he but his group, even when it has become no paltry tribe but embraces the whole race of mankind, has never taken for their inheritance. But at first, and even for a very long time, he does not realize this. Hence he supposes (as we are told) that the different quarters of the heavens belong, as it were, to that division of his people which is encamped towards it. What- soever sort of thing he has to do with, animal, plant, star, and so forth, he divides into classes according to the tribes of his people. We are reminded of the words of a writer belonging to a far more advanced stagfe of development than the Australian black- 76 Sociological Theories of Categories fellows^ whose customjary phraseology has been the main evidence alleged for this habit of the primitive mind. It is the poet of the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy who says : ** Remember the days of old, consider the years of m'any generations. Ask thy father and he will shewi th^e ; thine elders, and they will tell thee. When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he separ- ated the children of men, he set the bounds of the peoples according to the number of the children of Israel." ' It would be easy to produce exam'ples of the same habit per- sisting in quarters nearer at hand. In imagi- nation (though we know it to be only in imagination) we associate the constellation of the Southern Cross with the folk who nightly look upon it, and we feel a sense of natural proprietorship in the weather of our native land. A late well-known musician was wont to amuse his friends by classifying every- thing in heaven ,and earth as '* Oxford " or ' Deut. xxxii. 7, 8. 77 Group Theories of Religion "Cambridge.** This was on his part, of course, a dehberate joke, but a joke in which there was an echoi of a habit which no doubt influenced many generations of men in their choice of principles on which to class the " number of things " of which, like the child in Stevenson *s poem,' they found the world to be full. Such terms pf our own language as *' genus " and *' kind '* obviously imply the extension of what MM. Durk- heim and Mauss call '* domestic relations " to the most universal purpqses of loigical science . But to what does all this comte? In the first place we mtist notice that that funda- mental characteristic of the human mind, its apprehension (however vague and indeter- minate) of an *'all," a whole, a universe, is presupposed in this mapping of it out on the principles of the social organization of those Who so map it out. In the second place, the consciousness of the social organization ^ A Child's Garden of Verses : Hafpy Thought. 7& Sociological Theories of Categories itself as such,' already involves the presence of a reason which distinguishes and relates, or, if we prefer that language, which appre- hends distinctions and relations. The logical classification could not have been modelled on the social, had not the principle of classifi- cation already been present and applied to the consideration of the group itself. Hence what sociology can explain is not why we use categories— tneaning by that word ** principles of classification of loni versal application ' ' — but why certain particular principles of classification were first hit upon rather than others . It may, of course, be contended without absurdity, or rather with some antecedent probability, that principles of classification once chosen for reasons connected rather with the traditions of the first classifiers than ^ I do not say the existence of the social organization itself, for there may, I suppose, be differentiation of function in a species, due to the action of natural selection, without any social consciousness, properly so-called, arising. 79 Group Theories of Religion with the nature of the things classified may, in consequence of the pressure exerted by habit and tradition, have in some cases per- sisted longer ' than their intrinsic merits de- served. But to contend, as Mr. Cornford, for example, in effect contends, in his book already mentioned, called From Religion to Philosophy, that this sort of traditional persistence is the true key to the history of Greek Religion and Philosophy is not only to refuse to see in Religion a genuine form of experience (for this Mr. Cornford would probably decline to do ) ; it is also to see in Philosophy no genuine knowledge, but only a play of the imagination with idieas which had become associated together on principles in the last resort irrational or at least purely subjective. Perhaps Mr. Cornford would not shrink fromi this position either ; but if so, it should be clearly understood that the title From Religion to Philosophy involves a charge of bastardy against Philosophy, which is to be proved' no offspring of Reason at 80 Sociological Theories of Categories all, 'but the natural child of the collective hallucination which is called Religiort. But, as a study of the sociological epistemology which lies behind Mr. Cornford's speculations abundantly shows, the difficulty is to be sure even of the parentage of Science itself ; and if Science, too, turns out to have no right to claim Reason as the author of its being, we shall have to admit that Reason, if indeed not itself a purely mythical being, at least has left no descendants alive among us to-day. The object of what we are agreed now- adays to call Science-Chough whether Plato would have allowed much of it to be entitled to the name is very doubtful— is the world in time and space. It is admitted by MM. Hubert and Mauss that time and space are given in the individual consciousness ; ^ although they are also objects of collective representations, for space is (as we have seen) mapped out and the measurements of time ' L'A. S.y vii. 119. 81 F Group Theories of Religion chosen and consecrated by social or religious authority. But Science is not concerned with empty time or space ; it is con- cerned with the substance extended in space, and with the changes of this substance which take place in time. It is difficult to understand how it can dispense with that assumption of the real existence and unity of this substance which we express by speaking of it all at once as *' Nature." But in the disguise of this notion of Nature^ the v(ns of the Greek philosophers, MM . Hubert and Mauss detect an older conception, familiar to anthropologists as mana or orenda, a con- ception which, according to them, differs from the notion of time and space " given " in the individual consciousness, by be- longing only to collective thought. It has, we are told," no raison (Vetre outside society, and none therefore for " pure reason," which it is thus taken for granted (it is very doubtful, as we shall see, how far M . ^ LA, S., vii. 122. 82 Sociological Theories of Categories Durkheim would here agree with his colla/b- orators ^ ) is something merely individual . I am convinced that this attempt to make ** pure reason " something merely individual, and to deny ob j ecti ve value to what our sociologists call '* collective representations/' just because they are collective and not in- dividual, is fundamentally mistaken. I shall, however, expend the less criticism upon it here because it seems to me that the editor of VAnnee Saciologiqae, M. Durkheim himself, has given it up in the article before mentioned, which he contributed to the Revue de Meta- physiqae et Morale, to serve as an Intro - duction to his work on the various forms of the religious consciousness .2 It repeats what I suppose to be the error in Comte's law of ^ See^. F.i Eng. tr., p. 438. " We take it as an axiom that religious beliefs, howsoever strange their appearance may be at times, contain a truth which must be discovered." Thus we see how far it is from being true that a conception lacks objective value merely because it has a social origin. ■ The concluding^ chapter of this work, now complete, confirms the impression made upon me by the Introduction. 83 Group Theories of Religion the three stages ; for, so far as that law represents what we comtnonly call science as differentiating itself first, along with metaphysic, from theology, and then from metaphysic also, it represents on the whole correctly the course of development ; but when it regards the elemients of human consciousness thus dissociated from science as having no rela- tively independent development of their own, it fails to do justice to the problem' befoire us ; although, as a matter of fact, Comte, by the construction of a positive philosophy reinstated metaphyteic (for only by a meta- physic can the possibility of metaphysic be denied), and again by his creation of the Church of Humanity went on to reinstate religion also— and thereby allowed, not merely the persistence, but the ultimate redintegration with '' science " of the other forms of human consciousness^ from which, in achieving its own liberty and independence, it was com- pelled for a while to sever itself. One may go farther : this identification pi 84 Sociological Theories of Categories the rational with the merely abstractedly in- dividual is so much out of harmony with the very insistence on the importance of the group - consciousness which is the main theme of the French sociologists^ that their combination in one theory is only rendered possible by means of the doctrine ^ advanced in M. L^vy Bruhrs book on The Mental Functions in Societies of the Lower Culture of a profound unlikeness between the processes of the primitive and of the civilized human mind ; a doctrine which we have already had occasion to consider, but of which we will now undertake a more detailed investigation . ^ From which M. Durkheim has explicitly dissociated him- self in his Elementary Forms of Religious Life. See Eng. tr., p. 439. 85 CHAPTER VI THE THEORY OF PRELOGICAL MENTALITY Our previous criticism of M. L^vy Bruhrs theory consisted in an examination ^ of the contrast which he institutes between the Law of Participation, which was, according to him, the grand principle of primitive thinking, and the Law of Contradiction, which— also according to him— takes its place in the minds of civilized men. We saw reason to think that both laws were misinterpreted by M. L6vy Bruhl, and their relation misconceived. I will now go on to consider som'e of the more detailed statements brought forward in his book to support the theory which rests upon this contrast of two rival principles. I hope tO' show that M. L^vy Bruhl greatly ex- aggerates the diversity of the primitive and 2>6 The Theory of Prelogical Mentality the civilized mind, when, instead of merely pointing out how primitive thought is hampered by imperfection of knowledge, by lack of en- couragement to individual initiative, by want of practice in that art of detecting differences between things which' are prima facie alike or habitually associated, in which Aristotle' recognizes the hall-mark of intellectual superi- ority, he would persuade us that the mind actually works in different ways in primitive and in civilized humanity. M. L6vy Bruhl tells us 2 that what he calls la mentalite prelogique, the process of thinking which goes on in men's minds who belong to *' societies of the lower culture," and have not yet come to reason in accordance with the Principle of Contradiction— this '* pre- logical mentality " is, so he says, " synthetic in essence, in the sense that the syntheses which constitute it do not, like those which are effected by logical thought, imply previous ^ Eth. Nic.^ X. I, 1172;^ 3. ^ Les Fonctions Mentaks^ etc., p. 114. 87 Group Theories of Religion acts of analysis, the results of which are registered in the form of concepts. In other words, the principles of connexion between the representations are there given, generally speaking, along with the representations themselves. The syntheses in this sphere appear as primitive and as nearly always un- analysed and unanalysable {inde compose es et ind^composables) , Put into different language this means that primitive men, in perceiving objects, perceive not what we should perceive in their place— a yellow primrose, for example (to recall the instance of Peter Bell), but something which possesses, along with the colour and shape and texture of the flower, all sorts of characteristics which would not exist for us, characteristics which are what M. L6vy Bruhl chooses to call ** mystical," which stir the emotions of the beholder, since they connect what he sees with the life of the group to which he belongs. In this respect the primitive beholder of the primrose is, it would seem, in the same position as the 88 The Theory of Prelogical MentaUty English Conservative, in whom the primrose may also arouse political emotion, owing to its association with a departed political leader of his party, and with a league founded in his memiory to promote the party's interests. But M. L6vy Bruhl would, no doubt, point out to us that the English Conservative does not fail to distinguish what he actually sees from the political organization of which it reminds him ; while, if we accept for a moment M. L^yy Bruhl 's claim to read the thoughts of the primitive man (despite their vast un- likeness to his own), the primitive man makes no such distinction ; all the special relations in which his group suppose the primrose to stand to them— it is, let us suppose, their totem— seem to him to be there before his eyes as much as the colour and texture and shape which are all that the disillusioned sight of a civilized man (such as Peter Bell) can detect, although, like Hamlet's mother, he could say with conviction *' All that is, I see." » ^ Hamlet^ III. 4. 132. 89 Group Theories of Religion According to M' . L6vy BruhPs theory the English Conservative is enabled', despite the emotions aroused in him by the sight of the primrose, to distinguish the objective fact of the primrose from its political associations, because he has somehow acquired the power, which his primitive ancestors presumably did not possess, of isolating the concept " prim- rose " from the context in which the particular instance of a primrose before him is per- ceived by him. He can then go on to connect or synthesize this concept of ** primrose *' (itself, as we have seen, the result of an analysis) with the similarly abstract concept of *' dog-violet " as two flowers which love the same kind of soil, and are usually found growing together. This will thus be a logical synthesis of quite a difi"erent sort from' that which the primitive man had given him in his very perception of the flower which connected it with his totem -kin. But surely the language here employed is very misleading'. No doubt our imagined savage", whose totem' 90 The Theory of Prelogical Mentality is the primrose, and' who had always thought of himself as one of the Primrose -kin, will not be able without an effort (which would very likely be beyond his mental capacity) to. see thfe primtose without the emotion proper to the beholding of one's totem. The very notion of making an attempt to do so, even of the possibility of such an attempt, may never enter into his mind. Nay, if suggested to him, the thought might be repudiated ^s sacrilegious. But, after all, he knows that there are other men whose totem is not the primrose, and that their totem' is — let us say —the dog-violet, which rouses in him' no such emotions. Why is M. L6vy Bruhl sure that the operation of distinguishing that which Primrose men and Dog-violet men would alike see in the primrose from that which Primrose men see in it and Dog-violet men do not, is something belonging to a quite different *' mentality '* from that of the primitive man, to whom (as to many men at a higher level of culture, who never think of dispassionately 91 Group Theories of Religion comparing their religion or their country with other people's), it does not occur to attempt the performance of the operation for himself. Is individual reluctance or even inability to perform certain mental operations enough to constitute a difference of mentality, in M. L6vy Bruhl's sense? If so, should not many of us have to admit our *' mentality" to be quite different from that of men who can and do perform mathematical operations, of which we are individually incapable, and which it would never occur to us to undertake ? Surely the whole attempt to fix a great gulf between primitive and civilized, *' pre- logical " and *' logical *' mentality is mis- taken. M. L6vy Bruhl has to admit that, in fact, the *' prelogical mentality " persists in civilized man, alongside of the *' logical." Rather, from the first the hunlan mind has possessed its differentia of rationality, its ideal of objective and universally valid truth— not, of course, as a consciously contemplated ideal, but as an impulse continually at work, 92 The Theory of Prelogical Mentality producing attempts at analysis and at synthesis, in which, no doubt, things have often been wrongly connected and wrongly disconnected, and throughout which there has been a con- tinual pressure of the social environment on the individual mind, determining the direction of its attention. The existence of a, social environment is itself the means by which the individual mind becomes properly a mind, something which transcends the life of sense and is potentially universal^or in Hamlet's words : . . . with such large discourse Looking before and after . . . ^ — concerning itself in principle with the all, the universe. For even while its interest seems bounded by that of its tribe, yet its tribe is, in a real sense, a universe to it ^ ; and this is just * Hamlet, IV. 4. 36, 37. ' Cp. M. Durkheim, Elementary FormSy Eng. tr., p. 442 n, : "At bottom the concept of totality, that of society and that of divinity, are very probably only different aspects of the same notion." 93 Group Theories of Religion where the truth of our author's doctrine, that the ** categories "—the principles used for universal classification— are in their primeval form derived from social or tribal arrange- ments, really comes in. They are principles used for universal classification from' the first, although they v^ere principles suggested by tribal arrangements. This is hardly realized by M. L^vy Bruhl ; and so elsewhere, whten he hints ' that the *' efficient cause " of philoso- phers is a. sort of abstract precipitate of the ** mystic power " attributed to spirits— the be- lief in which he is probably right in supposing less primitive th^n it is represented as being in the '* anirtiistic " hypothesis of Sir Edward Tylor— he does not realize that ** a mystic power '* already implies what in more technical language is called ** efficient causality." It is, of course, quite possible that men may have gone wrong in assuming that "efficient causality" must always be of the" ' P. 17. 94 The Theory of Prelogical Mentality sort to which their attention was first attracted. In one section of his 'book M. L6vy Bruhl has a very interesting 'discussion of the primitive man's attitude towards numbers ; but the discussion would really be improved were it disembarrassed of the obliga- tion which the author feels laid upon him to distinguish as sharply as possible primitive from civilized mentality . Indeed, when he observes : ' ** The earliest numbers — up to ten or twelve about— which are familiar to the prelogical and mystical mentality, participate in the nature of that mentality^ and have only very slowly become numbers purely arith- metical : perhaps there is even now no society where there are no more than this, except in the eyes of mathematicians," he adtnits more than is really compatible with his doctrine. For, as he goes on ito say, while the higher nunibers with which primitive men do not concern themselves, and which have never been attended to except by civilized arithtne- ' P. 237. 95 Group Theories of Religion ticians, statisticians, or financiers, have no other significance for us than the properly numerical, these earlier numbers— the numbers up to ten or twelve— have been enveloped along with their names in the collective representa- tions of the prelogical mentality, or, to put it more simply, have acquired traditional associations of very long standing, which cause their names to suggest to us these associations over and above their places in the numerical series. Thus civilized men, so far as they are not engaged in purely mathe- matical calculation, are still influenced by these associations, and, on the other hand, the attention paid by primitive men to numbers as distinct from things numbered, even though this attention may be concentrated on certain numbers recommended by associations with the life of their group, is surely already a recognition of that which is the subject- matter of Arithmetic, and the first step taken towards the foundation of that science. There is no need to talk of *' prelogical '' or 96 The Theory of Prelogical Mentality ** logical " here ; neither word has any real application . M . L^vy Bruhl's prejudice in favour of this illusory antithesis leads him mbre than once to put aside as inadequate the word * * infantine, * * as descriptive of * * primitive mentality . ' ' Nowhere does he illustrate, as he might profitably have done, the processes of primitive thought from those of the infantine mind, some of which we can, ttiost of us, remember. Commenting' on a writer — Dr. Conant — who finds it hard to understand why not only the number five, so naturally suggested by the number of the fingers of each of our hands, but many other numbers, are taken by various peoples as the basis of numeration— and who is, it seems, specially puzzled by the use for this purpose in more than one instance of the number four, M. L^vy Bruhl says that this is ** une eiiigme artificielle '^ because in primitive societies comsideratioris of the kind which he is pleased to jcall " mysticcd " determine these m'atters, and ^ Les Fonctlons Mentaks, etc., p. 231. 97 G Group Theories of Religion not such consi'dbrations of convenience as appeal to us to-day. This is proba^bly true enough ; and in the same way considerations, not of ct)nvenience but of association and even of fantasy, determine children of an imaginative turn in like cases. I remember myself as a child fixing on this very number four, which puzzles Dr. Conant, as a private sacred number for myself. I wanted to have one which was different from three or seven — Tacknowledged by my family to have sacred associations— and which should be my very own. I was accustomed, if allowed to ring the bell for breakfast, to ring it four times and with a pause after the fourth time ; and the habit of using four in this sort of way has not wholly deserted me yet. But, even when I chose four for my own special number, I did not suppose that for purposes of arith- metic pure and simple it was in a privileged position. I was perfectly well able to count, and quite familiar with the multiplicatioji table ; but I was mbre interested, as pre- 98 The Theory of Prelogical Mentality sumably primitive men are, in numbers that had associations of their own, even of a self- chosen and arbitrary kind, such as that which the number four had for me. Still, it was an interest in numbeys, and this must not be forgotten when dwelling on the mathematical irrelevance of the associations sometimes con- nected with particular numbers. Nor is there anything illogical in being specially interested in a number which happens to be the number of something in which we are specially interested . Where, more - over, the nimiber seetnis to belong to the intrinsic nature of the thing— and that a thing which seems (as in the case of the three dimensions of space or of past, present, and future) tO; be one of the flmdamental features of the world in which we find ourselves— then it might, perhaps, so far from being distinctly logical, even bfe called unphilosophical to pay no special attention to that number on that account . The suspicion which these considerations 99 Group Theories of Religion may have aroused that M. Levy Bruhl's em- phasis on the differaice between the mental fmictions in primitive and in civihzed man respectively is excessive and disproportionate will be, I think, confirmed by the following criticism of detailed statements on the subject to be found in his book. It is, perhaps, possible to exaggerate the importance of the law of parsimony in framing hypotheses ; but such contempt for it as is shown by M. L6vy Bruhl is surely out of place. Over and over agaiin he dismisses as inapplicable the most obvious interpretation of the words and deeds of primitive men, just because it assumes an identity of mental fimction in them and in us. But it is plain that this kind of reasoning is much in peril of comtnitting the fault of petitio principUy and incurring itself that charge of indifference to the rules of civilized logic which M. L6vy Bruhl brings against the thinking of thbse of whom' it treats . It is true that M. L^vy Bruhl's readiness to admit the existence of a *' prelogical " I CO The Theory of Prelogical Mentality and " irrational " element in the thinking of civilized men may suggest a possible evasion of the inferences we might other- wise be inclined to draw from parallels be- tween our own behaviour and that of primitive men. Yet the multiplication of these will throw doubt upon the sharp contrast between twO' kinds of mental functions which is drawn by our author, and gives a title to his book ; and it will make us less afraid than M. Livy Bruhl would have us be to interpret the conduct of our primitive—as of other— fellow- men by analogy with our own under more or less similar circumstances. Why should it be necessary to talk of a different sort of perception in primitive men from ours, in order to explain their tendency to treat images or pictures of things as though they were the originals ? We are not allowed by M. L6vy Bruhl ^ to speak here of a ''confusion enfantine'\\ yet is not a child's terror of a picture ' Les Fonctions Mentales^ etc., p. 45. lOI Group Theories of Religion representing something which, if seen, would frighten him, a terror not altogether allayed 'by the knowledge that it is only a picture, the real key tO' the pritnitive state of mind ? Do not associations (not only " traditional asso- ciations " — though the theory of the French sociologists may even require, in the case of primitive men, that they must be traditional — but associations of various kinds) affect our attitude, even in mature life, towards pictures and images? Should we not hesitate to use the picture of one we greatly reverenced or loved as a target on which to practise shooting ? True, we should not think, as a primitive man might think, that our arrows or bullets would injure the original of the picture ; and there- fore even the most nxalignant am^ng us do not practise the rite, known throughout the world, and called in French envoutement, of making waxen images of our enemies, by sticking pins into the heart of which we may destroy the enemy they represent. No doubt this rite (for practising which against hef 1 02 The Theory of Prelogical Mentality husband's nephew, King Henry VI, Eleanor Cobham, Duchess of Gloucester, was con- demned in 1 4 4 1 to lifelong imprisonment ) seem's to us highly irrational, because we understand much better than those who practised or practise it the actual con- nexions which exist between material things ; but without this better understanding the pro- ceedings of the operator of wireless telegraphy would seem no less irrational. To explain the primitive attitude towards images, we require surely no real difference in mental functions b^etween the primitive man and thfe civilized. We suppose the primitive man to feel as we feel about a picture or like m^emlorial of one to whom oiu: feelings of some kind are strong, so that we love or, on the other hand, cannot bear to look at it. But we know, as he does not, that the fact of it exciting in us the feelings which the original would excite, so that we should often shrink from doing to it what we should shrink from doing to the original, or again, might 103 Group Theories of Religion do to it what we should do to the original (kiss it, for example, or curse it), does tiot carry with it the consequence that the same effect would be produced on the original as on the picture by what we do to the picture. But there is really nothing odd in guessing, before experience proved the contrary, that it might be so. I do not, of course, deny that we doi draw a distinction between action which seems to us to be *' mystical" (the name, if not free from; objection, may pass ) and action which, however surprising, is under- stood to be ** natural." I think, however, that the distinction is in principle drawn both by primitive man and by civilized. I believe that it rests upon a real distinction within pur experience ; and that though it is probably true that the habits of thought of primitive man lead him to look for ** mystical " /action where there is only ** natural," while those of men civilized after our fashion lead us to see oinly " natural " where there must be * ' mystical, * ' yet this contrast in our habits 104 The Theory of Prelogical Mentality of mind does not warrant the assertion of M. L6vy Bruhl that there is a real difference of mental function between the two groups of men. I must state more expUcitly the view I have hinted at ; it would, however, take us out of our way if I were to dwell on it for miore than a very brief space. But I think I can make it plain most easily if I start from the question, now so often asked : ** Is there such a thing as telepathy?" It is not easy to say precisely what is meant hy telepathy ; but perhaps one may put it that it is usually taken to mean an effect produced in the mind of one person by the mind of another, where the persons con- cerned are too far apart in space to be perceptible to one another's senses, and where no material medium external to their own bodies (such as an electric current, or a vn-itten paper conveyed from one to the other) is employed in the communication. It does not seem to belong to the usual notion of telepathy los Group Theories of Religion that the communication should be intdntionally or even consciously made. On the other hand, it does seem: to be required that the communi- cation should be quite or alm'ost instantaneous J Now, I shall not presumie to say what is the correct answer to the question as to the existence of telepathy in this sense ; for I do not know. But I think that the question is frequently asked, not from mere curiosity, but because it is supposed that the proof of t^ie real occurrence of such telepathy would deal materialistn its death-blow. Many men are strongly predisposed to admit its existence, and others as strongly predisposed to deny it, just because they are alike convinced that the result of admitting it would be to adlnit that materialism was untenable. Now I do not feel so sure that this .would be the result. The real test of the adequacy of materialism is its power of explaining, not comparatively rare phenomena, such as ^ Thus telepathy would scarcely be alleged as an adequate explanation of prophetic second sight. 1 06 The Theory of Prelogical Mentality on any showing, are those which could be describied as telepathy in the ordinary sense, but the everyday phenomena of a conversa- tion between two friends. If Materialism' caii wholly explain that, I do not know why it should not explain what is called *' telepathy." The rapport (I know of no English word equally convenient for my purpose) which exists between two persons who converse together is to my mind something which, while absolutely necessary to real conversation, in which there is what we call genuine personal intercourse and mutual influence, is by no means accounted for by cerebral and nervous processes and the visual and auditory consciousness which accompanies them. It is, no doubt, true that mlaterialism cannot account for consciousness at all ; but even if we should allow that it could admit sense-perception as the de facto result of the organization of mjatter to a certain kind and degree of corriplexity, the rapport of which I have spoken would still have to be 107 Group Theories of Religion explained. On the other hand, if materialism is not confuted by the fact of conversation, it need not be confuted by the existence of telepathy in the usual sense of the word. In some alleged cases of telepathy the recipient of the telepathic comlmunication is said at least to ** see ** or ** hear " something ; and there must presumably thus be some kind of m:aterial process going on in his brain and his sensory nerves, such as would be anyhow admitted on all hajids to take place in the case of a pure hallucination. Even a man's sudden recollection of an absent friend, which is sometimtes all that is asserted to occur, cannot be supposed to involve no modification in the brain. In the same way, the remembrance of the person to whom' the communication is tnade, or the wish for his presence in the other party's mind, we must also suppose to^ be, like other memories or wishes, conditioned by some kind of cerebral change. So far as I can see, we are actually familiar bt)th with the mutual communication io8 The Theory of Prelogical Mentality of minds and with) the mutual conta:dt of bodies. The former is far more intimately interesting toi us, but it only takes place between minds or beings with minds ; and, according to the view now mbst commonly held among us, there are in our environment many fewer minds than bodies . Primitive men did not think that this was so \ they tended to^ suppose the mutual communication of minds the normal type of event ; hence they often supposed tliat beings which' have not or are not hiinds w'ere capable of affecting us as only minds do, and conversely tha,t they cbuld affect thletri as we can only affect bteings with minds capable of mutual communication with ours. I do not, of course, suggtest thkt primitive mkn expressed it in terms of this sort, ior that he thought of minds and bt)dies as dis- tinguished in the way in which we distinguish them, 'It is just thie very point we are in- sisting upon that he did not. He was aware of two kinds of causality, which we m^y call, 109 Group Theories of Religion if we please, '* mysticial " and " physical ''—if we only reln'elribier that the former is just as well seen in everyday personal intercourse as in the stories of the occult or miraculous, and therefore retnains a fact of experience, though all these stories should turn out to be false ; and if we remember also that " physical " is used in a conventional sense, and that the other kind of causality b'elong's also to the nature of things. In the indistinctness of primitive men's notions as to what kinds of being could exhib it or be affected by the different sorts of causality respectively lies the secret of those primitive beliefs which M, L6vy Bruhl thinks must imply a different solt of mentality to ours. But we are still leaitiing daily miore and more about the dis- tribution of these kinds of causality ; and it is not " logic," in M:. Levy Bruhl's sense, certainly noit thie ** Law of Contradictioiu," which will give us any help in the matter, but ojnly experience, and reflection upon experience . no The Theory of Prelogical Mentality And if there is this general indistinctness among primitive men as to what things act like minds and what like bodies^ it is natural that this indistinctness should be most con- spicuous in regard to those beings which clearly exhibit, even to our more critical survey, something of the nature of mind, and yet seem unable to enter into the fellowship of mutual converse with us^ namely, the lower animals. Is there anything requiring the heroic measure of supposing that the mental functions are quite different in primi- tive men from' what they are in ourselves, in the belief that the lo;wer animals may (like most of ourselves) prick up their ears when they hear themselves mentioned,/ so that it is better not to mention them when you want your proceedings not to attract their atten- tion, either because you do not wanit them to attack ypiu or because you want yourself to attack thfem unawares? Nq doubt the asso- ciation of a name with the thing named is ^ Pp. 47, 200. Ill Group Theories of Religion thought by primitive men (like that of the image fwith its original) to be closer than it has been found by a more extended experi- ence to be, so th'at this care not to name ppwerful and harmful beingiS is extended to cases where it seems to us quite unreason- able. Many o{ us are p,robably familiar with Fouqu6's use in his story of Sintrant and his Companions of the notion that to call in reck- less mood on Death or on the Devil may chance to bring these highly undesirable com- panions to our side. But would this be an unreasonable fear if we thought that there were such beings who might overhear us ? Even belief in the magical power of a name pronounced to compel its bearer against his will to attend the utterer, or to make other things biehave a's they would in the presence of the being named, is the illegitimate extension of a belief which experience-^ours as well as primitive in^'s — ^^bamdantly justifies . The calling of a man by a particular nam'e^(as in thd case of a nickname or a pet name) The Theory of Prelogical Mentality may^ and often does, by trieans of the emo- tions excited by it in the hearerj^ poit him, even against his will, in a certain relation to the utterer, and call forth activities which nothing else would call forth. Is it wonder- ful, again, that this power should be by primi- tive men attributed to the nam'e in abstraction from the whole context of personal intercourse in which alone it is exerted? Once more, I am not supposing that primi- tive man deliberately extends by way of hypo- thesis the explanation found satisfactory for one case to others which we have found it not to fit. I only suggest that the real experi- ence of the power of names in human inter- course is the real source of the belief in that pofwer everywhere, though it was not at first at all noticed that human intercourse was the only condition under which this power was actually exercised. Such a view is quite on the lines of the ** sociological " theory itself, so far as it makfes social experience the type of what is extended, at first through lack of 113 H Group Theories of Religion discrimination, but afterwaMs theoretically (and in this case, at least, erroneously), to a wider sphere. And I do not at all question the powerful effect of social and religious tradition in preserving and stereotyping a belief which, though originally derived from experience, had not been checked by refer- ence to experience, but had gathered from long prescription a kind of sacrosanctity. •To suppose, as M. L6vy Bruhl does, that the notion of a purely physical phenomenon is lacking to the primitive man (if we mean by the notion of a purely physical phenomenon the notion of a phenomenon which is not ** mystical") seems gratuitous, and even in contradiction with the same primitive man's attribution of occult power or mana not to all things but only to certain things, however heterogeneous. Probably here, too, we may be better instructed by remembering our own childhood. The child is ready to accept any- thing—even the most unpromising to older eyes— as capable of entering into relations of 114 The Theory of Prelogical Mentality personal intercourse witli himself ; but what does not at the time interest him^ at all is not so treated. The uninteresting thing is for him merely what u/e should mean by a ** physical phenomenon." On the other hand^, " collective representa- tions " may^ even am^ongi the most civilized of men, hinder the developmient of individual criticism, just as among the primitive. They do so less, no doubt, but this is a matter of degree. It is not true to, say or imply, as M. L^vy Bruhi does, that u^e do not believe in any properties of objects which we do not perceive^ while primitive mjen readily do so. Are we not, on the contrary, perfectly ready tQ believe, on thie authority of scientific men, in properties ( e .g^. radio-activity) which we do not perceive and never expect to perceive ? It is true we suppose them to have been per- ceived (or inferred from what has been per- ceived) by scientific men on whom' we rely. But it is noi less true (as M;. L6vy Bruhrjs^ own instances show) that the primitive man IIS Group Theories of Religion supposes the occult properties in which' he believes to be perceived by his medicine -man. Nor will it do to say that we never believe in properties which we do not perceive, although we may be present when those who would persuade us of their existence say that they perceive them. For this^ too, is not true. We are prepared to believe that persons of finer ear than ourselves can detect musical in- tervals which we cannot, persons of keener gmell detect odours imperceptible to us, and so, forth. And, whether the stories of people with a " cat-sense '* or ** spiider-sense " be true or not, we do not consider thlem to be ruled out by any law (for, despite M. E^vy Bruhl,i we recoigriize no such law) that nothing! can be real which is only perceptible to some and not to all. Thus, once more, the whole question is one, not of our logic as against the ** prelogic ** of primitive men, but purely of a more ad- vanced state of knowledge of the actual facts, ^ Les Fonctions Mentales^ etc., p. 58. 116 The Theory of Prelogical Mentality If primitive men continue to believe in the efficacy of fetishes, though they have always been disappointed of the benefits they hoped to obtain from them', and find an explanation in some counteracting influence; if more ad- vanced men, under the influence of that sur- vival of primitive prelogic which is called Religion, account for their desertion by their God as the merited punishment of their own sins ; so,, too, in our own " lay " civilization belief in much-advertised healers and public men of any kind is often created and main- tained by the ** collective representations '' due to the opinion of the fashionable world or the puffing of the newspaper press, in the teeth of a notable absence of any evidence that they deserve their repoitatioin . Nothing here authorizes us, as M. Ldvy Bruhl says we are authorized, to assert that primitive mentality differs from ours. iM. Edvy Bruhl, as his bt»ok proceeds, seems to me to become more and more reckless in his dogmatic assertion of this doctrine, and 117 Group Theories of Religion his instances to become less and less con- vincing*. A missionary in New Guinea/ whose arrival in a certain place coincided with an epidemic of disease, was suspected of some connection with it^ on the principle, presum- ably, of Mill's Method of Difference, which one would suppose to belong to thfe logical sort of mentality. The Papuans very reason- ably thoug'ht that among the new-comer's belongings might be found the cause of the visitation. They suspected first a sheep, then some goats, which were killed to satisfy them' ; but the epidemic continued, and they had to frame another hypothesis. They then pitched upon a large print of Queen Victoria. Now, no doubt all these hypotheses were incorrect, and no doubt they were not put to strictly scientific tests. But how does the procedure differ in its general character from' what our own would be in suspecting an out- break of disease to be due to some newly arrived animal or piece of furniture which ^ Les Fonctions Mentaks, etc., pp. 71 foil. 118 The Theory of Prclogical Mentality might be the carrier of the gertn? The knowledge of the New Guinea natives in these matters was, no doubt, not extensive ; they were, like most people, insufficiently cautious in the matter of testing their hypotheses ; but their logic was not at fault, unless that of civilized man is so too. There is really nothing in the point, insisted upon by M. E6vy Bruhl,i that they had long been familiar with the Queen's picture before suspecting it of having a connection with the disease . Were our ' modern doctors not justified in asking them- selves whether rats had not something to do with plague or lack of fresh air with con- sumption, because rats and airless room's had long been familiar to them' and no one had suspected them before? What, we wonder, would M. L^vy Bruhl say if he chanced to read the following, which I take from an article in The Times of May 8, 19 14, on the ravages of the sleeping sickness in Africa? ** Unfortunately," it is said, '* it is extremely ^ P. 74. 119 Group Theories of Religion difficult to convince the natives of any con- nection between the fly (the tsetse fly) and the disease, since they and their forb'ears knew the former long before the sleeping sickness was ever heard of in the land." Thte natives of Africa are here censured (yjou will notice) precisely because they ar^e as M'. U^vy Bruhl would apparently have argued in the case of Queen Victoria's portrait and the New Guinea epidemic, but as the natives of New Guinea did not argue in that case, and arr in consequence called by, M . L6vy B ruhl " preloigical." Where, again, is the proof of a different mentality from' ours in the fact ^ that the same design on a sacred object and on one not sacred may by primitive men be in the one case regarded as highly, significant, and in the other to have had no signification at all, or as signifying, when placed on different objects, things as ** different as a gum-tree and a frog"? Would it not be true that a broad ' P. 129. 120 The Theory of Prelogical Mentality arrow on certain objects carries with it to an English eye the significance that they are the property of the Government, while on others it would pass unnoticed as a meaningless mark? Would not the letter A on the black- board in a logic -lecturer's room suggest a Universal Affirmative Proposition, but in a professor of music's room a particular note of a certain musical scale ? ^ M . Levy Bruhl compares ^ the fear of an old Australian that in directing some malignant magic against an enemy he might have been affected himself by the evil influence, to that of an anatomist who might believe himself to have contracted an infectious disease through pricking himself with an instrujnent he was using in the dissection of the corpse of a ' It is curious that M. Levy Bruhl, considering a remark on page 129, in which he illustrates from a musician's in- difference to certain irrelevant resemblances in the different musical scores, does not see that the arguments which he here uses do not establish any diversity between primitive and civilized minds as regards processes of reasoning. = P. 324. 121 Group Theories of Religion person dead of that disease. But why is the former fear prelogical as compared with the latter? It is merely less well inform'ed. To add one more instance of this same sort of inconsequence^ it is reg^arded ^ as an example of prelogical mentality that am'ong African savagies the deaths of important persons (not of unimportant) are frequently assumed to be due to witchcraft, and a hunt takes place for the guilty party, in consequence of which some one is generally condemned to death. But just in the same way, at certain periods (e.g. under the early Roman Empire or in the Italy of the Renaissance), men who would not be regarded by M. L^vy Bruhl or by any one else as in the *' prelogical ** stage were apt to suspect poison whenever a considerable person died ; and there were often no doubt there, as in Africa more lately, cases where influential men could vent their spite or gtatify their covetousness by destroying, through false accusations, either their enemies ' Les Fonctions Mentaks, etc., p. 325. 122 The Theory of Prelogical Mentality or men possessed of wealth, somte of which might be confiscated to themlselves . No doubt witchcraft is not in our eyes a vera causa Uke poison ; but it is not the Law of Contradiction that teaches us this, it is obser- vation and experiment. But, though no doubt observation and experiment are mentioned in the logic books under the head of Induction, I do not suppose M. L'^vy Bruhl would sup- pose that there is nothing of the kind in les societes inferieures. Doubtless, as is shown in the instance of the trials for witchcraft in the seven- teenth century, religious tradition may prevent the honest application of the test of observa- tion and experiment ; but so m!ay traditions of a very different sort. There is such a thing as group-prejudice among scientific men which has before now hindered the impartial examination of alleged facts reputed to be inconsistent with accepted scientific beliefls. Such prejudice is no doubt irrational, whether found in a religious or a scientific 123 Group Theories of Religion commtinity ; but why should the word ** pre- logical " be invented to describe it? It also, no doubt, as I have said, acts through social pressure ; but it is no less social pressure which keeps most of us on lines which have been traced for us by the great masters of modem science. The group theory of Religion advocated by the Fr^ich sociologists, and M'. Levy Bruhl's theory of the difference between the mental functions of primitive and those of civilized men, are put forward by them in conscious opposition to the theory of Animism' which is associated with the name of Sir Edward Tylor, the father of Anthropology in the miodern sense of the word. Eor the Tylorian theory of Animism represents primitive men as suppbsing all, or many of, the objects which we call inanimate to be animiate— that is, to have souls dwelling in them, just as we usually (or at least traditionally) re^ai^d the bodies of human beingis as having souls dwelling in them. This theory is criticized by the Erench 124 The Theory of Prelogical Mentality sociologists as, in the first place^ implying' that primitive men, like civilized, foxm hypptheses to account for particular phenomena, and that the ** sptul " which they are said to suppose indwelling many thingis^ the behaviour of which we should p;Ut down to mechanical movements or chemical changes^ is such an hypothesis. Secondly, it is criticized as im- plying' in primitive men a conception of a " soul " far more definitely thought out than any which can with prioibability be ascribed to them. With respect to this second line of criticism, there is mUch reason to agree with it up to a certain point. The distinction, with which Dr. Marett has made us familiar, of animatism from animism, is intended to ex- press the difference between the vaguer con- ception of certain things which we should call inanimate, as being alive, or rather as acting like living things, and the more elaborate conception which personifies the life in each case as a kind of quasi -human being, using a non-human body, distinct from' itself, as its 125 Group Theories of Religion instrument. This latter conception, which is involved in the theory of Animism' strictly so called, we may well regiard as a result of sub- sequent reflection^ in contrast to that more indeterminate notion of things as them'selves alive which seems also to correspond more nearly with what we remember of our own attitude in childhood. But in this important matter of the soul, where M. L^vy Bruhl finds a striking illus- tration of his theory of the difi^erence in mental function between primitive and civi- lized manj, I think we may say that we shall find no real support for that theory at all. ■To M. L^vy Bruhl the Law of Contradiction is constantly violated by primitive conceptions of a man's soul, such as the African kra,^ which is at o^ce himself and not himself. ** It is not the individual^ since it exists before him and survives him' ; yet it is he, since when he wakes from sleep the individual remembers what the kra has dope^ endured, ' P. 85. 126 The Theory of Prelogital Mentality suffered during the night." For dream ad- ventures are supposed to be thiose of the kra, which has left the body lyiiig asleep, as we say, and gone off by itself. Again, we, if we talk of souls at all, think of each man as having one soul ; for we form the hypothesis of a soul just in order to act as a principle of unity, to explain why we talk of a man as the same in all his different moods and states of consciousness, and notwithstanding the gradual replacement by others of all the material particles that at any one time make up his body. But primitive men are ready to talk of one man having many souls. In this paradoxical multiplication of souls, which are yet all somehow one, M,, L6vy Bruhl can see only th^ existence or survival of a preloigical mentality which knew not the Law of Con- tradiction . Yet, if we turn to such facts as those with which modern mental pathology has made us familiar^ as suggesting what, in the title of Dr. Morton Prince's well-known work, is 127 Group Theories of Religion called the " dissociation of a personality," we are compelled, quite apart from' any, pressure of social or religious tradition, and merely, in order to describe actually observed phe- nomena, to recognize different ** personalities," '' sub -personalities/' and so, on, belonginig! somehow to one man or one wom'an. Some- times two of these *' personalities " seem to have no part of their menit>r,y in common ; sometimes one remembers some or part of what the other has done but not as its o^wn act, and so forth . Now, no doubt it is possible to criticize the language in which Dr. Morton Prince and other students of these abnormal phenomena describe them, but it is unquestionable that they make it necessary to use some languag'e which, if M. L'^vy Bruhl found it among savages, he would assuredly assigm to the mentality which is governed by the Law of Participation and innocent of that of Contradiction. .Yet there is, as I say, no, question here of the persistence of primitive language due to, the influence of ** collective 128 The Theory of Prelogical Mentality representations." Indeed, the facts of '* mul- tiple personality " are obviously rather discon- certingly incongruous than otherwise with the notion of the *' immortal soul/* which is one of the most influential " collective representa- tions " imposed by our social tradition. Again I will refer to a book of singular independence and candour by a modem man of science, Dr. McDougall's Body and Mind. In this work Dr. McDougall undertakes the defence of what he calls Animism, the theory of a soul in living beings distinct from, how- ever closely connected with the body, as a psychological hypothesis more ^accordant with known psychological facts than any which attempts to dispense with this conception alto- gether. It is clear to the attentive reader that at the outset Dr. McDougall is thinking of a soul which is, in the ordinary sense, indi- vidual, which may be my soul or yours, but cannot belong to, or rather be, more than one of us at once. Yet before he has done he has come, in following his argument, accord- 129 I Group Theories of Religion ing to the Platonic precept/ " w^hithersoever, like a wind, it may blow," to the notion of what we may call a racial soul, of which indi- vidual souls are, as it were, phases or mani- festations. And he hardly goes on to touch upon further problems which his treatment inevitably suggests ; such as that of the rela- tion of the soul of a natural species to the genus, or on the other side to, let us say, a race (in the sense in which we speak of the white or the yellow race) ; or, again, to still more difficult questions connected with the common life of a nation or other group which is united, not by the biological ties of descent, or not by these alone, but rather by the links of social tradition. A group -theorist can least of all men afford to disregard such problems as unimportant ; but they can hardly be stated without recur- rence to language which M. Ldvy Bruhl would undoubtedly refer to the Law of Participation. Yet these problems are thrust upon us, not ^ Rep., iii. ^94B. 130 The Theory of Prelogical Mentality by *' collective representations " acting on us as sharers in a group consciousness, but by those objective facts connected with the existence of groups with a group-conscious- ness which are, according to the writers of UAnnee Sodologique, the proper subject of scientific sociology. The real flaw, as it seems to me, in the sociological theories under consideration, which, as we shall see, makes them incapable of dealing satisfactorily with the facts of individual religion, is the combination of insist- ence on the importance of " collective represen- tations " with the assumption in the last resort of what is after all a purely individualistic empiricism as its philosophical background. This seems to be a defect which might have been corrected— and, as I shall shortly point out, M. Durkheim in his article in the Revue de Metaphysique et Morale seems to be, at any rate, on the way to connect it.^ It ^ It is to a great extent corrected in the book to which that article formed an Introduction. 131 Group Theories of Religion is admitted by M. L^vy Bruhl that it is difficult to draw the line between individual and col- lective representations ; ^ that the connexions implied by the collective representations of the prelogical mentality are not so arbitrary as they appear ; 2 and that with us logical exigencies are imposed by the uninterrupted pressure of the social medium (le milieu social) upon the mind of each individual among us, just as the most fantastic beliefs of primitive men are imposed upon the individual members of primitive groups .3 All this suggests that there is no such contrast between the primitive and the civilized mentality and their respective functions as M. L6vy Bruhl would have us admit. Why should we not allow that man is at once always an individual, and always social, a ttoKitikov {£01/ ? that his illusions and his genuine science are both alike the product of a mentality which is never independent of ** collective representations/* yet always ^ P. 112. ^^ P. 445- 3 Pp- "3» 114- 132 The Theory of Prelogical Mentality functions individually? Why not admit that the apprehension of reality is not. reserved for individual perception as opposed to the use of ** collective representations*'? It may be possible to distinguish the features of reality which are apprehended by individual per- ception from those which require the use of *' collective representations/* yet this cannot be an absolute distinction, for in human per- ception is always present that implicit rationality which is not really separable from the social consciousness ; while, on the other hand, the ** collective representation " only exists, is only actualized in, individual repre- sentations . The individual mind is always subject to the pressure of the *' social medium," and the operation of this is equally seen in the encouragement and in the checking of in- dividual trains of thought and imagination . Such checking takes place both where the free development of these would be desirable, and where it would be the reverse. As a child 133 Group Theories of Religion brought up in London, I chose a private totem (I did not call it by that name) in the shape of the Underground Railway ; and I liked to fancy an especial link of sympathy existing between me and this mysterious object. It was mysterious to me, since from' the circumstances of the locality of my home, right in the centre of the " Inner Circle," I never, or practically never, travelled by it, but only delighted to stand above an opening at the Portland Road Station, where I could look down and see the trains issuing from and disappearing into the smoky dark- ness of the tunnel. This totemistic fancy, by the way, was surely not itself in any intelligible sense the product of *' collective representa- tions " in the consciousness of the group. But perhaps I need not turn aside to urge this, as M. L6vy Bruhl himself surprises us by observing in one place,' a propos of the almost universal belief in the laying of the ghost in the neighbourhood of the corpse of ' P. 367- 134 The Theory of Prelogical Mentality a person lately dead : ** Were it not involved in the collective representation, it might be produced in individuals by the psychical mechanism." Nothing in my social medium, however, encouraged my totemistic fancy, and accordingly it soon faded away. On the other hand, the influence of " col- lective representations " belonging to groups thoroughly representative of what M. Levy Bruhl would call the logical mentality may on occasion be hostile to the attainment of truth, just in the same way as those of the most primitive groups. The present Vice -Chancellor of the Uni- versity of Manchester, Sir Henry Miers, in the inaugural lecture delivered on his appointment to the Chair of Mineralogy in the University of Oxford, insisted on the marked reluctance shown by men of science in the early nineteenth century to admit that stones ever really fell from the sky . In the same lecture he drew an instructive parallel between the attitude of these scientific 135 Group Theories of Religion men a hundred years ago towards the evidence for the fall of meteoric stones^ and that of many scientific men at the date of the lecture ^ towards the evidence then being offered for the existence of what is called Telepathy, ^ Which was delivered in 1896. 136 CHAPTER VII THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF THE THEORIES OF THE SOCIOLOGISTS Let me now try to justify my statement that the theory of M. L^vy Bruhl and of many of his collaborators (if not that of M. Durkheim) does assume an ultimate empiricism . M . L6vy Bruhl certainly holds * that when the " cognitive function " {la fonction connais- sante) differentiates itself from the other elements involved in the " collective repre- sentations " which constitute the most primitive kind of cognition, " it does not furnish the equivalent of the elements " from which it thus separates itself . These persist side by side with it for a long time^ despite the dissolvent effect of the '* logical *' habit of ^ Les Fomtions Mentaks^ etc., pp. 450 foil. 137 Group Theories of Religion mind . For the intolerance of la pensee logiqwe is not reciprocal. La pensee logique " suffers no contradiction, and strives to ex- terminate it as soon as it perceives it/' but '* the mystical and prelogical mentality is, on the contrary, indifferent to logical exigency." I have already ventured to doubt whether M. L^vy Bruhl has not a very confused notion of the nature of contradiction ; but it is plain from this passage that the non-logical or mystical element in consciousness is regarded as persisting in virtue of its own irrationality. " Such collective representations belonging to the prelogical and mystical mentality " — so M. L^vy Bruhl concludes the paragraph from which the above observations are taken ^— "are in all societies of which we have any knowledge the collective representations on which repose a great number of institutions ; in particular many of those which are implied in our moral and religious beliefs and practices." "Our mental activity" (he says ' P. 452- 138 Basis of Theories of the Sociologists later on ') *' is at once rational and irrational. The prelogical and mystical coexist in it with the logical." The attempt to rationalize beliefs which do not relate to the world of sense - experience appears to him to be necessarily futile. "God/' he says,^ *' is, in the society to which we belong, an object sought by logical thought and given in collective repre- sentations of a different order. The effort made by reason to attain to a knowledge of God seems at once to incite the thinker to God and to remove him to a distance from him. The necessity of conforming himself to the exigencies of logic is opposed to these participations between man and God which are not representable without contradiction. The knowledge attained is thus reduced within a very sm'all compass. But what need of this rational knowledge to the believer who feels himself united to God? Does not the con- sciousness which he has of the participation of his being in the divine essence procure for ' P. 455- ' P-453. 139 Group Theories of Religion him a certitude of faith, in comparison with which logical certitude will always be some- thing pale, cold, and almost a matter of indifference to its possessor? " The meaning of this passage is clear . What is '* mystical '* is " prelogical " ; it sur- vives among us because the '* logical cogni- tion " (which alone apprehends an objective reality) does not satisfy our emotions, as food for which we keep by us, as it were, the illu- sions which the prelogical mentality produced, but the art of producing which we, with our logical habits of mind, have unfortunately lost. This is not, of course, a very uncom- mon point of view ; and it is obviously M. L^vy Bruhl's. There is for him nothing objectively real to which the *' collective repre- sentations " of the mystical mentality can be considered to correspond. So, too, in a passage of their essay on Magic to which I have already referred, MM. Hubert and Mauss consider ^ it self-evident ^ LA. S,y vii. 12 3. 140 Basis of Theories of the Sociologists that such a notion as that of mana has no raison d'etre outside of society, and that it is absurd from the point of view of pure reason, and only arises from the functioning of the life of a group. Pure reason is here identified with the individual reason— although it is said elsewhere in the same essay that the individual is always conditioned by the state of society to which he belongs, and although a collective illusion ( such as the belief in Magic) is said ' — I do not know why — to possess as being collective an objectivity far superior to that which it would have if it were only 2 a tissue of false ideas held by indi- viduals only, a primitive and erroneous sort of science. These authors, however, in denying (as it seems to me unwarrantably) any cognitive value to the emotions, are not really thereby establishing all the more firmly (as perhaps ' BA. S., vii. 141. ^ The reference is of course to Sir James Frazcr's view of magic, 141 Group Theories of Religion they suppose) the validity of the empirical sciences. On the contrary, the a priori prin- ciples which Kant showed to be necessary to these tend with them' to be treated as mere ghosts of " collective representations " belong- ing to what Ml. Levy Bruhl calls the prelogical and mystical m^entality. But a pure empiri- cism must end, with Hume, in scepticism . The attempt to explain the indisputableness which we attribute to certain principles by just such pressure of the social medium as is admittedly exercised at least no less fre- quently in favour of erroneous beliefs, cannot really lead anywhere else ; and the argu- ments still remain unshaken by which Aristotle long ago showed the necessity, if we are to have genuine science, of admitting indemon- strable first principles immediately appare- hended.^ As I have already observed, M. Durkheim himself, the editor of V Annee Sociologlqwe^ has in his article in the Revue d\e Metaphysiqae ^ Post An,y I 3. 142 Basis of Theories of the Sociologists et Morale for 1908 on Sociologie Religieuse,^ set forth the type of view which we have been studying in a form far less open, in my judg- ment, to the criticisms which I have sug- gested than that in which it is presented by some of his collaborators. I now turn to this article, in which the doctrine of the French sociologists about Religion and about its rela- tion to social life is seen at its best. I will first, however, refer to an earlier article in the same review, published ten years earlier,^ on Representations I ndividuelLes et Represen- tations Collectives . " One must choose ; " says M. Durkheim in this article : '* either epipheno- menalism is indeed the truth or there is really a memory which is mental in the proper sense of the word." The former alternative, he tells us, is indefensible, hence the latter must be admitted . This observation is noticeable, because it shows that M. Durkheim has faced what I am sure he is right in considering the truth, that a materialism acknowledging no ' R. de M. et M,^ xvii. 733. = vi. 273. 143 Group Theories of Religion reality, but one amenable to the methods of the sciences which deal with matter in motion, must, if it is to be consistent and thorough- going, end in the paradoxical doctrine called epiphenomenalism. This is the doctrine— from asserting which the courage of Huxley did not shrink — that consciousness makes no difference at all to the course of the events, so that what, when it happens to us, seems to be the result of our thoughts and feelings, would have happened just as much under any other circumstances, though we had neither felt nor thought, exactly as the carriage wheel goes on turning, whether it be casting a shadow or no. I am convinced, with M. Durkheim, that epiphenomenalism is indefensible, and that Mind must be allowed to be a real factor in the course of events, although the methods of the purely physical sciences may be in- competent to deal with it. For the relation to one another of *' representations " (we will not now quarrel with this not very fortunate expression — we may substitute if we please 144 Basis of Theories of the Sociologists "mental states*') is not that of externality to one another as of objects in space— they in- terpenetrate one another. I The attempt to save Materialism by supposing a spatial coin- cidence in the brain corresponding to each similitude which the mind apprehends is purely mythological. " Such a cerebral geography belongs rather to the realm of romance than to that of science." Here, too, I am cordially in agreement with M. Durkheim. M. Durk- heim is of opinion that what he calls the persistence of representations as such is demonstrated by the fact that ideas are asso- ciated by resemblance. I should prefer to get rid of this kind of phraseology, which is the curse of current psychology (and is ultimately, though this is not always suspected, a damnosa hereditas from Aristotle 2 )^ and to speak of the fact of memory as inexplicable without ^ I do not know, by the way, whether M. Durkheitn's use of this phrase is independent of M. Bergson or not. = Cp. Mr. H. W. B. Joseph in Mind, N.S. xix. 76, Oct. 1910, p. 468. 145 K Group Theories of Religion supposing a mind which is more than the sum of successive states of consciousness. I do not know whether M. Durkheim would allow this translation of his words. He prob- ably would not, as he expressly says he does not think the hypothesis of a soul necessary to account for memory. But this is due to his entanglement in the theory of *' represen- tations," or, as in English they have most often been called, " ideas," words which, as has now been shown, can be dispensed with almost or even altogiether in a psychological tre^atise ^ without injury— rather with benefit — to its clearness . But the language I have used is intended to describe the same facts as he has in view. The great point is, as he goes on to insist, that the difficulty of ** representing pheno- mena/* as he calls it — of imagining how things come about, as I should pirefer to say— n^fust ^ Almost by Dr. McDougall in his Psychology or the Study of Behaviour^ and altogether by Messrs. Loveday and Green in their Introduction to Psychology, Cp. Hastings' Encyclo- padia of Religion and Ethics^ art. " Idea." 146 Basis of Theories of the Sociologists not be permitted to hinder the recognition of well ascertained facts. The noiw familiar phe- nomena due to the action of the X rays offer, as he shows, just such a diffioulty ; and he remarks that we must not rule out a priori the possibility of so-called ** telepathy '* with- out careful study of the evidence because we find it difficult to imagine the modus operandi. He thinks that the fact of memory requires the admission that there are unconscious psychical states^ difficult though these cer- tainly are to "represent." I do not propose now to discuss this particular point. It is arguable that the supposed necessity of an unconscious state between a state of con - sciousness A and a state of consciousness B in which A is remembered is mythological in the same kind of way as what M. Durkheim aptly calls the *' cerebral geogfraphy '* of the materialists. But I should quite agree with M. Durkheim's assertion of the relative inde- pendence of ideas — I should rather say of 147 Group Theories of Religion mind, or even of soul — upon nervous cells, although several of these must co-operate before consciousness arises in the organism. This relative independence of ideas upon cells is then taken to, illustrate the relative independence of social phenomena on indi- vidual minds, although these must co-operate for social phenomena to come into being. I should here only interject the caution (which will be found to have importance later) that the relation of the cells to the mind is much less intimate than that of individual conscious- ness to the social consciousness, and recall, as of first-rate value here, the immortal pages of Plato's Republic which deal with the re- lation of the State or Society to the individual soul. But I think M. Durkheim is perfectly right in holding that, in speaking of the social consciousness, we are not merely speaking in a summary way of a number of individual consciousnesses, as I might refer generally to the ink spots on a desk instead of pointing to each separately. There is even a sense in 148 Basis of Theories of the Sociologists which, as he says, ** Society comprehends things as well as individual persons." It must, however, be admitted that, if we allow this, we must also allow that individual per- sonalities cannot be treated as though there were not some things— their bodies at least, and not only their bodies— apart from which they would not be what we mean by those individual personalities at all. But M. Durkheim not only admits a rela- tive independence of the social consciousness ; he even allows to Religion a relative inde- pendence of the social consciousness. The latter does not, he tells us, directly determine the development of religion any more than cerebral physiology determines wholly even the sensations, the most rudimentary forms of individual consciousness, the way in which they give rise to images, concepts, etc. Here, again, I do not wish to say that I find no difficulty in M. Durkheim's phraseology. But I welcome the admission implied that the religious development of man has its own laws, 149 Group Theories of Religion which cannot be ascertained merely by deduc- tion from the non-religious needs of the social organism. This seems to me, at any rate^ to sugigest the possibility that in Religion there is an apprehension of a genuine reality, which is independent even of society, in the sense that it is not a mere product of the social nature of man, though not necessarily so unconnected with it but that it may be the ground of the existence of that very social nature itself. In his later article on Sociologie Religiease M. Durkheim tells us' further that in the religious nature of man is revealed to us an essential and permanent aspect of his nature. It is 2 an essential postulate of sociology that no human institution could endure if it were solely based on error and falsehood. Hence 3 all religions are in a sense true religions . There is no religion which is not a cosmology ' P. 733; E.R, Eng.tr., p. 2. = P. 734; ibid. 3 P. 735 ; ibid., p. 3. ISO Basis of Theories of the Sociologists at the same time as it is a speculation on the Divine.' This is, I feel sure, quite true, and very important. The notion of the Divine is no mere mirage of social facts : it is an im- plicit theory of the universe . The human mind necessarily conceives itself with the All, though it always starts in doing so with its immediate social environment, and only gradually realizes that this is not the domi- nant fact in the universe. This recognition of the essentially cosmo- logical character of Religion leads M. Durk- heim to put the doctrine, dear to the French sociologists, of the religious origin of cate- gories in a far truer light than we have yet seen it presented. " There exists at the roots of our judgiments a certain number of fun- damental notions . In the course of the methodical analysis of religious beliefs we meet naturally enough with the pirincipal of these categories. They are plainly bom in and of Rehgion . They are all full of religious ^ P. 742 ; E. R, Eng. tr., p. 9. Group Theories of Religion elements/' ' I do not wish to dispute the truth of what I take M. Durkheim here to mean. The categories are genuinely fundamental ; they are principles of general classification ; but the thought of the whole of the universe is primarily presented as a religious thought ■ and thus we find these *' categories " from the first associated with religious emotion. Man no doubt does go ** from religion to philo- sophy/' but this does not mean that philo- sophy is a persistence of outworn religious nonsense in the disguise of science^ which the enlightened anthropologist will strip off the pretender to the great advantage of humanity. "The general conclusion/' says M. Durk- heim,2 *' of the book which is here placed before the reader'' (that is, of his work on Les Formes Elementaires de la pensee et de ^ P. 742 ; E^ F,^ Eng. tr., p. 9. The translation, here and elsewhere, in quotations from the Introduction, is my own, = P. 743 ; ibid., p. 10. 152 Basis of Theories of the Sociologists la Vie Religieuse, to which the article we are considering is intended to form the Preface) "is that rehgion is a thing eminently social. Religious representations " (ideas, that is) " are ' collective representations '— ^or ideas— expres- sive of social realities." Apart from the language about ** representa- tions expressive of reality," which can easily be translated into other terms if we feel it to be too suggestive of an epistemological theory w^hich we may not share, there is, I think, nothing to quarrel with in this state- ment. It must mean that in his religious ex- perience man is apprehending what is real ; and this is just what those of us who are not prepared to treat religion as essentially an illusion are concerned to maintain. Nor need any one who is concerned to maintain this object to the epithet *' collective *' applied to the real object of religious experience . In the Christian religion the divine Spirit is re- garded as primarily revealed in the life of the Christian society ; and the Christian creed IS3 Group Theories of Religion has always asserted the closest possible con- nection between the Holy Ghost and the Holy Catholic Church. It has thus proclaimed the essentially social nature of the Divine ; nor does it stand alone in this among the higher religioins. But this subject may engage oiur attention hereafter. For the present we will return to M. Durkheim. 154 CHAPTER VIII M. DURKHEIM'S PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION We shall find M. Durkheim ' expressing what is true in what may be called the " group theory of categories " in regard to time and space, as he has expressed the *' group theory of religion " in a shape which does not neces- sarily involve, as some expressions of it do, a failure to recognize that essentially a priori character which Kant showed to belong to our apprehension of certain elements in the world of our experience. There is nothing but what harmonizes with the recognition of this a priori character in the observation that the posses- sion of notions of time and space as the same for all is presupposed in all social co -opera - ^ P. 744 i E. F., Eng. tr., p. ro. Group Theories of Religion tion \ and as it is precisely in such co-opera- tion that such notions are thus found necessary, there is nothing surprising in the fact that the divisions of time, for example (and perlups the same, as we saw, m!ay be true of divisions of space), bear the marks of the social context m which their use began ; that a ** calendar,*' as M. Durkheim says,' expresses by corre- spondence with the periodical recurrence of rites, festivals, and public ceremonies the rhythm of the collective activity at the same time as it assures the regularity of that activity. ** Reason is no other " (I again quote M. Durkheim 2) '* than the assemblage of the fundamental categories." Empiricism, which denies the a priori element in experience, is rightly named irrationalism. The d priorists are more respectful to facts than the empiri- cists. We always "add to experience." But how do we come to be able to do so? Is it that Oiur a priori judgments are emanations of ' P. 787 ] E, F., Eng. tr., pp. 10, 11. » P. 748; ibid., p. 13. 156 Durkheim's Philosophy of Religion a divine reason? But (says M. Durkheim') such an hypothesis can be brought to no ex- perimental test ; and, while those who have used such language suppose the divine reason to be unchangeable, human categories change both in place and time. The view that cate- gories are social in origin will solve the old dispute of empiricists and a prior istSy keep- ing apart the two elements which really exist in human knowledge, since man is always a double being — at once individual and social. It is plain that some points in this account are open to criticism. If "categories*' change both in place and time, this implies that the categories of space and time 2 can- not themselves change in like manner, since it is in them that this change is said to take place. They must thus be at least relatively permanent. But are any genuine categories ' E, F,, Eng. tr., p. 15. " Of course time and space are not, according to Kant's own terminology, categories, but they are according to M. Durkheim's less restricted use of the term, for which there is much to be said. 157 Group Theories of Religion indeed thus mutable ? That there may be said to be a development of categories, in which some pass over into others, has been since Hegel well known ; and the germ of the doctrine is already present in Kant's triadic arrangement, in which the third category in each of his four groups is reached by a combination of the first and second. But this is probably not the kind of mutability which M. Durkheim has in view. For, as the mention of Hegel is sufficient to suggest, it is in nowise inconsistent with the view of them as *' emanations " or manifestations of a divine reason. Any other kind of mutability, on the other hand, is difficult to reconcile with the nature of reason . To hold that categories should not merely be relatively abstract or inade- quate, but should possess a validity merely local or temporal, is surely only possible with consistency for a thinker who is content (as M. Durkheim is not) to be claimed as an irrationalist . No doubt categories may be 158 Durkheim's Philosophy of Religion recognized • or used here and not there, now and not then, but this is a kind of variation carefully to be distinguished from any which should affect the validity of the categories ^ themselves. The dismissal of the conception of §L divine reason as the source of our a priori judgments is only rendered necessary for M. Durkheim by his assumption that a divine reason must be something quite different from a social or collective reason.' I am not, indeed, prepared to say that to speak of a divine reason is merely to call a social or collective reason by another name . But I should not doubt that the conception of a divine reason first dawns upon the human mind in the form of a conception of a collective or social reason which the indi- vidual shares with his fellows . It first becomes distinguished from the conception of a merely social or collective reason, when the individual attains the level of development at which he not only sees in that which all his ^ But see the passage quoted above, p. 93 n. 2. 159 Group Theories of Religion fellows recognize as valid or desirable the really or objectively valid, the really or objectively desirable, but comes to recognize that something may be really and objectively valid or desirable which not only he but his whole group fail to accept or to desire. The claim of M . Durkheim to reconcile the empiricists and the *' apriorists " by his theory of the social origin of the categories will remind English readers of Spencer's claim to do the like by his theory of inherited results of experience. ^ I should certainly prefer M. Durkheim's claim to Spencer's. It is not embarrassed by the same dubious biological assumptions. And I should hold that the a priori certainty of certain principles may be most naturally envisaged as a certainty which we shall find acknowledged by all whom we group with ourselves as rational beings. It is, of course, only gradually that it is realized who are and who are not to be expected to share in our ' See Spencer, Principles of Psychology, § 208 n, 160 Durkheim's Philosophy of Religion acknowledgment of the universally true or right. Primitive man will both exclude some whom we should include, and include some (e .g . his totem' animals ) whom we should exclude from' the group of rational beings . But once man has realized his membership of a society, he cannot, except by arrest or atrophy of his reasoning powers, stop short of the recognition of all rational beings . This m'eans that he recognises that what is valid for miembers of that '' society, for rational beings as such, is so- because it '* represents," as M. Durkheim would say— I should prefer to say ** is a way of apprehending " — what is real. It is, no doubt, true that Kant does not put the matter thus ; but to maintain the separation, tending to be opposition, between the rational and the real, which is character- istic of his theory of knowledge, is to cut one- self off from the possibility of any genuine apprehension of reality, and to adopt a purely sceptical position, which is only avoided by Kant owing to elements in his view which i6i L Group Theories of Religion are not, in fact, reconcilable with that separation or opposition . M . Durkheim*s reconciliation of empiricists and apriorists, if more promising than Spencer's, will not really establish a peace between the combatants acceptable to both. Either the certainty of the apriorists must admit itself to be in fact illusory, a result of social suggestion, or an appeal must in the last resort lie from the society which sanctions them to their own intrinsic validity. It is the latter alternative which M. Durkheim really takes. For him, society ^ is a part of nature, differing only fro!m other natural kingdoms by its greater complexity. The categories are symboles bien fondes? A sociological theory of know- ledge does not imply the truth of Nominalism, but rather the reverse of this. Though man in general is not to be our point of departure, yet it is our point of arrival .3 It is as an ' P. 753 i -£:. ^., Eng. tr., p. i8. ^ This phrase is of course intended to recall Leibnitz's ^^ phenomena bene fundata?^ 3 P. 755. 162 Durkheim's Philosophy of Religion analysis of human nature that history has the importance attached to it by the '* sociological " §chool. The collective consciousness is the true [microcosm. I In this phrase M. Durk- heim certainly means to affirm that the nature of reality reflects itself in the constitution of society, which thus need not fear that in apprehension of reality after its own fashion it is really the victim of illusion ; and if we follow Plato (as for my part I am convinced that we should be right in following him) in regarding the individual and social con- sciousness as necessarily identical in funda- mental structure, we have here all the materials for a group theory of Religion, which shall at the same time not make of Religion, even of individual religion, a mere illusion due to collective suggestion, but rather a genuine apprehension of a character of reality which escapes the pur- view alike of the senses and of the natural sciences . ' P. 756. 163 Group Theories of Religion In a review published at a somewhat earlier date— in 1906— in UAnnee Saciologique ^ on Jerusalem's Soziologie det Erkennens M . Durkheim had already said in a like spirit to that displayed in the article we have just been considering : ** It is too often held that the collective type is mferely the mean average type. On the contrary, there is a vast interval between the two. The average consciousness is mediocre, intellectually and morally : the collective consciousness, on the other hand, is infinitely rich, since it is rich with all the treasures of civilization." When M. Durkheim says that man is double, having an individual and a social side to his nature, we have to bear in mind that these two sides are merely correlative to one another. Only through his recognition of a society to which he belongs does man attain the consciousness of individ- uality within it ; and conversely his conscious- ness of something transcending his private self is inseparable from some kind of con- ' xi. 44, 45. 164 Durkheim's Philosophy of Religion sciousness, however undeveloped, of that self as transcended by it. In these later utterances of M. Durkheim we seem to^ have got away from the form of " sociological " theory, which in effect opposes the individual consciousness to the social as on the whole, and when purified from emo- tional elements a consciousness of things as they are from a consciousness of " collective representations/' which on the whole ** repre- sent '* things to be, not as they are but as one would for certain social purposes wish them to be . Such a view must find in religion an illusion . Now, it is, no doubt, possible to take the view that, though religion is thus an illusion, it is not one the disappear- ance of Which is to be expected or even desired . Relegated from the sphere of science and of practice to the sphere of imagination and qf art, it must have (so it may be held) an abiding place among the treasures of the human spirit. In this way it may be allowed to be an individual possession. 165 Group Theories of Religion Indeed, imagination and art may be regarded and often are regarded as being, although, no doubt, socially conditioned and socially valuable, yet as pre-eminently the sphere in which a matured individuality will express itself, and wherein it will least tolerate social interference or regulation. The frequent con- nexion between artists and unconventionality is a sign of something profoundly char- acteristic of the imaginative life. There are some for whom a religious mysticism, free from moral or intellectual intolerance and from social or political ambition, can claim the respect due to all forms of individual self-expression, while religious dogmas which pretend to^ scientific value, religious institu- tions which pretepd to impose obligations, can only be regarded as superannuated survivals in a civilization whose philosophy and polity have become universally "lay." There is, at present, very familiar to us in this country a sentimental form (if one may venture so to call it) of the kind of sociology 166 Durkheim's Philosophy of Religion which we have been studying, in w'hich an imaginative sympathy with some, at any rate, of the " collective representations " of primitive men, is more prominent than in the pages of VAnnee Sociologiqwe, while there is no less confidence in the assumption that, if kinship with these be once detected in the religious beliefs of our contemporaries, this disposes outright of any claim to truth on the part of these religious beliefs. This way of thinking finds expression espe- cially in Miss Harrison's Themis, a work which, hoiwever interesting, must be pro- nounced to be singularly destitute of the scientific spirit, and in which sentimentaJism may be said to run riot. "The aroma of mysterious and eternal thingis " hangS for her (as we learn from her Preface) about the col- lective hallucinations ■v\^hich make up the religion with which she concerns herself. Her choice of views appears to be determined rather by what she is wont to call their delight fulness — which sometimes seems to be due to their 167 Group Theories of Religion affinity to feminism' — ^tlian by any more ob- jective quality. But in this type of view even more markedly than in that of the French sociologists we have no place left for a genuinely individual religion. In both cases it is, on the whole, taken for granted that, while reality in the strict or proper sense be- longs only to individual bodies in space, thfe *' collective repiresentations '* on which religion depends have reality only as modifications of the consciousness which in certain cases results from the complicated organization of certain such bodies, and that as ** representations " of the nature of the universe they are illusory. I am, of course, aware that neither the French socioloigists, nor perhaps Miss Harrison and those whose general way of thinking co- incides with hers, would entirely endorse this account of their positions. The French soci- ologists often insist on the objectivity of social phenomena ; and Miss Harrison in her Themis ^ confesses herself to be inspired by ^ p. viii. 1 68 Durkheim's Philosophy of ReHgion the Bergsojiian conception of the ^lan vital y and to think of individual Hves in the main as transient manifestations of a larger life, in which the whole world of conscious beings participates . And, indteed, what I am going on to suggest is that all these writers in a sense pay too little attention to the individual. And yet I am persuaded that an individualistic assumption such as I have described lies at the back of their views. For them' Religion^ because it is a " collective representation/' misrepresents the world, and this theory of religion falls under the head of those studied by Baron von Hiigel in an admirable and too little knqwn essay on Religion des of expression are fbund to be incompatible with Duty. And' that censoriousness of a one-sided moralism which is constantly imposing limits upon artistic expression, limits which seem to the artist, with his passionate sense of Beauty, the fetters of an intolerable slavery, is corrected by the faith which, even in denying the legitimacy of certain miodes of artistic ex- pression, affirms that that which they would fain express is, sO' far as it is beautiful, also divine, and, even although it remain here and thus unexpressed, eternally secure in God. I am aware that I shall seem' here to somle to be makinig for Religion in relation toi Art and Miorality a claim which should rather be made for Philosophy. But I djo not think that Philosophy can flourish except in the soil of Relig'ion. It is in Religion that we have the immeidiate consciousness of that tvhich in i88 Religion and Individual Religion Philosophy becomes, or strives to becomle, explicit. In this sense I should accept the phrase, the use of which by Mr. Cornford I have criticized above, '* from Religion to Phjlosophy," as suggestive of an important fact. Misunderstanding is so easy in these matters that I should perhaps add that of course I do not mean to sugigest that the data of the specifically religious experie!noe are the only material with which it is the business of Philosophy to deal. No, all experience, all knowledge is alike grist to Philosopjhy's mill. fWhat I mean is rather that the aspiration after a kno'wledge of a single ground of all things ox of an all-inclusive unity, an aspira- tion which is the vital principle of Philosophy, is the ojie which has its original and its con- stant stimulus in that hope and promise of its fulfilment which the religioius experience supplies. J The result of our inquiries so fkr has been ' Cf. Royce, Problem of Christianity, ii. 8.' 189 Group Theories of Religion to find the group theories of ReUgion which we have studied unable to do justice to indi- vidual religion, which m,ust for them', in f^ct, be nothing but illusion. 190 CHAPTER X CONCLUSION It would be interesting, to follow up our in- quiries into the theories which we have been considering by an investigation of certain philosophical accounts of Religion which in- sist on the social or super-individual ^ char- ^ The group theories of Religion which we have been studying had, as we have seen, but little care for a kind of religious experience which is least conspicuous at the lower levels of culture, where the consciousness of individ- uality over against the group is least developed. But we ■shall expect more attention to be paid to it in theories occasioned rather by philosophical reflection on the ex- perience of individuals at a high level of culture than by the study from without of the customs and behaviour of those at a lower. Nor shall we be disappointed. Such a theory as that expounded in Professor Royce^s lectures on the Problem of Christianity (New York, 1913), to a very great extent supplies just that philosophical background for 191 Group Theories of Religion ftcter of thfe religious consciousness^ and to endeavour to discover how far we should find justice done in these to that comiplemlentary aspect of religion in virtue of which, as we have seen, it is no less the stronghold of our sense of individual worth in distinction from the worth of what has merely public or abstractly universal significance, than in virtue of its lack of which the theories of the French sociologists are so often at fault. In these lectures Professor Royce has dwelt upon the place in the dominant religion of European civilization occupied by what he calls the "Beloved Com- munity," and the salvation of the individual from the burden of his individual feebleness and failure through identifica- tion with a society whose soul is God — the body, as the Pauline metaphor expresses it, of Christ, in whom dwelleth the fullness of the Godhead bodily (Col. i. i8; ii. 9). (This doctrine has been developed by Professor Royce, as he himself tells us (p. xv), in conscious correction of the ultra-individualistic tendency — to which I have already re- ferred — of the philosophy of religion put forward by his late friend and colleague William James in his well-known Varieties of Religious Experience.) It is to be wished that this eminent thinker, who in genuine comprehension of religious experience is in the first rank of contemporary philosophers, had brought into more explicit relation with his doctrine of the Community the doctrine of the 192 Conclusion otber aspect it affords a refuigie for our sense of the worth of what is common and universal against the destructive criticism of Nominalism and Individualism. But this task must be left to another occa- sion. Here it is only possible to prepare the way for its accompjishlmteint by stating in a very brief and summiary fashion the nature individual as the expression of a unique purpose and the doctrine of the immortality of the individual based thereon, which he had worked out in his Gifford Lectures on The World and the Individual, In the second series of Mr. Bosanquet's GifFord Lectures on The Value and Destiny of the Individual^ with its descrip- tion of human life, in a phrase borrowed from a letter of Keats, as a " vale of soul-making " (see Bosanquet, op. cit, p. 63), he has wrestled with the problem of finite individuality in a thorough-going way for which perhaps the first series of Gifford Lectures on Individuality and Value, with its ascription of Individuality in the true sense to the Absolute alone, had scarcely prepared us. Yet perhaps, even at the •end of the second series, some of us may feel that justice has hardly been done to the finite individual. The soul is made, after all, to be as a soul destroyed again for ever. In the latter essays of the collection, recently published by Mr. Bradley as Essays on Truth and Reality, there is a profoundly interesting discussion of those problems raised 193 N Group Theories of Religion of that probletni of Individuality which, as I have already suggested, requires a more thorough -going philosophical investigation than it has received from' the writers we have been discussing;, and stating: this with especial by individual religious experience in dealing with which some of those most in sympathy with the type of philosophy now represented in our country by Mr. Bradley and Mr. Bosanquet have sometimes felt these thinkers least satis- factory. The appearance of the two works just mentioned is a welcome proof that they have themselves realized the legitimacy of the desire that they should put students of philosophy in fuller possession of their mature thought upon these subjects. I have already confessed that I am left dissatisfied by Mn Bosanquet. He certainly intends to assign high importance to the witness of religious experience, yet hardly interprets it quite fairly. Mr. Bradley, while insisting as much as ever on the essential moment of self-loss in religious ex- perience and on the error — as it surely is — of expecting from Philosophy a guarantee of future temporal happenings, does, as it seems to me, more justice — perhaps as much justice as can be done by Philosophy — to the demands of the religious experience. It would not, it may here be noted, be correct to describe Mr. Bosanquet's and Mr. Bradley's theories of Religion, without qualification, as "group theories." For them the object of Religion is "more than social." 194 Conclusion reference toi the form in 'which this problenj presents itself in the field of religious ex- perience. We contrast the individual with the uni- versal. We think of the individual as what is unique, as just this thing and no other, and as, because it is individual, necessarily dis- tinct from any other individual^ no matter how like to itself. Even were the likeness of this individual to some other absolutely exact, even could no characteristic be affirmed of the one which could not with equal truth be affirmed of the other^^ yet there would still be two in- dividuals and not one ; so that, could they both be brought at once before the observer^ their mutual distinctness would appear^ how- ever difficult or even impossible it would be tQ know in the other's absence which was which. Of the universal,^ on the other hand, we think as of a nature or character, which,, though perhaps found only in one iudividual, might cojiceivably^, at any rate, be found in 195 Group Theories of Religion more than onC;, and which is permianent in ithie sense that,^ even though it might newly begin, or again might cease altogethier, toi be exhibited by any individual, yet a mind once coginizant of it in one individual instance fw'ould be able to recoginize it were it to re- appear in another, nor vv^uld it be meaning;- less to inquire whether^ it had ever been present in any individual instance befoire that in which it was first by us detected. Burther^ the universal cannot be conceived as existing apart frpjn some individual in- stance . Even in the case of those moral uiiiversals (e.g. justice) which seem originally to have suggested the well-klnown Platonic thteory of the ^aypia-fio^ or independent being of the Ideas or Eternal Natures, while we ma^y, and indeed must, cqpceive them: as in some sense not dependent for thieir validity on their actual exhibitioln in conduct, y^t we rather think of them as what alwia^y^ OjUgfit to be^,^ »v^^bether they are or not, than as what, inde- pendently of individual instances^ actually are, 196 Conclusion On the other hatid^ the individual must, m the first place, be an instance— even if thte only instance— of a universal;,^ wh'ose nature can be distinguished from thfe fact of the existence of this individual instance of it. Apart ftom this it would have no character^j ^d noithingi at all could be predicated of it. In the second place^, fwhen we speak of an! individual we do not generally mean what we should call merely -an individtial instance oS a universal— an instance^ e.g., of yellowness! —but rather something; the description of which would involve the recognition of several universals, of each of which it could be allege^d! as an instance — e.g. (to take Locke's favourite instance) a piece of gold which is yellow but also hard, heavy, soluble in aqua regia, and so forth. Moreover^ it is imppssible to, regard! jeithier universals or individuals as all on a! level with other universals or individuals re- spectively . Moral qualities, mathematical properties, colours, natural spjecies, official positions^, are all in some sense universalsj; 197 Group Theories of Religion yet plainly th!ey will require very various treatment ; and various treatment seems no less demajided for the individuality of a sen- sation, of a shade of colour, of a piece of goldj of a table, of a picture, of a nation, of a religion. To attempt to do more than indicate the formidable difficulties which thus beset the question of Universals and Indi- viduals would here be impossible ; but to indicate them is necessary if we are to bring home to ourselves how loagi and intricate an investigation is required before wie can expect to get to the bottom of the problem' raised by Religion as at once a function of the social and of the individual life. OFjor a society, though itself in a very real sense an indi- vidual^ is also a universal, since it possesses those spiritual qualities which {characterize it only because, and in so far as, they are possessed by the individual members of it. If we look in one way at tte individual— and here we ma,y confine lourselves (as our subject is Religion) to the individual man-- 198 Conclusion what strikes us is that it is thfe uniPersal ia him^ the type he represents, the character he illustrates, the cause to which he devotes himself, the point of view for which he stands, which is of value and signifi cancel. What is merely individual about him seems tQ have value only so far as it serves for a vehicle to these. To dWell upon it for its own sake seems to be but trivial gossip ; a great man's true picture (we say) is in his works ; even if we have known him after the flesh, it is a higher thing to know him thus no more^i but to see in the knowledge of his spiritual siginificance the only knowledge of him which is worthy of the name .2 On the other hand, we may look at the matter othei^se. Only as belonging to indi- viduals, we may say, have ttypies, characters, causes, ipoints of view, any reality ; apart from individuals they are mere abstractions ^ See 2 Cor. v. 16. =^ Cp. a remarkable sermon by the late W. G. Rutherford on The Value of Idealism in Common Life (Sermon VI in The Key of Knowledge^ Macraillan, 1901). 199 Group Theories of Religion and ideals. To; the individtiality of their pps- sessors they owe it th^t they are ever concrete and actual. In the philosophy of Aristotle, toi which the scientific terminology of European civilization ONves so nauc^ the antithesis is brought out by the contrast between his assertion that knO!wledge is alwa,ys of the universal^ and his constant insistence^ as against whiat he re- garded as the illegitimate separation of the universal from thfe individual by Plato^^ on the primar,y reality ,of^ the individual. His erro- neous cosmology, with its sharp distinction between the wojld above and the world below the spheres of the moon, enabled him to attend to the two aspects of individuality, the one when talkin|g| of the heavens^^ the othfer when talking of thfe earth. Here below the part pla^yed by the multiplicity of individuals is merely that of securingi, by means of a suc- cession of beings of one kind which differ from one another, not specifically but only numerically, the perpetuity of that specific 200 Conclusion nature with which alone science concerns itself. There above are eternal individuals^,^ each with a specifically distinct nature ; and there is nq need of a multiplicity of nutneric- aUy different but specifically identical indi- viduals. Such eternal individuals are the heavenly bodies in Aristotle ; and of his scholfLstic followers some held the ang'els to be in likfe manner, although not indeed eternal (since they are created)^ yet immortal, and each a species by itself. The Aristotelian astro^omy and the scholastic angelology jniay seem to be of little importance - nowadays ; but they may be of Value even to us as show- ing what we must demand of a theory of inidividualit,y. If it is not to reduce thfe dis- tinction between you and me to something of no: worth or sigiiificance at all,^ such a theory must recognize alike in you and in me a nature, elSos, or form, belonging to each of us, and not shared by any other beings, numerically distinct from', but specifically identical with>^ ourselves. Each of us, that 201 Group Theories of Religion is, must, like an Aristotelian planet or a schlolastic angel, be a species by himself. The teaching of the Christian Gospel ^ that in the resurrection men shall be equal to the angels, and neither die any more nor any more repro- duce their kind, should here be compared, as showing that Religion is led to emphasize the Heed, for its own purposes, of interpreting! individuality, as Aristotle interpreted it, when it was not of terrestrial but of celestial indi- viduality that he was speaking. tWhile it is tempting to go on to discuss the question— Which seems by tno means easy to answer— whether we cannot conceive two individuals exactly alike— it is not necessary fbr us to do so here^ since in Religion assuredly the indi- vidual becomes conscious of a unique voca- tion^ a unique relation to God. "This I was worth ito God,, whose wheel the pitcher shaped." 2 ,We can scarcely imagine the celestial Pptter as turning out innumerable ^ Luke XX. 35, 36. ^ Browning, J^addi Ben Ezra. 202 Conclusion copies, all exactly alike, of one pattern, in the multiplication of which there is no fresh artistic or inventive interest. Such a creator Would, at any rate, b^ no true artist, let alone a God. We may say that, through a religious ex- perience, an experience which has been gained, and probably could only have been gained;, in a religious community, tmen have come to such an enjoyment of comtaunion with God as finds expression in the words of the Psalmist ^ : '' Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire in com^parison of thee. My flesh and my heart faileth : but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever/' Out of this experience arises that genuinely religious faith in imtnortality which must not be con- founded with the survival of primitive specu- latwws on thte dream self or with the mere i^oism of the natural desire for self-gratifi- catioln. Such a faith is not capable of proof ^ Psa. Ixxiii. 24. 203 Group Theories of Religion or disproof on grounds which abstract from religious experience. ^ But if religious expe- rience is not fundamentally illusotyj^ this faith, too^ must haVfe substantial wiorth. Religion at its higHest levels is illusolry; unless the indi- vidual, as he is in his relation to Gdfi (his experience whereof, although ceasing to be merely public or social, never becomtes mierely private or unsocial), is assured of the preservation of what (to- quote Browning again) he is '' worth to God^ whose wheel the pitcher shaped." What in this preservation must be lost, what kept, is beyond our powers to say. Our expjerience, such as it is, shows us abundantly h'Qw: easily we may be mistalien as t;0 whiat of our possessions inward or out- ward can best be spared. As words of gteat men often fit states of mind which they themselves can scarcely have foreseen^ this faith, combineid with a eon- ' This is what is, I think, the truth in Mr. Bradley's assertion that Religion is always practical {Essays on Truth and Reality^ pp. 428 foll.)j though the phrase is, it seems to me, open to grave misunderstanding. 204 Conclusion sciiousness of the indefinite possibility of error in detail even whtere it seetms surest^ niay find aln expressijoti in itie familiar wor'ds of one whose eschatological expectations \ve may find it difficult to share in the form in which he himself probably entertained thfem, btit from whom we miay hear the authentic voice of thfe religious experience at its best : "Be- loved, now are we the sons of God, ^nd it do;th not yet appear what we shall be : but wie kjiow thlat, when he shall appear, we shall be like hito, for we shall see him as he is." ^ ^ I John iii. 2. 205 INDEX Animatism, T25 Animism, 124 §., 129 Aristotle, 15, 27, 39, 87, 142, 145. 200 fF. Arnold, Matthew, 25, 184 Art, 165 f., 182 ff. Averroes, 176 Bacon, 73, 175 n. Beauty, 185 ff. Bergson, M. Henri, 145 n., 169,173 Berkeley, 17 Bosanquet, Mr. B., 193 «., 194 n. Bradley, Mr. F. H., 193 w., 194 w., 204 n. Browning, 202, 204 Burnet, Prof. J., 50 Butler, 186 Caird, Edward, 38 ff. Categories, 27 f., 151 f., 155 ff. Christianity, 38, 67, 69, 153 f., 171. 192 «., 202 Collective representations, 16 ff., 83, 115, 128 f., 131 ff., 153, 165, 167 ff. Comte, 30 f., 83 f. Conant, Dr. L. L,, 97 f. Conceptualism, 176 Contradiction, Law of, 23 ff., 86 f., no, 123, 126 f. Cornford, Mr. F. M., 72, 80 f., 181 Cynics, 29, 34 Durkheim, M. Emile, 5 f., 11 ff., 34 £., 37 ff-* 74- 83. 93"'»i3i» 137, 142 ff. Duty, 186, 188 Eleanor Cobham, Duchess of Gloucester, 103 Epiphenomenalism, 143 f. Figgis, Dr. J. N., 31 «. Fouque, 112 Frazer, Sir J., 141 n. Goethe, 184 Green, Prof. J. A., 146 «. Grote, 25 Harrison, Miss Jane, 64, 167 ff., 171 ff.. 181 Hegel, 66, 158 Henry VI, 103 Hermann, Prof. W., 66 ff. Hubert, M. Henri, 13, 30,64, 81 f,, 140 Hiigel, Baron F. von, 169 Hume, 17, 142 Huxley, 144 Ideas, 146 ff., 196 Immortality, 179, 203 ff. Individual, Individuality, 193 n.^ 194 Individualism, 193 Darwin, 25 Deuteronomy^ 77 James, William, 22, 63, 192 «. Jastrow, Mr. Morris, 69 207 Index Jerusalem, Prof. W., 164 Jesus Christ, 67, 202 Jevons, Dr. F. B.,38ff. Joan of Arc, 52 John, Epistle of, 205 Joseph, Mr. H, W. B., 145 «. Judgments of Value, 21 Kant, 57, 71, 142, 155 ff., 161 Keats, 193 «. Kruy 126 f. Laiqiie, 31 f., 52 ff. Law, 48 ff. Leibnitz, 162 n. Levy Bruhl, M. Lucien, 5, 13 f., 18 £f., 41 f., 85 ff., 173 Locke, 17, 33, 197 Loveday, Prof. T., 146 n. McDougall, Dr. W,, 129 f ., 146 n. Magic, 13, 30, 32, 140 Mana^ 82, 114, 141 Marett, Dr. R. R., 125 Materialism, 106 f., 145 Mauss, M. Marcel, 13 f., 22, 30, 62 f., 74, 81 f. Max Miiller, 40 Miers, Sir H., 135 Mill, J. S., n8 Modernism, 22 Mohammedanism, 38 Morality, 48 ff., 186 ff. Moses, Song of, 77 Mystery gods, 171 Nature, 82 Nominalism, 34, 174 ff., 193 Numbers, 95 ff. Obligation, 46 ff. Olympians, 171 f. Orenda, 82, 114 Pantheism, 175, 177 f. Participation, Law of, 23 ff., 86, 128, 130 Paul^ 192, 199 n. Personality, 128 Philosophy, 188 f., 194 //. Pindar, 50 Plato, 27, 50, 81, 130, 148, 163, 183, 186, 196, 200 Prince, Dr. Morton, 127 f. Protestantism, 63 Psalter, the, 203 Psychology, 15 Reinach, M. Salomon, 46, 60 11, Ren an, 69 Ritschlianism, 66 ff. Royce, Prof. J., 74, 189 /?., 191 n.^ 192 K., 193 n, Rutherford, W. G., 199 Sabatier, Auguste, 62 Sacrifice, 13 Science, 184 ff. Shakespeare, 89, 93, 183 Shebbeare, Mr. C. J., 185 w. Sophokles, 50 Soul, 126 ff., 146, 148 Spencer, 160, 162 Spinoza, 176 f. Starbuck, Prof. E. D.,22 Stevenson, R. L., 78 Telepathy, 105 ff., 136, 147 Times, The, 119 Tylor, Sir E., 94, 124 Universals, 195 ff. Victoria, Queen, u8 ff. Wilde Lectureship, 12 Wordsworth, 41 f., 88 f. Printed in Great Britain by UNWIN BROTHKRS, UMITED, THE GRESHAM PRE^b, WOKING AND L0XD0»-