§ 29. But if the psychology of belief is the proper starting-point for a description of the religious experience, it is none the less suggestive of the fact that religion, just because it _is_ belief, is not wholly a matter for psychology. For religion _means to be true_, and thus submits itself to valuation as a case of knowledge. The psychological study of religion is misleading when accepted as a substitute for philosophical criticism. The religious man takes his religion not as a narcotic, but as an enlightenment. Its subjective worth is due at any rate in part to the supposition of its objective worth. As in any case of insight, that which warms the heart must have satisfied the mind. The religious experience purports to be the part of wisdom, and to afford only such happiness as increasing wisdom would confirm. And the charm of truth cannot survive its truthfulness. Hence, though religion may be described, it cannot be justified, from the stand-point of therapeutics. Were such the case it would be the real problem of religious leaders to find a drug capable of giving a constantly pleasant tone to their patient's experience.[83:1] There would be no difference between priests and physicians who make a specialty of nervous diseases, except that the former would aim at a more fundamental and perpetual suggestion of serenity. Now no man wants to be even a blessed fool. He does not want to dwell constantly in a fictitious world, even if it be after his own heart. He may from the cynical point of view actually do so, but if he be religious he thinks it is reality, and is satisfied only in so far as he thinks so. He regards the man who has said in his heart that there is no God as the fool, and not because he may have to suffer for it, but because he is cognitively blind to the real nature of things. Piety, on the other hand, he regards as the standard experience, the most veracious life. Hence, it is not an accident that religion has had its creeds and its controversies, its wars with science and its appeals to philosophy. The history of these affairs shows that religion commonly fails to understand the scope of its own demand for truth; but they have issued from the deep conviction that one's religion is, implicitly, at least, in the field of truth; that there are theoretical judgments whose truth would justify or contradict it. This general fact being admitted, there remains the task to which the present discussion addresses itself, that of defining the kind of _theoretical judgment_ implied in religion, and the relation to this central cognitive stem of its efflorescences of myth, theology, and ritual. It is impossible to separate the stem and the efflorescence, or to determine the precise spot at which destruction of the tissue would prove fatal to the plant, but it is possible to obtain some idea of the relative vitality of the parts.