A more enlightened fallacy, and a more dangerous one, is due to the
supposition that religion can be defined exclusively in terms of some
department of human nature. There have been descriptions of religion in
terms of feeling, intellect, and conduct respectively. But it is always
easy to overthrow such a description, by raising the question of its
application to evidently religious experiences that belong to some other
aspect of life. Religion is not feeling, because there are many
phlegmatic, God-fearing men whose religion consists in good works.
Religion is not conduct, for there are many mystics whose very religion
is withdrawal from the field of action. Religion is not intellection,
for no one has ever been able to formulate a creed that is common to all
religions. Yet without a doubt one must look for the essence of religion
in human nature. The present psychological interest in religion has
emphasized this truth. How, then, may we describe it in terms of
certain constant conditions of human life, and yet escape the
abstractness of the facultative method? Modern psychology suggests an
answer in demonstrating the interdependence of knowledge, feeling, and
volition.[58:2] The perfect case of this unity is _belief_. The
believing experience is cognitive in intent, but practical and emotional
as well in content. I believe what I take for granted; and the object of
my belief is not merely known, but also felt and acted upon. _What I
believe expresses itself in my total experience._
There is some hope, then, of an adequate definition of the religious
experience, if it be regarded as belonging to the psychological type of
belief.[58:3] Belief, however, is a broader category than religion.
There must be some _religious type_ of believing. An account of religion
in terms of believing, and the particular type of it here in question,
would, then, constitute the central stem of a psychology of religion,
and affords the proper conceptions for a description of the religious
experience. Even here the reservation must be made that belief is always
more than the believing _state_, in that it means to be _true_.[59:4]
Hence to complete an account of religion one should consider its object,
or its cognitive implications. But this direct treatment of the relation
between religion and philosophy must be deferred until in the present
chapter we shall have come to appreciate the inwardness of the religious
consciousness. To this end we must permit ourselves to be enlightened by
the experience of religious people as viewed from within. It is not our
opinion of a man's religion that is here in question, but the content
and meaning which it has for him.
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