JUL 801921 
 
 r 
 
 BL 51 .W38 1921 
 Wells, Wesley Raymond 
 The biological foundations 
 of belief 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2008 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/biologicalfoundaOOwell 
 
THE BIOLOGICAL 
 
 FOUNDATIONS 
 
 OF BELIEF 
 
 V*' 
 
 By 
 
 ;ttf' 
 
 WESLEY RAYMOND WELLS, Ph.D. 
 
 Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Colby 
 College, Waterville, Maine 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 RICHARD G. BADGER 
 
 THE GORHAM PRESS 
 
Copyright, 1921, by Richard G. Badger 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 
 MADE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 
 The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. 
 
TO THE MEMORY OF MY BROTHER 
 
 ORION VASSAR WELLS, M. D. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The past two decades have witnessed the rapid 
 growth of an interest in the psychology of religion. 
 Many books have been written in this field since 
 the publication in 1902 of William James's Varie- 
 ties of Religious Experience. The recent develop- 
 ment of psychology into behaviorism suggests the 
 importance of a behavioristic study of religion. 
 Such a study should reflect the biological tendencies 
 of behaviorism. It should deal with religious be- 
 lief in terms of human behavior, having effects 
 upon individual and racial survival. This book 
 attempts to do just this — to study the biological 
 foundations of belief. 
 
 Though the biological view-point is maintained 
 throughout, the logical question of the truth or 
 falsity of the religious beliefs that are valuable 
 occasionally arises. James and other pragmatists 
 have confused matters of logic and biology to the 
 extent of claiming that the survival value of be- 
 liefs is a test of the truth of these beliefs. In 
 order to avoid the suspicion of any such confusion 
 in this book, I have pointed out what I have 
 called the pragmatic fallacy, which is committed 
 by such pragmatists as James and Dr. Schiller; and 
 I have pointed out another fallacy frequently com- 
 
 V 
 
VI Preface 
 
 mitted by James and by numerous others, which 
 
 I have called the fallacy of false attribution. I 
 have tried to maintain the thesis that religious 
 beliefs may be biologically valuable regardless of 
 their truth, and that they may survive indefinitely 
 just because of this most fundamental of all rea- 
 sons, the biological reason. My position is stated 
 at the outset, in the first chapter. Then Chapter 
 
 II deals with religious fallacies. Chapters III and 
 IV classify religious values, point out further bio- 
 logical grounds of belief, and take account of 
 criticisms that have been made of my discussion of 
 religious fallacies. Chapter V is a study of the 
 value of religious beliefs as a means of moral 
 training during childhood and youth. Chapter V 
 contains also a discussion of the moral and re- 
 ligious value of philosophy for college under- 
 graduates. These questions of religious and moral 
 education are taken up in the light of a biologically 
 grounded psychology. 
 
 The book consists entirely of articles that have 
 been published during the past four years. Thanks 
 are due to the editors of the Journal of Philos- 
 ophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, and of 
 the American Journal of Psychology for permis- 
 sion to reprint articles that first appeared in their 
 columns. It is hoped that these articles may be 
 found to have sufficient unity of plan and purpose 
 
Preface vii 
 
 to justify the present work of collection and ar- 
 rangement. Such unity as may exist is the result, 
 first of all, of the fact that all of the articles con- 
 tained in the book are a direct outgrowth of my 
 doctor's thesis written at Harvard University in 
 19 1 7, a thesis entitled A Behavioristic Study of 
 Religious Values. 
 
 Wesley Raymonb Wells 
 Colby College, January, 1921 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 The Biological Value of Religious Belief. ... i 
 
 NOTE TO CHAPTER I 
 
 Religious Belief and the Population Question 2 1 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 The Pragmatic Fallacy and the Fallacy of 
 
 False Attribution 27 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 A Classification of Religious Values 42 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 On Truth and Survival Value 68 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 Religious and Moral Education 93 
 
 IX 
 
THE BIOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS 
 OF BELIEF 
 
The Biological Foundations 
 of Belief 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE BIOLOGICAL VALUE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF* 
 
 SO far as religious belief can be shown to be a 
 crucial fact in human evolution, instrumental in 
 adapting the individual and the race to the en- 
 vironment, biological terms may properly be ex- 
 tended to include reUgion, or at least to include 
 its instinctive and emotional sources. Whatever 
 is essential to the successful ongoing of life pro- 
 cesses possesses a truly biological significance. I 
 propose to point out the vital importance of re- 
 ligious belief and its biological utility during the 
 course of human evolution. 
 
 Whether God, freedom, and immortality are 
 realities or not, of one thing there is no question : 
 it is a fact, for any observer to take note of, that 
 in many minds there exists the belief in these ob- 
 
 ^This essay is reprinted from the American Journal of 
 Psychology, Vol. XXIX (1918), pp. 383-92. 
 
2 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 jects. Religious beliefs are real as psychological 
 facts regardless of the reality of the objects of the 
 beliefs. It would be possible to construct a phi- 
 losophy of religion wholly upon the fact and the 
 value of religious belief, without raising the fur- 
 ther question of the existence of the objects be- 
 lieved in, or even if we assumed the unreality of 
 such objects. Beliefs may exist and have value for 
 those who hold them as true even though they are 
 entirely false, since the subjective effects of beliefs 
 are independent of the question of truth; and it is 
 even possible that religion is too good to be true. 
 
 Religion would continue in the world indefinitely 
 upon the sheer basis of belief as a psychological 
 fact, a biologically justified fact, even if the whole 
 scientific and philosophical portion of mankind had 
 agreed in branding all religious objects as unreal. 
 James expresses the emotional necessity of reli- 
 gious beliefs for the majority of people when he 
 says,^ "Materialism and agnosticism, even were 
 they true, could never gain universal and popular 
 acceptance; for they both, alike, give a solution of 
 things which is irrational to the practical third of 
 our nature, and in which we can never volitionally 
 feel at home." Careful observers would have 
 said, even before Professor Leuba's recent study^ 
 
 *Wm. James, The Will to Believe, p. 126. 
 *J. H. Leuba, The Belief in God and Immortality, Boston, 
 1916. 
 
The Biological Value of Religious Belief 3 
 
 of the actual religious beliefs of American scien- 
 tists showed that it is so, that the majority of 
 scientists do not believe in God or immortality. 
 This fact is not so significant for the future of re- 
 ligion, however, as the fact that the majority of 
 the parents of each new generation do have reli- 
 gious beliefs. The parents and homes, the churches 
 and general social background, of each new gen- 
 eration, exert a greater influence upon the reli- 
 gious beliefs of people than do a few scientists who 
 have ceased to require religious belief in order to 
 maintain their vital equilibrium. Mal<:ing the 
 whole world scientific is impossible. 
 
 Beliefs exert a potent influence on life. The 
 psychological and physiological effects of behef 
 are shown strikingly in cases of primitive taboo 
 where the belief that a taboo has been violated has, 
 in numerous instances, caused death. World- 
 views, beliefs about the ultimate things in man's 
 total environment, are important influences on the 
 physical economy of life. If two nations or races 
 are equal in all respects except that the general 
 philosophy and religion of the one is optimistic, 
 and of the other, pessimistic, the race with the 
 optimistic beliefs will survive in the struggle for 
 existence, while the other race will be driven to 
 the wall. As Goethe says:* "The real and sole 
 
 *Notes to Westostlicher Divan, quoted in Paulsen's Sys- 
 tem of Ethics (Thilly's translation), p. 425. 
 
4 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 theme of the history of the world is the conflict 
 between belief and unbelief. All epochs in which 
 faith reigns supreme, under whatever form it may 
 be, are bright, uplifting, and fruitful for contem- 
 poraries and posterity. All epochs, on the other 
 hand, in which unbelief, in any form, gains a weak 
 victory, even though temporarily boasting a sham 
 glory, will pass away." 
 
 Several writers have given clear expression to 
 the biological setting of religious belief. Professor 
 Leuba says:^ "The mere belief in gods may of 
 itself produce results sufficient to make of re- 
 ligion a factor of the highest biological impor- 
 tance." "The biological point of view affords the 
 more fruitful outlook. From this point of vantage 
 religion appears as a part of the struggle for life." 
 "Morality and religion . . ," says Professor 
 Carver,® "must be regarded as factors in the strug- 
 gle for existence as truly as are weapons for of- 
 fence and defence, teeth and claws, horns and 
 hoofs, fur and feathers, plumage, beards, and 
 antlers." "Who are the chosen people is not a 
 historical question. It is a question of fact, adap- 
 tation, and survival. What is the true church will 
 
 •J. H. Leuba, A Psychological Study of Religion, pp. 14, 
 16-17. 
 T. N. Carver, Essays in Social Justice, pp. 20, 31. 
 
The Biological Value of Religious Belief 5 
 
 never be determined by archaeological and his- 
 torical investigation. It will be determined by the 
 laws of selection and survival." Of the actual 
 religious beliefs of the past, Read says/ "Religion, 
 in spite of its many drawbacks, has been so useful 
 that families and tribes have been selected by their 
 addiction to it." 
 
 The very fact of the existence of religious be- 
 liefs among all primitive peoples establishes a 
 presumption in favor of the biological value of 
 such beliefs. If at any time there have existed 
 savage peoples without religious beliefs, they have 
 not survived long in the struggle for life. All the 
 peoples that have survived have possessed, among 
 other things, religious beliefs. From this fact the 
 evolutionist at once infers that religious beliefs 
 must have been of some important service to the 
 race. It might be argued against this by some 
 objectors that the races which have survived have 
 survived by virtue of other kinds of vital fitness, so 
 that religious beliefs have counted neither for nor 
 against survival. It is true that some organs exist 
 the utility of which is not apparent. Since such 
 variations have at least had no disutility, they 
 have not been eliminated through the elimination 
 of the organisms possessing them. But belief Is of 
 such practical Importance that it can not by any 
 
 'Carveth Read, Natural and Social Morals, p. 226. 
 
6 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 possibility be regarded as neutral, that is, of no 
 influence, favorable or unfavorable, in the struggle 
 for existence. Consequently the universal exist- 
 ence of religious belief among primitive peoples 
 is evidence of its survival value. 
 
 Some critics might admit that rehgious belief 
 has been valuable in the past, during the infancy 
 of the race, while they would argue that, like the 
 vermiform appendix, it has outgrown its useful- 
 ness, or has even become a source of injury. G. 
 E. Moore, for example, speaking of religious be- 
 lief in modern society, says that "there is at least 
 good room to doubt whether it ever does much 
 good."^ It can be shown, however, that religious 
 behef still possesses value. 
 
 I would repeat that the question of truth is ir- 
 relevant to a discussion of the value of religious 
 belief. I am studying the value of beliefs in their 
 psychological context, without regard to the logical 
 matter of truth. Actually, most of the early re- 
 ligious beliefs have had unreal objects, as all 
 would agree, but their value is not thereby vitiated. 
 Thus Read says,^ "As for the falsity of a whole 
 rehgion in its peculiar doctrines, that (I fear we 
 must admit) does not necessarily render it debas- 
 
 ""The Value of Religion," The International Journal of 
 Ethics, Vol. XII (1901-02), p. 97. 
 ^Op. cit., p. 229. 
 
The Biological Value of Religious Belief 7 
 
 ing or pernicious; for we have here an extreme 
 case of that astonishing phenomenon in human 
 life, the utility of illusion." And Rashdall says in 
 like manner, "Error and delusion may be valuable 
 elements in evolution ; to a certain extent . . they 
 have actually been so."^° Primitive religions have 
 been the cause of many evils, it is true, but such 
 evils have been more than counterbalanced by 
 numerous positive values. 
 
 I said above that religious belief cannot be re- 
 garded as a neutral factor in the struggle for ex- 
 istence. The enormous effect of strong behef is 
 well illustrated by instances of violated taboos 
 among primitive peoples. Frazer cites many strik- 
 ing examples." A Maori slave, upon being told 
 that the food which he had eaten had belonged to a 
 chieftain, and was therefore taboo, "was seized 
 by the most extraordinary convulsions and cramp 
 in the stomach, which never ceased till he died 
 about sundown the same day. . . A Maori wo- 
 man having eaten of some fruit, and being after- 
 wards told that the fruit had been taken from a 
 tabooed place, exclaimed that the spirit of the 
 chief, whose sanctity had been thus profaned, 
 would kill her. This was in the afternoon, and 
 
 "Hastings Rashdall, The Theory of Good and Evil, Vol. II, 
 p. 209. 
 
 "J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, 3rd edit.. Part II, Taboo 
 and the Perils of the Soul. See pp. 135-137. 
 
8 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 the next day by twelve o'clock she was dead." 
 There is on record a case of a negro who ate a 
 wild hen, which was taboo, upon the supposition 
 that it was a domesticated fowl. Four years later 
 he was told by his former host what he had eaten, 
 whereupon he "immediately fell a-trembling, and 
 suffered himself to be so far possessed with the 
 effects of imagination, that he died in less than 
 twenty-four hours." Many other instances of a 
 similar sort are cited by Frazer. Such examples of 
 the effects of behef in the case of violated taboos 
 illustrate the general potency of belief. In the 
 majority of cases, of course, taboos are not violat- 
 ed, on account of the beliefs about the consequences 
 of violation, and so the race here receives its first 
 moral instruction. 
 
 Though the hygienic value of optimistic reli- 
 gious beliefs in the case of the higher religions Is 
 important enough to make of religion a significant 
 factor in the struggle for existence, religious be- 
 liefs have been of biological utility to a greater 
 extent through their moral influence. In such 
 forms of the higher rehglons as Christianity, both 
 the moral and hygienic values are important. 
 There are certain standards of conduct that are 
 justified by the forces of natural selection, and it 
 seems to be a fact that religious beliefs are the only 
 sufficient instrumentality permanently to maintain 
 
The Biological Value of Religious Belief 9 
 
 these standards. McDougall says^^ that the behef 
 in immortality, which is one of the most central of 
 rehgious beliefs, is essential to the survival of any 
 nation because of its moralizing influence upon 
 thought and conduct. 
 
 Some writers have attributed the beginnings and 
 even the continued maintenance of all morahty to 
 religious belief. Thus Pfleiderer says," "The 
 historical beginning of all morality is to be found 
 in religion." And Caird says," "Religion and 
 morality are necessary correlates of each other." 
 Such extreme views are untenable, for certainly 
 in modern society religion is not an essential condi- 
 tion of morality with all men; and in primitive so- 
 ciety many kinds of right conduct have an instinc- 
 tive basis, especially in the family relationships. 
 Nevertheless, rehgious behef has enhanced primi- 
 tive morality, and continues, on the whole, to pos- 
 sess positive moral value. 
 
 Primitive morahty is fundamentally a matter 
 of the customs, or mores, of the group. Morahty 
 is always and everywhere a social phenomenon, 
 arising from the interaction of individuals in 
 groups. A group of Hobbesian individuals is 
 biologically inconceivable. Man, like most mem- 
 
 "Wm. McDougall, Body and Mind, Preface, pp. xiii, xiv. 
 "Otto Pfleiderer, Philosophy of Religion (Stewart and 
 Menzies, translators), Vol. IV, p. 230. 
 "Edward Caird, The Evolution of Religion, Vol. I, p. 237. 
 
lo The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 bers of the animal kingdom, possesses various so- 
 cial instincts. Group selection^^ has tended to elim- 
 inate all of the too self-centered individuals. Since 
 a group is stronger than an individual in the strug- 
 gle for existence, only groups have survived; and, 
 furthermore, the existence of groups requires the 
 presence of social instincts in the individuals that 
 make up the groups. Altruism is just as instinctive 
 as egoism, and is probably derived chiefly from the 
 parental instinct. In many of the lower animals 
 the social instincts manifest themselves in various 
 forms of gregariousness and mutual helpfulness, 
 and much more is this the case with man. Thus 
 primitive man is fitted for a moral life within 
 groups by his aboriginal inheritance. 
 
 Acts are judged right or wrong by primitive man 
 according as they conform or not to the group 
 customs. So far as primitive customs are instinc- 
 tive in origin, they have survival value, on the 
 whole, since the instincts are one of the products 
 of the struggle for existence. Religious beliefs en- 
 ter, however, and complicate the situation. Many 
 of the customs have a religious origin, and others 
 are enforced by religious beliefs, especially by be- 
 liefs in taboo. Taboo is the original categorical 
 
 "See P. Kropotkin, Mutual Aid, a Factor of Evolution; 
 Edward Westermarck, The Origin and Development of th3 
 Moral Ideas. Vol. II, Ch. XXXIV; Wm. James, Principles 
 of Psychology, Vol. I, p. 325. 
 
The Biological Value of Religious Belief 1 1 
 
 imperative. It corresponds, in upholding early 
 customs, to the "thou shall not" of the Mosaic 
 code. Taboo is chiefly religious in origin, being 
 based upon the belief in awful and mysterious 
 penalties that will inevitably follow the infring- 
 ment of certain rules. Since primitive moraUty 
 consists of primitive customs, or mores, taboo is 
 instrumental to primitive morality through enfor- 
 cing the mores. There are other means, such as 
 public approval and disapproval, and physical 
 force, of enforcing primitive customs, but belief 
 in taboos is one of the very strongest guardians of 
 primitive group morality. Primitive customs have 
 possessed some disvalue, through hindering prog- 
 ress, but they have had positive survival value on 
 the whole; and taboo, in enforcing customs, has 
 possessed value in the struggle for existence. 
 Furthermore, the primitive mores have contained 
 the germs of much of our present morahty; and 
 taboo has, therefore, been instrumental to the 
 maintenance of conduct that is right, as judged by 
 modern standards. 
 
 There have been other values of early religious 
 belief. Religious belief has had what may be 
 called industrial value so far as the industrial arts 
 have developed in connection with the worship of 
 the gods. Religious belief has had scientific and 
 philosophic value wherever pure science and phi- 
 
12 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 losophy have developed from religion. Belief in 
 spirits, hero-ancestors, and gods, by increasing 
 the extent and complexity of primitive man's en- 
 vironment, has stimulated intellectual activity. The 
 worship of heavenly bodies has at least attracted 
 serious attention to them, and consequently the 
 science of astronomy owes something to early re- 
 ligious interests. Mythological accounts of the 
 origin and nature of the world have stimulated 
 curiosity about scientific questions, and have given 
 place to more scientific cosmogonies and cosmol- 
 ogies. The various professions have had a re- 
 hgious origin. Priests and chieftains are often 
 identical among primitive peoples. The medical 
 profession has evolved from the work of medicine 
 men. The first teachers were the priests and head- 
 men, who gave instruction to the youth in the in- 
 itiation ceremonies. There has been a close his- 
 torical connection between theology and philos- 
 ophy; and the early rehgious interest, first becom- 
 ing intellectualized in the form of theology, has 
 always tended to go over into general philosophy. 
 Among other values of early religious belief are 
 artistic, social, and legal or political values. Prim- 
 itive religious beliefs have had artistic value so far 
 as poetry, music, sculpture, and architecture have 
 developed out of the worship of the gods. Dan- 
 cing and music were originally of religious signifi- 
 
The Biological Value of Religious Belief 13 
 
 cance. The drama traces its origin to religious 
 ceremonials. The first poetry consisted of stories 
 of the gods. The first architecture worthy of the 
 name arose in the construction of altars and tem- 
 ples. In the creation of images of the gods, sculp- 
 ture appeared. Early painting represented the 
 deeds of the gods and of ancestoral heroes who 
 had been deified. Social value has attached to early 
 religious beliefs wherever the beliefs have been 
 a bond uniting groups in the worship of common 
 deities, supplementing the instinctive basis of 
 group unity. Legal and political values of early 
 religious beliefs appear in the development of 
 property rights and stable forms of government. 
 Taboo has played an important part in the de- 
 velopment of rights of property. Holy places are 
 at first the property of the gods. In the case of 
 taboo on chiefs, it is sometimes the case that every- 
 thing that a chief touches becomes his property. 
 It is of importance for social evolution that the 
 conception of property rights should have arisen 
 early. More obvious is the connection between 
 religion and government or law. The legal pro- 
 fession was originally undifferentiated from the 
 priesthood, and the first laws of the state were 
 religious laws. 
 
 Not only the moral value of early religious be- 
 liefs, but also the other values, which I have called 
 
14 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 industrial, scientific, artistic, social, and legal, have 
 been genuine values of a biological sort. 
 
 II 
 
 The biological value of religious belief on the 
 level of the higher religions, including Christianity, 
 may not at first seem so obvious as in the case of 
 the primitive religions. It is, however, even more 
 important, inasmuch as our present-day interests 
 are vitally affected in such practical ways by re- 
 ligious belief. 
 
 The most fundamental distinction between the 
 lower, nature religions, and the higher, redemptive 
 religions may be expressed in terms of the differ- 
 ence between desires for satisfactions of a tem- 
 poral and physical sort, and desires for tran- 
 scendent satisfactions. In the nature religions man 
 is satisfied if he has worldly prosperity; and he be- 
 lieves in and desires transcendent realities only as 
 instruments to the attainment of his worldly de- 
 sires. It was not until a considerable degree of 
 civilization had been reached that the redemptive 
 religions could appear and maintain themselves. 
 Natural selection, perhaps, accounts for the sup- 
 pression of interests of a redemptive sort in the 
 periods of prehistoric savagery and of primitive 
 culture, through eliminating any idealistic individ- 
 uals that may have appeared. A Wordsworthian 
 
The Biological Value of Religious Belief 15 
 
 is not the kind of nature worshipper that would be 
 fit to survive among primeval savages; but, in a 
 social order of more refinement, idealistic beliefs 
 possess a positive biological value for many in- 
 dividuals. 
 
 In the higher developments of the religious con- 
 sciousness the hygienic value of religious belief, 
 which now becomes instrumental to optimism and 
 hence to health and survival, is perhaps a more 
 important value than the moral value, though the 
 latter is still significant. The complete denial of 
 the existence of the objects of religious beliefs 
 would reduce a large portion of mankind logically 
 to the acceptance of Mr. Russell's statement,'" 
 "Only on the firm foundation of unyielding de- 
 spair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely 
 built." This would be the logic of the situation, 
 but not the biology of it. Despair means death, 
 literally. A race that despaired would perish from 
 the earth; but a hopeful faith means life, and gives 
 life abundantly. Faith is biologically necessary 
 for the human race, and it is a psychological fact 
 that "hope springs eternal in the human breast." 
 Mr. Russell's statement is contradicted by the facts 
 of biology and psychology, for on a foundation 
 of despair no habitation at all for the soul can pos- 
 sibly be built. 
 
 "Bertrand Russell, Philosophical Essays, p. 61. 
 
1 6 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 Such a pessimism as Mr. Russell's is due as 
 much to the pessimist's high ideals as to his beliefs 
 about the objective nature of reality. Pessimism 
 results from the belief in a fundamental misfit be- 
 tween reality and the objects of desire. The man 
 who is content to be a brute, with a brute's desires, 
 is not pessimistic if he finds the world funda- 
 mentally brutal. But to the man aware of the 
 "noon-day brightness of human genius," pessimism 
 comes if he beheves that "the lofty thoughts that 
 ennoble his little day" are insufficiently grounded 
 in the ultimate nature of things. 
 
 For large numbers of individuals in modern 
 society, belief in the reality of another world of 
 which the physical world is but a shadow and a 
 promise, is essential to optimism and to a healthy 
 state of mind in general. Professor Hocking's 
 assertion" that optimism requires the denial of the 
 reality of the world as it appears to be, together 
 with belief in transcendent realities, is justified by 
 the psychological facts so far as many persons 
 (though not all) are concerned. The '^Welt- 
 schmerz bred of reflection," or religious pessi- 
 mism, according to James, "consists in nothing but 
 a religious demand to which there comes no normal 
 religious reply."^® "Its great reflective source has 
 
 "W. E. Hocking, The Meaning of God in Human Experi- 
 ence, p. i68. 
 "Wm. James, op. cit., p. 39. 
 
The Biological Value of Religious Belief 1 7 
 
 at all times been a contradiction between the phe- 
 nomena of nature and the craving of the heart to 
 believe that behind nature there is a spirit whose 
 expression nature is."^^ "No brute can have this 
 sort of melancholy; no man who is irreligious can 
 become its prey. It is the sick shudder of the 
 frustrated religious demand,"^" 
 
 The inevitable pessimism of naturalism for all 
 persons of sensitive natures who are also reflective, 
 and who take a wide view of reality, has been a 
 frequent theme in prose and in poetry. Some lines 
 in James Thomson's "City of Dreadful Night" 
 express vividly the despair of religious pessimism: 
 
 i 
 " 'The man speaks sooth, alas I the man speaks sooth ; 
 We have no personal life beyond the grave; 
 There is no God ; Fate knov^rs nor wrath nor ruth : 
 Can I find here the comfort which I crave? 
 
 " 'Speak not of comfort where no comfort is, 
 
 Speak not at all: can words make foul things fair? 
 Our life's a cheat, our death a black abyss : 
 Hush, and be mute, envisaging despair.' " 
 
 James points out two possible ways of relieving 
 such pessimism. "The longing to read the facts 
 religiously may cease, and leave the bare facts by 
 themselves; or supplementary facts may be dis- 
 covered or believed in, which permit the religious 
 reading to go on."^^ The first alternative would 
 
 ^^Ihid., p. 40. 
 ^"Ibid., p. 42. 
 '^Ibid., p. 41. 
 
1 8 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 mean the giving up of religion and the acceptance 
 of a materialistic philosophy. It is true that such 
 a solution is accepted by many persons, but James 
 emphasizes correctly the biological impossibility 
 of the general acceptance of materialistic views by 
 all of mankind.^^ A spiritual view, on the other 
 hand, releases hope and moral courage; and 
 hope and moral courage are among the things 
 men live by. Such religions as Christianity and 
 Buddhism are essentially religions of deliverance 
 from the vanity of worldly desires. Buddhism is 
 pessimistic so far as the physical world is con- 
 cerned, but its adherents are made optimistic, and 
 so are enabled to survive in the physical world, 
 through their beliefs in transcendent realties. 
 
 Browning's optimism was based upon religious 
 idealism. Reality, as he believed it to be, coin- 
 cided with what he valued most. Abt Vogler's 
 keys gave their sounds to the wish of the musi- 
 cian's soul. In music this "wish flowed visibly 
 forth." The man with an idealistic temperament 
 will be an optimist only if he believes that this 
 "palace of music," the objectification of lofty as- 
 piration, is "founded flat on the nether springs" of 
 realty. The religious idealist experiences all the 
 emotions of spiritual sovereignty, believing, with 
 the creative musical genius of Browning's poem., 
 
 "Ibid.. Ch. IV. 
 
The Biological Value of Religious Belief 19 
 
 that " 'tis we musicians know." By him, realty is 
 taken to be such as to satisfy all his deepest long- 
 ings. He believes that: 
 
 "All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist; 
 Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor 
 power 
 Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melo- 
 dist 
 When eternity affirms the conception of an hour." 
 
 Though man's emotional nature in so many 
 cases requires Idealistic and religious beliefs, it by 
 no means follows that such beliefs are true. To 
 maintain that the value of idealism implies its 
 truth would be to commit the pragmatic fallacy. '^^ 
 But there Is every reason to think that large num- 
 bers will continue to accept religious idealism as 
 true, simply because in so many cases man's emo- 
 tions determine his beliefs. Those who predict 
 the "irrellgion of the future" fail to take into 
 account the emotional and temperamental basis 
 of belief. We may correctly conceive of the con- 
 flict between religion and Irrellglon, Idealism and 
 materialism, as a biological struggle between the 
 "tender-minded" and the "tough-minded" ; and 
 the biological advantage lies to some extent with 
 the "tender-minded" so far as their emotional 
 cravings are satisfied by religious beliefs. Reli- 
 ious beliefs not only make for optimism, but are 
 
 'See below, Ch. II. 
 
20 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 also instrumental in motivating moral endeavor; 
 and, consequently, in the highest as well as in the 
 lowest forms of religion, religious beliefs have 
 important biological values. 
 
NOTE TO CHAPTER I 
 
 RELIGIOUS BELIEF AND THE POPULATION 
 QUESTION^ 
 
 SUCH considerations as have been presented in 
 Chapter I ought to be supplemented by an ac- 
 count of one further situation, a very specific and 
 concrete situation, in which rehgious belief mani- 
 fests its biological value most strikingly. I refer to 
 the correlation between religious belief and a rela- 
 tively high birth-rate, especially in the case of be- 
 lief of a somewhat legalistic sort such as is now best 
 exemplified in Catholicism. This correlation is 
 very significant. It shows that religious belief pos- 
 sesses survival value of a high order. 
 
 The connection between religious belief and the 
 birth-rate in ancient history is a well-known fact. 
 Fustel de Coulanges^ has pointed out how, in the 
 patriarchal famihes of the ancient Greeks and 
 Romans, religion required the continuity of the 
 family. The fate of the ancestral spirits was be- 
 lieved to depend upon offerings made at their 
 
 'Reprinted from the American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 
 XXXI (1920), pp. 204-207. 
 
 'The Ancient City, (translation by Willard Small), Boston, 
 nth edition, igoi. 
 
 21 
 
2 2 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 tombs by their descendants. Continuity of the 
 family was required for the sake of the sustenance 
 of the departed ancestors. Celibacy was an im- 
 piety, forbidden by religion and also by civil law 
 when law arose out of religious requirements as 
 something distinct from them. The ancient laws 
 of Rome forbade celibacy.^ The ancient Hindus 
 had similar laws. For the Hindus as for the 
 Greeks and Romans the extinction of a family 
 caused the ruin of the family religion, and this was 
 to be avoided by all means.* Among the ancient 
 Hebrews also it was a fundamental religious duty 
 to "be fruitful and multiply." 
 
 All this, however, is a matter of ancient history. 
 It is more important to inquire about the relation 
 between religious belief and increase of popula- 
 tion in modern society. 
 
 In the first place, it seems a matter of common 
 observation that, in general, the birth-rate is high- 
 est in families most influenced by religious belief. 
 The reasons that might be assigned as the cause of 
 this are various. In some cases the religiously 
 inchned may feel a mystic obligation to rear a 
 family. Fear of a concrete hell for those faihng to 
 fulfill their parental obligations may be the mo- 
 tivating power in other cases. Mr. Russell seems 
 
 *See Cicero, De Legibus, B'k III. 
 *See Fustel de Coulanges, op. cit., p. 63, 
 
Religious Belief and Population Question 23 
 
 to incline to this explanation, and to think that the 
 belief in hell-fire is thus biologically justified, when 
 he says, "Men and women who can still believe 
 the Catholic faith will have a biological advantage; 
 gradually a race will grow up which will be im- 
 pervious to all the assaults of reason, and will 
 believe imperturbably that limitation of families 
 leads to hell-fire."^ A third possible explanation 
 of the connection between a high birth-rate and 
 religious belief is the partial identity of the pa- 
 rental instinct and the religious sentiment. Accord- 
 ing to McDougall,*^ the tender emotion, which is a 
 correlate of the parental instinct, is a constituent 
 also of the religious sentiment. 
 
 In the second place, statistical studies have sup- 
 ported the conclusions of casual observation by 
 showing it to be a fact that, where religious belief 
 thrives, there a relatively high birth-rate is gen- 
 erally to be found. The Italian economist Nitti^ 
 has called attention to this fact. M. Leroy-Beau- 
 lieu has made a statistical study of the situation, 
 not only in France, but in various other countries 
 as well. He has found a high birth-rate among 
 the Spanish and Italian Catholics, and in those 
 sections of France where the Catholic church is 
 
 *Bertrand Russell, "Marriage and the Population Question," 
 International Journal of Ethics, Vol. XXVI (1915-16), p. 451. 
 
 'See Wm. McDougall, Social Psychology, pp. 66ff and Ch. 
 XIII. 
 
 'Francesco S. Nitti, Population and the Social Order 
 (translation), pp. 118-24. 
 
24 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 strong.* McDougalP accepts the contention of 
 Benjamin Kidd^° that one great influence of re- 
 ligious belief has been, and continues to be, its 
 instrumentality as a support of the parental in- 
 stinct against the tendency towards prudential lim- 
 itation of the birth-rate. Sidney Webb" explains 
 the high birth-rate among Catholics in England by 
 reference to the fact that the Catholic church ab- 
 solutely forbids any regulation of the marriage 
 state. Of the distribution of the birth-rate he 
 says," "It is significant that Ireland is the only part 
 of the United Kingdom in which the birth-rate has 
 not declined; that in Ireland itself it has declined a 
 little in semi-Protestant Belfast, and not at all 
 in Roman Catholic Dublin; and that in the towns 
 of Great Britain the decline is least in Liverpool, 
 Salford, Manchester, and Glasgow — towns in 
 which the proportion of Roman Catholics is con- 
 siderable." Webb finds that among the metro- 
 
 'Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, La Question de la Population. See 
 especially pp. 395-402. Leroy-Beaulieu gives the following 
 explanation of the influence of religion, especially Catholi- 
 cism, on population : "La religion catholique , plus encore que 
 toutes les autres, enseigne la resignation a son sort, condamne 
 I'egolsme et deconseille I'anibition: c'est-a-dire, q'elle exalte 
 le sentiment qui tend a rendre les families nombreuses et 
 qu'elle reprouve ceux qui tendent a diminuer le nombre des 
 enfants." (Pp. 397, 98)- 
 
 "Op. cit., p. 272. 
 
 "See Benjamin Kidd, Social Evolution, p. 295; also Ch. V. 
 See also Mr. and Mrs. Whetham, The Family and the Nation. 
 
 ^^The Decline of the Birth-Raie, Fabian Tract, No. 131, 1907. 
 
 "/fetd., p. 9. 
 
Religious Belief and Population Question 25 
 
 politan boroughs the highest birth-rate is "in those 
 boroughs in which the Irish Roman Catholics (and 
 the Jews who, in this respect, are in the same posi- 
 tion) are most numerous. "^^ Many economists 
 have tried to correlate high and low birth-rates 
 with conditions of poverty and wealth, but Webb 
 shows that there is a closer correlation with reli- 
 gious belief than with economic conditions. As a 
 matter of fact, however, poverty and religious 
 belief frequently exist together since many people 
 find compensation in religion for the lack of the 
 material satisfactions of life. 
 
 For a most complete and convincing array of 
 statistics upon this subject, Mr. Meyrick Booth's 
 article, "Religious Belief as Affecting the Growth 
 of Population,"" should be consulted. Booth 
 shows, for example, that, according to the Cath- 
 olic Year Book for 19 14, the birth-rate per 1,000 
 of Roman Catholics in Great Britain was 38.6, 
 while the average rate for the whole population 
 was but 24. In the United States, among those 
 states which, according to the religious census of 
 1906, had a small population of Catholics, the 
 birth-rate was low, averaging 15 or less per 
 1,000. On the other hand, in five states with a 
 
 ^Ibid., p. 9. 
 
 *In the Hibbert Journal, Vol. XIII (1914-15), pp. 138-54. 
 
26 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 large proportion of Catholics, the birth-rate aver- 
 aged about 23 or 24 per 1,000/^ 
 
 There may be a temperamental basis for sus- 
 ceptibility to religious belief, and temperament is 
 hereditary. As McDougall says,'*^ basing his con- 
 clusions on the studies made by Karl Pearson,^^ 
 about one-half of each generation is recruited 
 from one-quarter of the preceding generation. 
 The quarter with the highest birth-rate is, as I 
 have shown, the most religious portion of society. 
 So far, then, as there is a temperamental basis for 
 religious belief, and so far as temperament is 
 hereditary, the religious temperament, and conse- 
 quently religious belief, can not die out while the 
 birth-rate is highest among those possessing the 
 requisite temperament. 
 
 The correlation between religious belief and a 
 relatively high birth-rate is most conclusive evi- 
 dence of the biological value of religious belief. 
 If unbelievers are not so much interested as others 
 in founding families, then their unbelief perishes 
 with them; while religious belief springs up in 
 each new generation from a perennial source of 
 vital human need. 
 
 "Booth's article is a careful study of the situation, and 
 gives many tables of statistics, which should be consulted by 
 any one who is not convinced of the importance of religious 
 belief as influencing population increase. All the statistics 
 used by Booth are uninfluenced by the World War, since they 
 are for years not later than 1914. 
 
 "Op. cit., p. 273. 
 
 "See Carl Pearson, Chances of Death. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE PRAGMATIC FALLACY AND THE FALLACY OF 
 FALSE ATTRIBUTION^ 
 
 f 
 
 THERE are two fallacies which are met with 
 so frequently in the literature of the philos- 
 ophy of religion that they deserve explicit men- 
 tion. The first, arising from a confusion between 
 the value and the truth of religious beliefs, is so 
 characteristic of the pragmatic way of thinking 
 in the field of religion that it may properly be 
 labeled the pragmatic fallacy. The second fal- 
 lacy arises from the attribution of the so-called 
 religious experience to outside, "higher" forces in 
 cases where, in reality, the cause of the experience 
 is merely physiological — from "below" and not 
 from "above." This may be called the fallacy of 
 false attribution. 
 
 'Reprinted, with change of title, from the Journal of Phil- 
 osophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, Vol. XIV (1917), 
 PP- 653-660. Since I published this article, in 1917, Professor 
 Leuba (Psychological Bulletin, Vol. XVI, p. 66, note) has 
 called my attention to the fact that he pointed out the fal- 
 lacy of false attribution, without naming it, in his discussion 
 of James's mysticism in 1904 (International Journal of Ethics, 
 Vol. XIV, pp. 323-29). He says, nevertheless, that my paper 
 "may claim the merit of providing names for long recognized 
 fallacies" (Loc. cit., p. 63). 
 
 27 
 
28 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 I 
 
 When value and truth are distinguished, and 
 when it is seen that in many cases beliefs that are 
 clearly false still have obvious value for those who 
 hold them as true, then the argument so com- 
 monly used that, since certain religious beliefs pos- 
 sess value for the believers, they are therefore 
 true, is seen to be unsound. Truth is definable in 
 terms of correspondence with facts. Pragmatists 
 accept this when they say, as James does, that be- 
 liefs "work," and are true, only if they agree with 
 reality; and they take the "working" of a belief 
 as evidence that the belief does agree with reality. 
 Truth is something that belongs to the subject- 
 matter of logic, while value has a field of its own. 
 Value is the subject-matter of the special science 
 of value, and there is a growing agreement in de- 
 fining value in terms of organic interests. Things 
 are made valuable when they are liked or desired, 
 V hen satisfaction is derived from their presence 
 or possession. The statement will, upon reflec- 
 tion, be challenged by few that there is nothing 
 either good or bad, but liking or disliking makes 
 it so. Those who do disagree with such a defini- 
 tion, calling value indefinable, as Mr. Russell and 
 Mr. Moore do,- or defining it in terms of har- 
 
 "Bertrand Russell, Philosophical Essays, pp. 4-15; G. E. 
 Moore, Principia Ethica, pp. 5-14. 
 
Pragmatic Fallacy and False Attribution 29 
 
 mony or fitness,^ etc., will still avoid any confusion 
 between value and truth. Beliefs may be true or 
 false; they may also have value or disvalue. In 
 most cases, probably, true beliefs are valuable, 
 and false beliefs have disvalue, but not In all 
 cases. It is a fact that false religious beliefs have 
 possessed value in the course of history; and it is 
 undoubtedly true that false religious beliefs still 
 possess value under some conditions. 
 
 Pragmatism is biological in its treatment of 
 mind. Metal processes, according to pragmatism, 
 have arisen as aids to the adjustment of organisms 
 to their environment. In such a view as James's, 
 truth and the survival value that behefs possess in 
 the biological struggle for existence are made 
 synonymous, and it Is just this that constitutes the 
 pragmatic fallacy. It might be argued that, ac- 
 cording to the instrumental theory of conscious- 
 ness, no false beliefs, but only true beliefs, i. c, 
 beliefs that correspond with reality, can be of 
 biological utility^ through their Instrumentality to 
 the adjustment of the organism to its environment; 
 but it is necessary to distinguish here, by reference 
 to the objects of the two classes of beliefs, be- 
 
 "See G. H. Palmer, The Nature of Goodness. 
 
 ■'Biological utility or instrumentality is a case of value, for 
 what is instrumental to life is indirectly the object of inter- 
 est or desire, since life is valued with approximate universal- 
 ity. 
 
30 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 tween what I shall call "scientific" behefs and 
 "metaphysical" beliefs. "Scientific" beliefs are be- 
 liefs about details of the physical environment. 
 "Metaphysical" beliefs are beliefs about the na- 
 ture of the universe as a whole, as e. g., the belief 
 that the surface appearance of things is real, or 
 the contrasting belief that ultimate reality is found 
 only beneath the surface of appearances. The 
 phenomenal universe is not a "whole," so if there 
 is a fundamental unity about the universe, it can be 
 found only in some transcendent aspect of it. Be- 
 liefs in transexperiential realities of any sort, also, 
 whether or not there be a unity about the objects, 
 would be called "metaphysical" beliefs. Many 
 religious beliefs are of this sort. "Scientific" hypo- 
 theses, if they are of any significance, are capable 
 of empirical verification with at least some degree 
 of success; while "metaphysical" beliefs, as I have 
 defined them, are incapable of empirical verifica- 
 tion. The beliefs that must be true in order to be 
 valuable in the long run, biologically and other- 
 wise, are the ones that I call "scientific" beliefs. 
 For example, the belief that the ice on the river is 
 safe is a "scientific" belief. It can be verified by 
 venturing upon the ice. Such a belief as this pos- 
 sesses biological value only if true, for to believe 
 that the ice is safe when in reality it is not safe may 
 be an indirect cause of death, in case I go skating 
 
Pragmatic Fallacy and False Attribution 3 1 
 
 and am drowned as a consequence. Beliefs of this 
 "scientific" sort have disvalue unless they corre- 
 spond with outside facts. 
 
 The case of "metaphysical" behefs, however, is 
 different. "Metaphysical" beliefs can not be veri- 
 fied by the practical process of discovering the 
 sense-data that constitute the objects with which 
 the propositions correspond, for they refer to no 
 empirical objects. But if they refer to no em- 
 pirical objects that can serve as their verification, 
 neither can they lead to objective results that are 
 harmful. Holding a false "metaphysical" belief 
 can never have such bad objective consequences as 
 holding a false "scientific" belief, e. g., a false 
 belief about the condition of the ice; and the false 
 "metaphysical" belief may, on the other hand, 
 possess positive values of a subjective sort. "Scien- 
 tific" beliefs, also, whether true or false, may have 
 subjective effects of value; but, in the case of false 
 "scientific" beliefs, the sum total of subjective and 
 objective effects will have negative value in the 
 long run. An error believed has the same suh- 
 jective effect upon the believer as a truth believed. 
 Even if we assumed naturalism to be the true 
 metaphysical theory, it is plain that the (false) 
 "tender-minded" belief in God would possess hy- 
 gienic value for those who were made optimistic 
 by the belief; and it would possess moral value for 
 
32 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 those who would not be moral without belief in 
 supernatural sanctions. In the case of "meta- 
 physical" beliefs, the effect is of a subjective sort, 
 and is independent of the objective truth of the be- 
 liefs. A man in a naturalistic universe might profit 
 from true "scientific" beliefs about the parts of 
 the universe, and also from the emotional and 
 moral effect of a false religious belief about the 
 nature of the universe as a whole, its meaning, pur- 
 pose, and the like. Many of the false religious 
 beliefs of primitive man have had negative values 
 so far as they have actually caused maladjustment 
 to the physical environment by virtue of having 
 "scientific" beliefs associated with them, but they 
 have possessed numerous positive values, through 
 being the source of moral instruction, of artistic 
 production, of conceptions of law, etc. Much con- 
 fusion will be avoided by keeping clear the dis- 
 tinction between the direct, subjective effects of 
 "metaphysical" beliefs, and the indirect, objective 
 effects of "scientific" beliefs. To believe in God, 
 even if there be no God, can have no bad indirect, 
 objective effect. On the other hand, the direct, 
 subjective effects of religious beliefs upon con- 
 duct, happiness, etc., may be of such positive value 
 as to be a determining factor in the biological 
 struggle for existence. 
 
Pragmatic Fallacy and False Attribution 33 
 
 In The Will to Believe^ James emphasizes the 
 emotional and moral necessity of some sort of 
 theistic belief for the majority of people. No 
 other sort of world-view, he says, Is congruent 
 with human nature. He recognizes in this early 
 work, too, that mere congruity with man's emo- 
 tional nature is not the meaning or the test of 
 truth. He says : "Theism, whatever its objective 
 warrant, would thus be seen to have a subjective 
 anchorage In its congruity with our nature as 
 thinkers ; and, however it may fare with its truth, 
 to derive from this subjective adequacy the strong- 
 est possible guaranty of its permanency. . . . 
 God may be called the normal object of the mind's 
 belief. Whether over and above this He be really 
 the living truth is another question. If He Is, it 
 will show the structure of the mind to be In ac- 
 cordance with the nature of reality."^ Though 
 James here avoids the pragmatic fallacy by dis- 
 tinguishing the value of belief from its truth, his 
 later developments of pragmatism obliterate the 
 distinction, or they at least make emotional con- 
 gruity sufficient evidence of truth in cases where 
 verification by perception and consistency is im- 
 possible or inconclusive. It is this that Professor 
 Perry refers to as the pragmatic method of "ver- 
 
 "Especially in Ch. IV. 
 
 *0p cit., p. 116. Italics mine. 
 
34 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 ification by sentiment,"^ when verification proper 
 is impossible. Since truth is a matter of logic and 
 epistemology, the extra-logical matter of senti- 
 ment should not be admitted as a test of truth. 
 Let us content ourselves by saying that unverifi- 
 able religious beliefs possess value or disvalue, 
 and stop at this point, rather than confuse matters 
 of psychology and theory of value with logic. 
 
 That James did not keep clear in his later 
 writings on pragmatism the distinction between 
 the value and the truth of belief is obvious, not 
 only from the general spirit of pragmatism, but 
 also from certain definite statements that he 
 makes.* 
 
 The pragmatic fallacy extends to the case of 
 mysticism when employed as James employs it as 
 evidence for the truth of religious belief. James 
 concludes" that "personal religious experience has 
 its root and centre in mystical states of conscious- 
 ness." Furthermore, it is largely, if not wholly, 
 because of the value possessed by mystical states 
 for the mystics themselves that James accepts mys- 
 ticism as evidence of the truth of religion. A few 
 quotations from James will make clear his posi- 
 tion. He says '^° "Mystical states indeed wield 
 
 ^Present Philosophical Tendencies, pp. 209, 10. 
 'See Pragmatism, pp. 77, 204, 222, 273. 
 "Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 379. 
 ^"Ibid., pp. 428, 413 (italics mine), 400, 401. 
 
Pragmatic Fallacy and False Attribution 35 
 
 no authority due simply to their being mystical 
 states." "To pass a spiritual judgment upon these 
 states, we must . . . inquire into their fruits for 
 life." "The Vedantists says that one may stumble 
 into superconsciousness sporadically, without the 
 previous training, but then it is impure. Their 
 test of its purity, like our test of religious value 
 [= truth, as I have pointed out, for the prag- 
 matist], is empirical: its fruits must be good for 
 life. When a man comes out of Samadhi, they 
 assure us that he remains 'enlightened, a sage, a 
 prophet, a saint, his whole character changed, his 
 life changed, illumined.' " If mystical states have 
 "no authority due to their being mystical states," 
 and if it is only because of their value that they 
 are accepted as evidence for the truth of the re- 
 ligious beliefs associated with them, or in terms of 
 which they are interpreted by the mystics them- 
 selves, then here is another clear case of the prag- 
 matic fallacy. 
 
 II 
 
 The question of the interpretation of mysticism 
 leads up to the fallacy that I have called the fallacy 
 of false attribution^ which consists in the erroneous 
 interpretation of an experience whereby the experi- 
 ence is attributed to an external, divine source in 
 cases where a physiological explanation is adequate 
 
36 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 to account for the experience. Thus James says that 
 the "inner" experiences, mystical in nature, which 
 are central in religion, point to the intervention of 
 superhuman powers. But it is possible that mysti- 
 cism is only a form of emotionalism, explainable 
 within a purely naturalistic scheme. Postponing 
 for the moment a more thorough examination of 
 mysticism, I will simply say that if mysticism is 
 only a form of emotionalism, then the mystic, 
 though indubitably passing through the experience, 
 errs in ascribing to it a divine significance that 
 does not belong to it. This is the fallacy of false 
 attribution. 
 
 As Professor Hocking says, "To distinguish 
 between what is subjective and what is objective 
 about our experience is frequently difficult, even in 
 physical observation; but especially in the experi- 
 ence of the mystic."" The difficulty of distinguish- 
 ing subjective from objective aspects of any ex- 
 perience that occurs when one is in an unusual 
 physiological condition is well illustrated in Kip- 
 ling's "La Nuit Blanche." Here a man with the 
 "jims" on has remarkable experiences. He says: 
 
 "In the full, fresh, fragrant morning, 
 
 I observed a camel crawl. 
 Laws of gravitation scorning, 
 
 On the ceiling and the wall." 
 
 This is only one of his spectacular experiences. 
 
 ^The meaning of God in Human Experience, pp. 352, 353. 
 
Pragmatic Fallacy and False Attribution 37 
 
 He himself pertinently raises the question of the 
 real objectivity of events in which the natural 
 order of things is so upset, for he asks : 
 
 "Was it earthquake or tobacco, 
 Day of doom or night of drink?" 
 
 The truth of a belief is tested by seeking the 
 object believed in. If the mystic defined God as 
 the mystical experience itself, then the truth of the 
 belief in God would be established when the ex- 
 perience was obtained. But God, for the mystic, 
 is not the mystical experience itself. That is, God 
 is not the experiencing, but the experienced. God 
 is believed by the mystic to be real outside of the 
 occasional mystical experiences, and to reveal him- 
 self in the experiences. God is believed to be, not 
 the experience, but the giver of the experience, 
 which is interpreted as an experience of union with 
 God. There is attribution of the experience to a 
 supernatural source. Without such attribution, 
 the experience is not called a religious experience. 
 
 James argues quite unsoundly that the question 
 of the origin of an experience is irrelevant. He 
 says, "The plain truth is that to interpret rehgion 
 one must in the end look at the immediate content 
 of the religious consciousness."^^ I would fully 
 agree with this, since one essential component of 
 the religious consciousness is the belief in some- 
 
 '^Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 12, note. 
 
38 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 thing superhuman, but since such a belief is neces- 
 sarily present in every religious experience," the 
 question of the natural or supernatural origin of 
 the emotional components of the experience is very 
 relevant indeed. 
 
 James's whole argument against the validity of 
 attaching any significance to the connection between 
 religion and sex is rather weak. It is not because 
 "language drawn from the sexual life"" is com- 
 mon in rehgious literature that the psychologist 
 interprets religion in terms of sublimation of sex. 
 Much of religious literature is unreliable as scien- 
 tific psychological evidence. This is shown by the 
 fact, as James points out, that religion has often 
 been described in terms of other instincts, more 
 or less irrelevant. But it is just because religion 
 is actually observed by modern psychologists to be 
 correlated with sexual phenomena that a sexual 
 origin is frequently ascribed to it. 
 
 What James really seems to be arguing for is 
 the irrelevance, so far as truth and falsity are con- 
 cerned, of ascribing to an experience a patholog- 
 ical, as opposed to a normal, physiological origin. 
 He admits my contention that the question of 
 physiological origin is relevant when "supernatural 
 
 "In the case of the mystical experience there is present, at 
 least after the experience, the belief that an objective God 
 was revealed. 
 
 "James op cit., p. 11, note. 
 
Pragmatic Fallacy and False Attribution 39 
 
 origin is pleaded by the other side."^^ In the case 
 of the religious experience, there is belief in a 
 supernatural origin, as James himself insists. So 
 in reality there is little disagreement in the last 
 analysis between the views of James and the point 
 that I am insisting on. James would admit the 
 fallacy of false attribution when the question is one 
 of attributing an experience to a supernatural 
 source, by the one who has the experience, if 
 psychologists can establish the physiological origin 
 of the experience. 
 
 Mysticism may be identified with the meta- 
 physical system that asserts the unity, timelessness, 
 immediacy, and ineffableness of reality, together 
 with the denial of reality to the phenomenal world. 
 Royce defines it thus, and proceeds to refute \t}^ 
 Professor Hocking accepts" Royce's refutation, 
 but says that mysticism has been historically a 
 much broader thing than the metaphysical system 
 that Royce refutes. Professor Hocking says, "The 
 agreement of the mystics lies in that fact, prior to 
 doctrine, and wholly coextensive with religion, the 
 practice of union with God in a special act of wor- 
 ship."^* But here is the rub. Here the whole 
 question at issue is stated, in contradictory form. 
 
 ^'Ibid., p. 19. See also p. 520. 
 ^"The World and the Individual, Vol. I, Ch. II. 
 "The Meaning of God in Human Experience, p. 351, 
 '^Jbid., p. 352. 
 
40 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 "The practice of union with God in a special act 
 of worship" is not a "fact, prior to doctrine," as 
 Professor Hocking says it is. It is rather the doc- 
 trinal interpretation of a fact. The fact is the ex- 
 periencing. The doctrine is, that something ob- 
 jective, God, is experienced. 
 
 I would agree that the mystic's worship is an at- 
 tempt to gain what the worshipper believes is 
 union with God; but, so long as science and scien- 
 tific methods are accepted, there is a presumption 
 against the truth of the belief. The mystic com- 
 mits the fallacy of false attribution. The source 
 of his experience is "within" and not "without." 
 The experience is a form of emotionalism, which 
 consists of visceral reverberations and the activity 
 of the sympathetic nervous system. 
 
 Professor Leuba has made a psychological 
 study of mysticism, ^^ and his conclusion is that 
 mysticism is, to a large extent, a form of sublimated 
 love. This is the conclusion of the Freudians. 
 Professor Coe gives a good criticism of mysti- 
 cism.^° He denies that anything objective is re- 
 vealed in the mystical experience itself, and says 
 that the objective factor is added when the experi- 
 ence is interpreted. The cause of the interpreta- 
 
 "See "On the Psychology of a Group of Christian Mystics,' 
 Mind, N. S., Vol. XIV (1905), PP- iS-27. 
 
 '"G. A. Coe, "The Sources of the Mystical Revelation,' 
 The Hibbert Journal, Vol. VI (1907-08), pp. 359-372. 
 
Pragmatic Fallacy and False Attribution 41 
 
 tion made does not reside In the nature of the ex- 
 perience itself ; but "tradition and instruction, auto- 
 suggestion grown habitual, and reflective analy- 
 sis,"^^ determine the interpretation of the mystical 
 experience as a revelation of God. "The mystic 
 brings his theological bcUefs to the mystical ex- 
 perience; he does not derive them from it."^^ 
 
 Though the half-way mysticism of most mystics 
 is inadequate, and involves the fallacy of false 
 attribution, it is still possible that there may be a 
 mystical solution of the religious problem. So 
 long as any recognition is given to phenomenal 
 reality and to the world that the sciences study, 
 mysticism must be regarded as emotionalism only, 
 with a false belief as to the source of the emotion; 
 but a complete metaphysical mysticism, such as 
 Royce expounds and refutes, may still be the truest 
 insight, and farthest from a final refutation. 
 Thoroughgoing mysticism is at least wonderfully 
 attractive, occasionally for all reflective persons, 
 and always for a few; and it will continue to lure 
 world-weary souls to the promised rest and peace 
 of its Nirvana. ^^ 
 
 '^Ibid., p. 367. 
 
 ''Ibid., p. 367. 
 
 "For a further discussion of the fallacy of false attribution, 
 see the author's article, "The fallacy in Mr. H. G. Wells's 
 'New Religion,'" in the Monist, Vol. XXVIII (1918), pp. 
 604-08. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 A CLASSIFICATION OF RELIGIOUS VALUES^ 
 
 IN an article in the Journal of Philosophy, 
 Psychology, and Scientific Methods^ I pointed 
 out two fallacies that are met with frequently in 
 works in the philosophy of religion, fallacies that 
 I have called the pragmatic fallacy and the fallacy 
 of false attribution. Professor Brightman,^ Pro- 
 fessor Moore, ^ and Dr. Schiller^ have presented 
 criticisms of my views. In answering these criti- 
 cisms I shall be led into a somewhat detailed dis- 
 cussion of religious values from the point of view 
 of a behaviorist. The views of one who speaks of 
 the meaning and value of God in human behavior 
 are apt to be misunderstood, since religion is a 
 field into which behaviorism has not as yet ven- 
 tured far. However, since this is a direction in 
 
 ^Reprinted, with slight changes and additions, from the 
 Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, 
 Vol. XV (1918), pp. 488-99, where the article appeared under 
 the title, "On Religious Values: A Rejoinder." 
 
 *Vol. XIV, pp. 653-660. This article is reprinted above as 
 Chapter II. 
 
 ^Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Meth- 
 ods, Vol. XV, pp. 71-76. 
 
 *Ibid., pp. 76-78. 
 
 ^Ibid., pp. 505-515. In the following chapter I take account 
 of Dr. Schiller's criticism. 
 
 42 
 
A Classification of Religious Values 43 
 
 which study will prove fruitful, I shall offer a 
 classification of religious values, which will make 
 clearer what would be an objective, behavioristic 
 account of religious values, and which will also be 
 a part of my answer to my critics. 
 
 I 
 
 The pragmatic fallacy in the philosophy of re- 
 ligion, as I have defined it, consists of the identi- 
 fication of the value with the truth of religious 
 beliefs, and of the acceptance of those religious be- 
 liefs as true which are found to have value. I 
 have insisted that the concepts of truth and of 
 value can not be identified. I have pointed out 
 especially that the survival value of religious be- 
 liefs in human evolution is no evidence for the 
 truth of the beliefs, contrary to the view of James, 
 who was the first to employ Darwinism in defense 
 of religious truth. Further discussion of the 
 meaning of value is obviously needed, but I pre- 
 supposed among the readers of my article a suffi- 
 cient familiarity with the developments in the 
 theory of value from the work of Meinong'' and of 
 Ehrenfels^ to recent discussions to obviate such 
 
 "A. Meinong, Psychologisch-Ethische Untersuchun-gen sur 
 Weriiheorie, Graz, 1894. 
 
 'C. von Ehrenfels, System der Werttheorie, 2 vols., Leipzig, 
 1897. 
 
44 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 misinterpretations as have been made of my state- 
 ments by Professor Brightman. 
 
 Though the pragmatic fallacy m2iy be maintained 
 equally well in connection with other theories 
 of value, the theory which I accept, as I suggest- 
 ed in my original article, is one which defines value 
 in terms of organic attitudes and acts, in terms of 
 liking and desiring; and liking and desiring may 
 be most adequately treated in behavioristic terms. 
 An object possesses value if some organism has an 
 interest in it; and to have an interest in an object 
 means to act in such a way as to try to get posses- 
 sion of it (or retain it if already possessed), or at 
 least to enjoy it, as in the case of esthetic values. 
 Since interests and likes and dislikes have meaning 
 only in terms of behavior, value may ultimately be 
 defined in terms of reactions or responses, positive 
 or negative. Positive response constitutes posi- 
 tive value (the good, the desirable, etc.), and neg- 
 ative response constitutes negative value (the bad, 
 the undesirable, etc.). 
 
 But value is not so simple and obvious a thing 
 as such a definition might seem to imply. There 
 are various types and classes of values all coming 
 within this one definition. I might have presup- 
 posed that my readers would be familiar with the 
 common distinction between independent, or im- 
 mediate, values, attaching to objects valued for 
 
A Classification of Religious Values 45 
 
 their own sake, as ends, and dependent, or instru- 
 mental, or derived, values, attaching to objects 
 only when such objects are instrumental to other 
 objects possessing independent values. Instru- 
 mental values are "derived" from the relation of 
 the objects to other objects directly valued. An 
 instrumental value may thus be only indirectly the 
 object of interest. Though I might have presup- 
 posed familiarity with such a distinction between 
 independent and dependent values, I was careful 
 to state that biological utility is a case of what I 
 have here called instrumental value, not , inde- 
 pendent, since an object that possesses biological 
 utility, i. e., one that is instrumental to the preser- 
 vation of life, "is indirectly the object of interest 
 or desire, since life is valued with approximate 
 universality." But Professor Brightman over- 
 looked my statement of this distinction, and tries 
 to make out that I have presented two definitions 
 of value, a psychological and a biological one.* 
 My single definition is, rather, a psycho-biological 
 one, and allows for the distinction between inde- 
 pendent and dependent values. The classification 
 which I shall present a little later will make my 
 position clearer. 
 
 Professor Brightman makes two confusions of 
 the issue when he refers to my distinction between 
 
 'Loc. cit., p. 72. 
 
46 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 what I called "scientific" and "metaphysical" be- 
 liefs. I said that "scientific" beliefs, referring 
 to details of the physical environment and capable 
 of empirical verification, must be true in order to 
 be valuable. I cited the case of belief in the 
 safety of the ice as an example. Professor Bright- 
 man,® in the first place, confuses the belief in the 
 safety of the ice (the belief is a psychological 
 entity — ultimately a behavioristic fact) and the 
 ice itself. I spoke, not about the value of the ice, 
 but only about the value of the belief in the safety 
 of the ice. Whether or not the small boy likes the 
 ice itself is an extraneous matter. In the second 
 place, as I pointed out, it is the indirect or instru- 
 mental value of the belief (its instrumentality in 
 relation to survival, survival being directly de- 
 sired) that is in question, not its independent 
 value as the direct object of desire, as Professor 
 Brightman seems to think,^" So whether or not 
 the small boy likes to believe in the safety of the 
 ice is also an extraneous matter. The actual in- 
 strumentality of the belief is the important thing. 
 As a result of these two confusions, Professor 
 Brightman's criticism of my statement of the 
 pragmatic fallacy falls down. When he concludes 
 that he has reduced my pragmatic fallacy to "the 
 
 •See loc. cit., pp. 71, 72. 
 "Loc. cit., p, 72, 
 
A Classification of Religious Values 47 
 
 argument that a belief is true because we desire 
 it to be true,"" he shows his entire failure to take 
 into account the distinction between independent 
 and dependent values. The chief error of some 
 pragmatists when dealing with the philosophy of 
 religion, and of James especially, has been in 
 maintaining that religious beliefs possessing sur- 
 vival value thereby demonstrate their truth. Such 
 beliefs may or may not be true. Nothing can be 
 inferred from their survival value as to their 
 truth. To maintain that survival value of reli- 
 gious beliefs is evidence of their truth is to commit 
 the pragmatic fallacy. 
 
 Professor Moore objects to my distinction be- 
 tween "metaphysical" and "scientific" beliefs. He 
 says" that even false "scientific" beliefs may be 
 subjectively valuable, as in the case of belief in 
 the non-existence of pain, while being objective- 
 ly harmful through hindering the cure of the 
 disease. This is all very true, and does nothing 
 to invalidate the distinction that I made. It helps 
 to confirm it instead. The fact is, as Professor 
 Moore points out in this example, that "scientific" 
 beliefs do have objective effects, and hence must 
 be true if, in the long run, they are to possess a 
 balance of positive value. "Metaphysical" be- 
 
 "Loc. cit., p. 72. 
 "Loc. cit., p. 77. 
 
48 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 liefs, on the other hand, as I defined them, can not 
 have objective effects to counterbalance any 
 subjective effects of positive value that they may 
 have. Professor Moore does not deny this, but 
 simply claims that they may have harmful effects 
 on "the spiritual nature." This is beside the point 
 when the case is being argued on the biological 
 grounds of pragmatism, for "the spiritual na- 
 ture," in Professor Moore's sense of the term, 
 does not count as a factor of biological significance 
 in the struggle for existence. 
 
 It is necessary to make the distinction that I did 
 between "scientific" and "metaphysical" beliefs or 
 else, from the premises of the instrumentalist, it 
 would follow that all beliefs that survive would be 
 true, and that survival would be the test of truth. 
 I pointed out that some beliefs, which I called 
 "metaphysical," in that they do not refer to the 
 physical environment, may possess a subjective" 
 value even if not objectively true, and may prevail 
 and survive because of this subjective value, while 
 false "scientific" beliefs lead in the end to bad 
 objective results that destroy the beliefs. 
 
 II 
 
 Having defined value in its generic sense in 
 
 "For behaviorism the term "subjective" lacks its usual con- 
 notation. It has a legitmate use and meaning, however, refer- 
 ring to one phase of the objective mental processes. 
 
A Classification of Religious Values 49 
 
 terms of interest or desire, it remains for us to 
 differentiate religious values from other values, 
 such as ethical, economic, and esthetic values, and 
 then to classify the religious values. Religious 
 values may be differentiated from the values dealt 
 with by the other value sciences by reference to 
 the objects to which they are said to attach, i. e., 
 to the supernatural objects of belief, to the acts 
 of worship that such belief leads to, and especially 
 to the beliefs themselves, regarded as psycholog- 
 ical objects, and to emotional states associated 
 with the beliefs. 
 
 The distinction between immediate and instru- 
 mental values, and that between real and ideal 
 values, are the chief ones to be pointed out in a 
 classification of religious values. Immediate and 
 instrumental values have already been defined. 
 Ideal values are those which we predicate of ob- 
 jects which are not real, but which depend for their 
 existence on the valuing subject, being "invoked by 
 an interest and held in existence only by the act of 
 imagination."^* Real value-objects, on the other 
 hand, are objects that exist independently of the 
 interested subject. They are facts, while ideal 
 value-objects are fancies. 
 
 My classification of religious values, which fol- 
 
 "R. B. Perry, "Religious Values," American Journal of 
 Theology, Vol. XIX (1915), P- 3- 
 
50 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 lows, is in general agreement with one already 
 made by Professor Perry," but I have made sev- 
 eral added distinctions to allow for cases of value 
 that could not otherwise be provided for. 
 
 Instrumental values are of importance in the 
 study of value, especially in the case of religious 
 values. There are several distinguishable sorts of 
 instrumental values. The mere causal connection 
 between two objects, one of which is directly 
 valued, is one case. I refer by this to the relation 
 oi A to B when A is the condition of 5's occur- 
 rence or existence. A second case is that involving 
 the judgment that A is the condition of B, when the 
 judgment is true. A third case is that in which 
 there occurs the judgment that A is the condition 
 of B, when the judgment is false, though A is real. 
 A fourth case involves the judgment that A is the 
 condition of B when A is unreal, though believed 
 real, but such that the judgment would be true if A 
 existed. A fifth case is that involving the judgment 
 that A is the condition of B when A is unreal, and 
 when the judgment would be false even if A ex- 
 isted. 
 
 In these five cases we find, first, the distinction 
 between actual causal connection and the judgment 
 of, or belief in, such connection; second, the dis- 
 tinction between true and false judgments of 
 
 "Z-oc, cit., pp. iff, 
 
A Classification of Religious Values 51 
 
 causal connection when truth and falsity depend 
 upon the reality or unreality of the causal connec- 
 tion; and, third, the distinction between true and 
 false judgments of causal connection when truth 
 and falsity depend upon the existence or non- 
 existence of A. A combination of the second and 
 third cases occurs when A is valued because judged 
 instrumental to B, and when, as a matter of fact, A 
 is unreal, and when, further, the relation of in- 
 strumentality could not hold even if A existed. 
 
 The mere relation of causality or instrumen- 
 tality in itself does not constitute value i^" but we 
 may say that an object has value if it is actually 
 instrumental to a valued object, even though the 
 instrumentality is not recognized. If A is actually 
 instrumental to B, and if B is the object of desire, 
 then it is permissible to say that A has conditional, 
 instrumental value. The biological value of many 
 religious beliefs is of this sort. In such a case the 
 object A is not the object of an actual interest, but 
 it would be desired if its instrumentality to B, 
 which is desired, were recognized. 
 
 All of the above distinctions are provided for in 
 the three following tables : 
 
 "See W. T. Bush, "Value and Causality," Journal of Phil- 
 osophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, VqI. XV, pp. 
 85-96. 
 
52 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 I. Real Values (attaching to objects that exist). 
 
 1. Immediate, or independent (attaching to ob- 
 
 jects valued directly). 
 
 2. Instrumental, or dependent. 
 
 A. Conditional (when real instrumentality 
 
 exists, but is not recognized). 
 
 B. Actual (when instrumentality is recog- 
 
 nized). 
 
 a. True (when valuing of object is me- 
 
 diated by a true judgment of in- 
 strumentality). 
 
 b. False (when mediated by a false 
 
 judgment). 
 
 What I call "conditional, instrumental values" 
 are in all cases actually instrumental, by definition. 
 They are not actual values, however, because not 
 valued in the absence of a judgment of instru- 
 mentality, which is required to convert a mere dis- 
 position into an actual valuing act. What I call 
 "actual, instrumental values" may not be actually 
 instrumental in all cases; but if judged to be in- 
 strumental, whether truly or falsely, they then 
 have actual value because actually desired. 
 
 A second table, of ideal values, would be as 
 follows : 
 
 II. Ideal Values (attaching to objects that are 
 
 not real) . 
 I. Immediate, or independent. 
 
A Classification of Religious Values 53 
 
 2. Instrumental, or dependent. 
 
 A. Conditional (lacking, for what does not 
 
 exist can not be the cause of anything) . 
 
 B. Actual. 
 
 a. True (lacking, for there can be no 
 
 true judgment of instrumentality 
 when the instrument does not 
 exist). 
 
 b. False (the only case of instrumental 
 
 ideal values) . 
 
 In the case of a false, actual, instrumental, ideal 
 value, the object is actually valuable because it is 
 (i) believed real (falsely), (2) judged instru- 
 mental (falsely), and (3) actually valued because 
 so judged. 
 
 A third table, of the real values of belief, is 
 necessary. For behaviorism belief is a positive 
 reaction to a proposition, and disbelief is a nega- 
 tive reaction. Belief in God, for example, is an 
 acceptance of, or a positive organic attitude to- 
 wards, the proposition, God exists. Disbelief is a 
 rejection of, or a negative attitude towards, 
 the proposition. Beliefs are psychological, 
 i. e., behavioristic, entities, and proposi- 
 tions are not. Strictly, when such a dis- 
 tinction is made, it is only propositions that may 
 be true or false, while beliefs are only positive or 
 negative. But common usage justifies one in call- 
 
54 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 ing a belief in a true proposition a true belief, and 
 a belief in a false proposition a false belief. Fur- 
 thermore, disbelief in a true proposition would be 
 the equivalent of a false belief, though disbelief 
 in a false proposition might, or might not, be the 
 equivalent of a true belief. For the purposes of 
 the theory of knowledge, the terms "belief" and 
 "judgment" are practically interchangeable. In 
 the philosophy of religion, however, I prefer the 
 term "belief," since it suggests a more permanent 
 and stable reaction of the organism. 
 
 In the case of objects merely imagined, but be- 
 lieved to be real, the objects of belief are unreal, 
 but the beliefs themselves, as psychological sub- 
 ject-matter, are real. So there would be a third 
 table of real values, like the first table except for 
 the limitation of the objects to beliefs themselves : 
 
 III. Real Values of Belief 
 
 1. Immediate, or independent (when one be- 
 
 lieves, and likes to believe, just for the 
 sake of believing, if there be such a case). 
 
 2. Instrumental, or dependent. 
 
 A. Conditional. 
 
 B. Actual. 
 
 a. True. 
 
 b. False. 
 
 These tables of values may be further cluci- 
 
A Classification of Religious Values 55 
 
 dated through application to the chief religious 
 objects in the higher religions. According to 
 James's psychological study of the actual religious 
 experiences of individuals of strongly marked re- 
 ligious character," the chief objects of religious 
 interest and belief in the higher forms of religion 
 are the following four : ( i ) God, as a more or 
 less personal being; (2) human souls as real and 
 significant; (3) the permanent significance of the 
 human soul, i. e., personal immortality; and (4) 
 freedom (though not, to be sure, in all forms of 
 the higher, redemptive religions), or rather inde- 
 terminism, since the term "freedom," from its 
 philosophical associations, means, according to 
 James, "soft determinism,"^^ which is still genuine 
 determinism even though "softened" by its ideal- 
 istic setting. 
 
 God is the chief object of belief in most forms 
 of the higher religions. Buddhism is no excep- 
 tion, for in actual practice Buddhism is not athe- 
 istic, the Buddha himself being deified; and in the 
 more philosophical form of Buddhism the law of 
 Karma, which is the moral order of the universe, 
 would pass for a god. ''Some outward real- 
 
 "See The Varieties of Religious Experience, and The Will 
 to Believe. 
 
 ^'See Ch. V, "The Dilemma of Determinism," in The Will 
 to Believe. 
 
56 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 ity," James says," "of a nature defined as God's 
 nature must be defined, is the only ultimate object 
 that is at the same time rational and possible for 
 the human mind's contemplation." As to the na- 
 ture of God, James say: "It is essential that God 
 be conceived as the deepest power in the universe; 
 and, second, he must be conceived under the form 
 of mental personality, . . . God's personality is to 
 be regarded, like any other personality, as some- 
 thing lying outside of my own and other than me, 
 whose existence I simply come upon and find. A 
 power not ourselves, then, which not only makes 
 for righteousness, but means it, and which recog- 
 nizes us,"^° God, regarded as a personality, is 
 obviously desired as an end, like a human person- 
 ality, and not merely as a means. In the higher 
 religions God is actually so regarded, though no 
 counterpart of this is discoverable in the lower, 
 nature religions. 
 
 God would, however, if he existed, be also a 
 means to other ends. He would guarantee the 
 realization of the highest human ideals. First of 
 all, he would guarantee personal immortality, 
 which, according to James, "is one of the great 
 spiritual needs of man."-^ "The difference in 
 natural 'fact' which most of us would assign as 
 
 *The Will to Believe, pp. 115, 116. 
 
 "Ibid., p. 122. 
 
 '^Human Immortality, p. 2. 
 
A Classification of Religious Values 57 
 
 the first difference which the existence of a God 
 ought to make would, I imagine, be personal im- 
 mortality. Religion, in fact, for the great major- 
 ity of our own race means immortality, and noth- 
 ing else. God is the producer of immortality; and 
 whoever has doubts of immortality is written 
 down as an atheist without further trial. "-^ 
 
 The human soul is an object of vital concern in 
 most forms of the redemptive religions. For ex- 
 ample, in orthodox Christianity it is the sinful 
 soul that needs salvation, and the Buddhist salva- 
 tion from rebirth is meaningless unless there is a 
 soul that is reincarnated, though Buddhism tries 
 to deny the reality of the soul while still believing 
 in reincarnation. 
 
 Although a belief in and a desire for indeter- 
 minism are not universal in the higher forms of 
 religion, James classes indeterminism among 
 man's "spiritual" needs. It enhances the signifi- 
 cance of the self. The mechanical chain of events 
 in a naturalistic scheme, which denies individual 
 initiative, fails to satisfy, according to James, the 
 actual desires of most persons. The "soft deter- 
 minism" of monistic idealism also denies any real 
 individual creativeness in the act of choice. For 
 absolute idealism, "our wills are [not] ours, to 
 make them Thine;" they are only "Thine." Plu- 
 
 *The Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 524. 
 
58 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 ralistic idealism of some sort would seem to be 
 what the majority of the religious portion of hu- 
 manity desires. There is a prominent exception, 
 Calvinism, which denies indeterminism; but James 
 speaks of the unsatisfactory character of Calvin- 
 istic doctrine for most religious persons, and says, 
 "A God who gives so little scope to love, a pre- 
 destination which takes from all endeavor all its 
 zest with all its fruit, are irrational conceptions, 
 because they say to our most cherished powers, 
 There is no object for you.""^ 
 
 It now remains to classify the above-named ob- 
 jects of religious belief in respect to the sorts of 
 value attaching to them. God, regarded as real, 
 would have, first of all, an independent, or imme- 
 diate, value in the higher religions. For all forms 
 of mysticism the ultimate cosmic reality possesses 
 immediate value. God v/ould satisfy the believer's 
 intellectual curiosity as to the first principle of the 
 universe, his social desire for a great Friend above 
 all human friends, and perhaps his esthetic inter- 
 est. God would also have an instrumental, real 
 value by guaranteeing the final attainment of the 
 goal of man's highest endeavors. When St. Au- 
 gustine prays, "I seek Thee in order that my soul 
 may live," God is regarded by him as having in- 
 strumental value; and then, when St. Augustine 
 
 ^The Will to Believe, p. 126. 
 
A Classification of Religious Values 59 
 
 speaks of God as the supreme good, the object of 
 his belief is invested with immediate value. God, if 
 real, would always have at least conditional, instru- 
 mental value, being always instrumental in some 
 direction; and would possess actual, instrumental 
 value when actually valued because judged instru- 
 mental. The judgment that mediated the valuing 
 might be either true or false, for, though God is 
 assumed in this classification to be real, the be- 
 liever might judge him instrumental in cases where 
 the relation of instrumentality did not hold. 
 
 It is doubtful whether the soul ever possesses 
 immediate value, unless it is in the case of some 
 ideal of future selfhood that one desires to realize. 
 In such a case the "ideal" future self would be 
 regarded as real, and hence possessing a real, im- 
 mediate value, since it is assumed in this classifica- 
 tion to be realizable sometime, while the ideal 
 values of Table II are assumed to be purely 
 imaginary and never realizable. The soul, how- 
 ever, is more important for the instrumental value 
 attaching to it, as a condition, e. g., of immortality. 
 Personal immortality probably never possesses im- 
 mediate, real value, but is only instrumental to the 
 rejoining of departed friends and to the fulfilment 
 of those purposes that death, if final, leaves in- 
 complete. Indeterminism has only instrumental 
 value, being a means to the desired freedom of 
 
6o The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 choice. The soul, freedom, and immortality, re- 
 garded as possessing instrumental value, would pos- 
 sess only conditional value in certain cases, when 
 actually instrumental, but not recognized as such; 
 and actual value in other cases when actually 
 valued because either truly or falsely judged in- 
 strumental. 
 
 So far I have assumed for the purposes of my 
 classification that the religious objects in question 
 are realities. If assumed to be unreal, they would 
 be classified differently, in Table II. God, if un- 
 real, would possess ideal, immediate value if be- 
 lieved in and valued directly. Being assumed un- 
 real, God could not be actually instrumental. 
 Hence he could never have what I have called con- 
 ditional, instrumental, ideal value. He could have 
 actual, instrumental, ideal value, however, when 
 judged, falsely, of course, to exist, and to be in- 
 strumental to desired ends. The soul, immortal- 
 ity, and Indeterminism would not possess immedi- 
 ate, ideal values except in the one possible case of 
 the soul, corresponding to the immediate, real 
 value of the soul as noted above. Of the instru- 
 mental ideal values, false, actual, instrumental 
 values are the only ones that these objects could 
 possess. 
 
 The determination of the reality of the objects 
 of religious beliefs is a metaphysical problem. 
 
A Classification of Religious Values 6i 
 
 Whether or not such objects are real, however, 
 It is a fact that there exists in many persons belief 
 in religious objects. Therefore I shall now classify 
 in Table III the real values of religious belief, 
 regarded as a psychological, or behavioristic, ob- 
 ject, and viewed apart from the objects of belief. 
 
 Belief could hardly possess immediate, or in- 
 dependent, value, except in the case where one be- 
 lieves in God, and likes to believe, just for the sake 
 of believing, were there such a case. Though it is 
 true that probably all religious believers are glad 
 that they believe, still for most people the liking 
 to believe in God is not a sufficient basis on which 
 to adopt the belief. Believers normally believe in 
 God because they think he exists; though they may 
 as an afterthought value their belief, and pity the 
 unbehef of others. The more significant values 
 of religious belief, however, are instrumental 
 values. 
 
 The most important instrumental value of be- 
 lief in the higher religions is of a moral sort, even 
 in the redemptive religions that are beyond the 
 stage of the religions of the law. Religious belief 
 is Instrumental in many cases to higher standards 
 of personal conduct than would otherwise be at- 
 tainable. A further value is the hygienic, or ther- 
 apeutic, value of religious belief. This again is 
 a case of belief possessing instrumental, real value. 
 
62 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 If belief in God makes one happy, and if one 
 likes to be happy, then rehgious belief is a real 
 means to this end. If, through making one happy, 
 religious belief benefits one's health, and if one 
 values good health, then again belief has an instru- 
 mental value. In the case of belief both as hygienic 
 and as moral in its effect there is real instrumen- 
 tality, and therefore belief possesses real value in 
 such cases — value of the conditional sort when the 
 instrumentality is not recognized. When the in- 
 strumentality is recognized, and when the behef is 
 actually prized on that account, then the belief has 
 true, actual, instrumental value; and a belief would 
 have false, actual, instrumental, real value when 
 actually valued because judged instrumental to 
 something of which it was not actually a condition. 
 It is chiefly through the moral and the hygienic 
 effects of religious behefs that they come to pos- 
 sess survival value, and to be an important factor 
 in the struggle for existence. 
 
 There are other religious values that deserve 
 mention, such as the instrumental, real value of 
 psychological states of imagination induced by re- 
 ligious belief and worship, of emotional states 
 peculiar to religious experiences, and of the overt 
 acts of worship that are the outcome of religious 
 belief. ( i ) The play of imagination, when the 
 theme is exalted, as in religion, helps the mundane 
 
A Classification of Religious Values 6^ 
 
 consciousness to escape from the provincialism of 
 its ordinary environment, and lends enchantment 
 to the commonplace experiences of life. (2) Re- 
 ligious emotional states may possess positive, in- 
 strumental, real value, though there is always 
 danger that their value may be negative. Mysti- 
 cism may be regarded psychologically as a state 
 of emotionalism, and as such it may possess posi- 
 tive, instrumental, real value. Santayana says 
 oi it,^* "Although mysticism, left free to express 
 itself, can have no other goal than Nirvana, yet 
 moderately indulged in and duly inhibited by a 
 residuum of conventional sanity, it serves to give 
 a touch of strangeness and elevation to the charac- 
 ter and to suggest superhuman gifts." The nega- 
 tive value of religious emotionalism appears, for 
 example, in the possibility of gross sensual excess 
 following upon revivalistic excitement. (3) The 
 overt acts of worship in many cases possess posi- 
 tive, instrumental, real value of a social sort 
 through producing concerted action and thereby 
 strengthening social bonds. 
 
 The question arises as to the value of religious 
 Truth. Truth, usually spelled with a capital "T," 
 is often identified with ultimate reality, the goal of 
 all striving, etc., as in Lowell's "Commemoration 
 Ode" : 
 
 '*Poetry and Religion, p. 18. 
 
64 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 "Many loved Truth, and lavished life's best oil 
 Amid the dust of books to find her, 
 
 "So loved her that they died for her, 
 Tasting the raptured fleetness 
 Of her divine completeness." 
 
 Truth that possesses "divine completeness" is not 
 truth in any epistemological or logical sense of the 
 word. The poet in the above passage is not sing- 
 ing praises to the consistency or coherence among 
 judgments, or to the pragmatic "working" of be- 
 liefs, or to the correspondence between proposi- 
 tions and facts. "Truth," as the word is often 
 used by poets and preachers, is more or less 
 synomymous with "God," and consequently its 
 values would be the same as those ascribed to God 
 in the above classification. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Returning now to the pragmatic fallacy, we see 
 that it relates chiefly to what I have called the con- 
 ditional, instrumental, real value of religious be- 
 lief. The survival value of religious belief is a 
 case of conditional, instrumental value, except in 
 those cases where the biological utility of belief 
 is recognized, and where the value becomes actual 
 as value. The valuable belief need not have a 
 "conscious relation to biological survival," as Pro- 
 fessor Brightman seems to think," in order to 
 
 ^See he. cit., p. 72. 
 
A Classification of Religious Values 65 
 
 come within the category of values. The instru- 
 mentality to a directly valued object is the essen- 
 tial thing. The pragmatic fallacy consists chiefly 
 in passing from the conditional, instrumental 
 value of a belief to the truth of the belief, and in 
 arguing that a belief, because possessing survival 
 value, must, therefore, be true. 
 
 Both Professor Brightman and Professor 
 Moore criticize what I have called the fallacy of 
 false attribution, the fallacy of attributing the 
 religious experience, so called, to "higher," super- 
 natural forces in cases where the experience is 
 merely physiological in source — where it is from 
 "below" and not from "above." Professor 
 Brightman says that "it is rigorously logical to 
 say that an event has a psycho-physiological cause, 
 and also that the event is a divine act."^'' Sim- 
 ilarly Professor Moore says:" "The alternative 
 is not — Are these experiences subjective or ob- 
 jective, physiological or divine? . . . Rather, the 
 question is. Are they also objective and spirit- 
 ual?" Both would maintain, as Professor 
 Brightman explicitly does, that every event "is a 
 manifestation, an expression, an act of the di- 
 vine," and that "Kipling's camel-'jims' were di- 
 vinely caused."^® The difficulty with such a view 
 
 ^Loc. cit., p. 76. 
 "Loc. cit., pp. yy, 78. 
 "Loc. cit., p. 76. 
 
66 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 is that if every event is called divine, then the 
 term "divine" ceases to have any meaning at all, 
 and argument about it becomes useless. It then 
 becomes impossible to single out a field occupied 
 by religion. That which applies to everything 
 elucidates nothing. Moreover, belief in the uni- 
 verse as explained in the naturalistic terms of sci- 
 entific evolutionism is not a religious belief, and 
 can not be made into a religious belief simply by 
 substituting the term "God" for the term "physi- 
 cal universe." I submit that any religious indi- 
 vidual would cease to regard himself as religious, 
 and in fact would cease to be religious, if he came 
 to accept the naturalistic explanation of his so- 
 called religious experiences. 
 
 Professor Moore admits that "the belief that 
 God is experienced is a doctrinal interpretation of 
 mystical experiences,"^^ not a fact, but the inter- 
 pretation of that fact. He says, however, that 
 "precisely the same thing is true of physical exper- 
 iences."^" But, granting this, we are confronted 
 with the fact that the naturalistic interpretation of 
 human experience, if accepted, contradicts the 
 religious interpretation to the extent that, if the 
 person having the "religious" experience gives to 
 it a naturalistic interpretation, his former reli- 
 
 "Loc. cit., p. 78. 
 "Loc. cit., p. 78. 
 
A Classification of Religious Values 67 
 
 glous reading of the events becomes psycholog- 
 ically impossible. 
 
 Criticism of the pragmatic fallacy and the fal- 
 lacy of false attribution that would undermine 
 them must first meet them on their own ground. 
 As I originally defined them, and as I still main- 
 tain them, they stand as genuine and frequently 
 encountered fallacies in the logic of religion. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 ON TRUTH AND SURVIVAL VALUE^ 
 
 ■pvR. SCHILLER'S article, "Truth and Survival 
 -■--'Value,"- illustrates a characteristic of philos- 
 ophy found throughout its history, the character- 
 istic, namely, of emphasis upon minor differences 
 of view while important points of agreement are 
 left unnoticed. The history of philosophy consists 
 so largely of arguments and contradictions that 
 philosophers easily acquire the habit of looking 
 for disagreement rather than for agreement. My 
 own point of view in philosophy is fundamentally 
 much like Dr. Schiller's. I have been influenced 
 in the development of my own ways of thinking 
 by none more than by James, and by Dr. Schiller 
 himself; and, though there may be unquestioned 
 differences, as, for example, between Dr. Schiller's 
 subjectivism and my own behavioristic views, still 
 the habit of regarding all human questions from 
 the biological point of view constitutes an impor- 
 tant initial point of agreement. In Dr. Schiller's 
 
 ^Reprinied, with change of title, from the Journal of Phil- 
 osophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, Vol. XVI (1919), 
 pp. 259-71. 
 
 ^Journal of Philosophy, etc.. Vol. XV, pp. 505-15. 
 
 6$ 
 
On Truth and Survival Value 69 
 
 criticism^ of what I have called the pragmatic 
 fallacy,^ I feel that much of the difficulty and dis- 
 agreement is largely verbal. Indeed, our essential 
 agreement on an allied subject is shown in the last 
 part of Dr. Schiller's article, where he has applied 
 biological categories in considering the question of 
 pessimism in a manner precisely parallel to my own 
 treatment of this question in an article^ that was in 
 press when Dr. Schiller's article appeared. 
 
 In the present chapter I wish to discuss further 
 the question of the biological foundations of hu- 
 man belief. My procedure will, in the main, be 
 in exact agreement with Dr. Schiller's and with 
 James's approach to the question of belief. The 
 question of the relation of truth to survival value, 
 however, will eventually arise. As Dr. Schiller 
 says,*' "The matter cries out for further investiga- 
 tion." In considering the matter I shall attempt to 
 make clear the real point of difference between my 
 own view as already stated and that of pragmatism 
 of the Jamesian type, a type now represented by 
 Dr. Schiller. 
 
 I 
 
 Darwinism has been one of the most fruitful 
 
 ^Loc. cit. 
 
 *See Chapters II and III, above. 
 
 ""'The Biological Value of Religious Belief," American 
 Journal of Psychology, Vol. XXIX (1918), pp. 383-92. Re- 
 printed above as Chapter I. 
 
 "Loc. cit., pp. 514, 15. 
 
70 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 sources of pragmatism. After Darwin had con- 
 vinced the world that man In his physical aspect is 
 part and parcel of the animal kingdom, James ex- 
 tended Darwinian principles to the human mind, 
 showing how mental processes can be understood, 
 so far as their origin and their present operation 
 are concerned, only when placed against an evolu- 
 tionary background in which natural selection of 
 useful variations has been a vera causa In the 
 mind's development. Present-day behaviorism is 
 one of the consistent conclusions of the biological 
 trend In psychology which was given so strong an 
 impetus by the publication of James's Principles 
 of Psychology and other psychological treatises. It 
 has been a short step from James's "The Child 
 as a Behaving Organism,'"' for example, to pres- 
 ent-day behaviorism. 
 
 Many of James's later philosophical views con- 
 sist fundamentally of an extension of Darwinian 
 principles from psychology to the larger problems 
 of philosophy; and Dr. Schiller's "Axioms as 
 Postulates,"® and some of his other writings, show 
 as vividly as anything in the literature of prag- 
 matism the biological point of view In relation to 
 philosophical questions. But, whereas Dr. Schiller 
 represents a development of pragmatism in a sub- 
 
 ^This is contained in the volume, Talks to Teachers, Ch. III. 
 Published as Ch. II of Personal Idealism, edited by H. 
 Sturt. 
 
On Truth and Survival Value 7 1 
 
 jectivistic direction, behaviorism may be shown to 
 be a more logical development of James's views. 
 So long as the mental life is regarded as somehow 
 subjective in the literal sense of the term, a com- 
 pletely biological treatment of the mind is impos- 
 sible. When, on the other hand, consciousness and 
 behavior are identified, as in Professor Holt's 
 view,® for example, so that to be conscious means 
 to respond specifically to an object as the result of 
 external stimulation, while the content of con- 
 sciousness is the external object responded to, it be- 
 comes easy to be thorough-going in a biological 
 account of mental life. The consciousness of man, 
 no less than that of the amoeba, may be treated ob- 
 jectively, in terms of stimulus and response. Men- 
 tal variations which have proved useful in the 
 struggle for existence, and which have been pre- 
 served through the operation of natural selection, 
 are simply, in their physical context,^" useful modes 
 of behavior. 
 
 For behaviorism, beliefs are not subjective 
 entities, but objective processes. A belief is an 
 organic response. The physical presupposition of 
 belief is a system of reflex arcs so integrated that 
 
 "See E. B. Holt, The Freudian Wish, especially the supple- 
 ment, "Response and Cognition" ; also The Concept of Con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 "See James, Essays in Radical Empiricism, Chs. I and II, 
 for an unsurpassed discussion of the distinction between the 
 mental and the physical. 
 
72 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 some given assertion or proposition may be re- 
 sponded to positively. A belief is an acceptance or 
 an affirmation of a proposition, and may be either 
 an actual response, or, in the absence of the proper 
 stimulus, a mere organic set or disposition. Think- 
 ing, likewise, which is one of the means by which 
 beliefs are arrived at, is not an ethereal process 
 occurring in a vacuum, but is a process consisting 
 of responses of the animal type. Professor Wat- 
 son has discussed the thinking process in terms 
 of implicit behavior in which incipient responses 
 of the tongue and vocal organs play a prominent 
 part." Professor Thorndike has given a more 
 extended account than Professor Watson's of the 
 higher thought processes in terms of behavior. ^- 
 Professor Dewey" has analyzed the complete act 
 of thought into responses which he calls habits, 
 not "automatic routine habits," but "habits of re- 
 flective consideration."^* Thinking, according to 
 Professor Dewey's analysis, consists of locating 
 and defining a recognized difficulty, suggesting a 
 possible solution, finding the implications of the 
 suggested solution, and testing this possible solu- 
 
 "J- B. Watson, Behaiuior, pp. i8, 19, 324-28; Psychology, 
 Ch. IX. 
 
 "E. L. Thorndike, Educational Psychology, Vol. II, The 
 Psychology of Learning, Ch. IV, especially pp. 46, 47. 
 
 '*John Dewey, How We Think, Ch. VI. 
 
 "See John Dewey, "Public Education on Trial," New Re- 
 public, December 29, 1917, p. 246. 
 
On Truth and Survival Value 73 
 
 tion, or hypothesis, through observation of the 
 facts. These operations are all habitual responses 
 no different in kind from the simpler animal re- 
 sponses. They are perfectly definite and objective, 
 and may be treated wholly in behavioristic terms. 
 
 Belief, as I have said, consists either of an 
 actual response or of an organic attitude. Belief 
 is a positive attitude or response, as, for example, 
 the belief in the Copernican theory, which mani- 
 fests itself in an acceptance of the proposition as- 
 serting the theory in question. Disbelief is a neg- 
 ative response, a rejection. Doubt is an unstable 
 reaction, not definitely positive or negative. A 
 proposition, on the other hand, is not a response. 
 It is, first of all, a group of words, which, as 
 words, are marks on paper or sounds in the air. 
 Words have meaning, however, which can ulti- 
 mately be stated, perhaps, only in terms of uni- 
 versal. However this may be, a proposition, in 
 the first place, is not psychological subject-matter; 
 and, secondly, it is of propositions that truth and 
 falsity are properly predicable. We are justified 
 by common usage, nevertheless, in speaking of true 
 and false beliefs. A true belief is really a positive 
 reaction to a true proposition. A false belief is 
 primarily a positive reaction to a false proposition, 
 though a negative response to a true proposition 
 would be the equivalent of a false belief. 
 
74 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 So far as questions of positivity and negativity 
 in the behavioristic sense, and truth and falsity in 
 the logical sense, are concerned, "belief" and 
 "judgment" are practically interchangeable. Be- 
 lief is a more sustained response, or a more per- 
 manent organic disposition or attitude, than judg- 
 ment, but for most purposes we may use the terms 
 interchangeably without serious error. 
 
 II 
 
 After these preliminary statements, showing 
 the point of view from which I wish to look upon 
 the question of belief, I am able to pass directly to 
 a consideration of the biological grounds of some 
 of the actual beliefs which have been held in the 
 course of history, and which are held at the pres- 
 ent time. I have in mind especially beliefs of a 
 more or less philosophical and religious nature; 
 for such beliefs have been biologically conditioned 
 in numerous important and interesting ways. 
 
 The student of such a problem will do well to 
 keep his own philosophic beliefs in the background 
 as much as possible. An impartial observation of 
 just what actual beliefs have been held is what is 
 desired, not a crif cism of these beliefs because of 
 their possible falsity. The scientific attitude of 
 the observer who is himself detached from the 
 processes he is observing, is assumed by 
 
On Truth and Survival Value 75 
 
 the behaviorist, whether he is studying animal be- 
 havior, the simpler human mental processes, or 
 the more complex intellectual processes of man. 
 The scientific attitude is one of impartial observa- 
 tion of facts, whether the facts are agreeable or 
 not to the observer; and the behaviorist attempts, 
 first of all, to make the study of the mind scien- 
 tific. The scientist, through the development of 
 a rigid experimental method, seeks to rule out 
 subjective preferences and to be guided by the 
 facts as the sole test of truth. As Mr. Russell has 
 well expressed it, "The scientific attitude of mind 
 involves a sweeping away of all other desires in 
 the interests of the desire to know — it involves 
 suppression of hopes and fears, loves and hates, 
 and the whole subjective emotional life."^^ 
 
 Very few persons, however, ever develop the 
 scientific attitude in its full purity. People in gen- 
 eral are unconsciously influenced in their decisions 
 and beliefs by their likes and dislikes, by their 
 "subjective emotional life." James has given clas- 
 sic expression to this truth in his Will to Believe. 
 He has asserted^^ that man's passional nature de- 
 cides for him doubtful questions that bear inti- 
 mately on his life. Not only popular beliefs, 
 moreover, but also the views of philosophers, are 
 
 "Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic, p. 44. 
 ^*The Will to Believe, p. 11. 
 
76 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 in some instances determined by the "will to be- 
 lieve." The impersonal mathematical and labo- 
 ratory methods of science can not easily be applied 
 to the solution of the issue between idealism and 
 naturalism, for example; and undoubtedly inher- 
 ited or acquired emotional attitudes towards life 
 have been the deciding factor in the trend of 
 thought of many a philosopher. That the judgment 
 of the average man, untrained in the niceties of 
 scientific method, is influenced by desires and aver- 
 sions, is so obvious that it needs only to be stated 
 to be accepted; while James has maintained of 
 philosophers that temperament really determines 
 the acceptance or rejection of philosophic systems. 
 Bradley has said similarly that the efforts of phi- 
 losophers have been exerted for the purpose of 
 finding reasons to justify what is believed instinc- 
 tively. 
 
 The biological foundations of belief may be 
 exhibited in two ways. In the first place, it may 
 be shown in what manner some of the human in- 
 stincts, which are the basis of man's emotions and 
 desires, actually determine his beliefs. Since the 
 instincts exist as one outcome of the biological 
 struggle for existence, they rest upon biological 
 foundations. In the second place, attention may 
 be called to the direct survival value that beliefs 
 possess through their subjective effects upon the 
 physical economy of life. 
 
On Truth and Survival Value 77 
 
 How the instincts influence belief may be illus- 
 trated by reference to the instincts that form the 
 subjective support of religious belief. The bio- 
 logical basis of religious belief is similar to that of 
 a wide variety of other beliefs. I shall draw prin- 
 cipally upon Mr. McDougall's admirable study of 
 the human instincts. ^^ Mr. McDougall's classifica- 
 tion of the instincts is somewhat artificial and 
 arbitrary. Man's nature resists any such precise 
 analysis as he has made. His general attitude 
 towards human behavior, however, is above criti- 
 cism; and we can fall into no very serious error if 
 we accept, for practical purposes, his list of in- 
 stincts and emotions. 
 
 Mr. McDougall expresses accurately the atti- 
 tude that we should take in examining the bio- 
 logical grounds of belief, when he says: "Man- 
 kind is only a little bit reasonable and to a great 
 extent very unintelligently moved in quite unrea- 
 sonable ways."" "The truth is that men are 
 moved by a variety of impulses whose nature has 
 been determined through long ages of the evolu- 
 tionary process without reference to the hfe of 
 men in civilized societies."" 
 
 It is impossible to maintain successfully that 
 there is a religious instinct. Nevertheless, man's 
 
 "William McDougall, Social Psychology. 
 ''Ibid., p. II. 
 "Ibid., p. 10. 
 
78 The Biological Foundatiors of Belief 
 
 religious beliefs rest, as a general rule, upon sev- 
 eral instincts as their necessary support. Mr. Mc- 
 Dougall analyzes the emotional components of the 
 religious life-° into three complex emotions: ad- 
 miration, awe, and reverence. These complex 
 emotions, in turn, he analyzes into simple emo- 
 tions, each of which is associated with one of the 
 primary instincts. Thus he says that admiration 
 consists of wonder and negative self-feeHng, awe 
 consists of admiration and fear, and reverence 
 consists of awe together with the tender emotion. 
 The simple emotions, then, which in combination 
 are at the basis of the religious life, are: wonder, 
 negative self-feeling, fear, and the tender emotion. 
 Each of these simple emotions coexists with one 
 of the following primary instincts, in the order 
 given: curiosity, self-abasement, flight, and the 
 parental instinct.^^ Even though we should not 
 accept all the details of Mr. McDougall's rather 
 too neat and well-ordered classification of the in- 
 stincts and emotions, still we can not doubt the 
 connection between emotions and instincts, and we 
 can not doubt that these four instincts, and prob- 
 ably others, form an indispensable basis for re- 
 ligious belief. The possession of these instincts 
 and emotions does not in itself constitute a man's 
 
 *'Ibid., Ch. XIII. 
 ^'Ibid., Ch. III. 
 
On Truth and Survival Value 79 
 
 religion. A man is not religious unless he also has 
 a belief as to the reality of some more or less 
 supernatural object or objects about which these 
 instincts are united into a religious complex. But, 
 without such instincts as driving forces in human 
 life, religious belief would not exist among men. 
 
 Mr. McDougall's discussion of the instinctive 
 basis of religion might be supplemented by a 
 greater emphasis than what he places upon the in- 
 stinct (or sentiment) of love in the economy of the 
 religious life. Freudian psychology explains reli- 
 gion as a sublimation of the sex instinct. Human 
 love, when denied its normal human satisfaction, 
 or else passing beyond such satisfaction, seeks and 
 finds compensation in a religious world of the 
 imagination (believed real, of course) , a world the 
 existence of which depends solely upon the creative 
 power of human love. Perhaps the Freudian view 
 seems crude and ultra-prosaic, but Freud has sim- 
 ply expressed in plain words what poets and philos- 
 ophers have long recognized. Plato has described 
 the truly religious love of eternal goodness and 
 beauty as a growth out of ordinary human love.^^ 
 Emerson has expressed a similar thought in re- 
 verse form in saying, "Love . . is the deifica- 
 tion of persons.""^ And Browning, most em- 
 
 ^See the Symposium. 
 *Essay, Love. 
 
8o The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 phatically of all poets, makes human love and re- 
 ligion closely akin. It is a common observation 
 that people often become religious under either 
 one of the two following conditions. Those whose 
 earthly love has been thwarted may turn to the 
 religious life for its transcendent compensations. 
 The classic case is that of the woman who with- 
 draws from the world into a nunnery because of a 
 disappointment in love. On the other hand, many 
 who were not previously religious become so upon 
 "falling in love." Then, as Emerson says, "Na- 
 ture grows conscious," and the attitude of the 
 lover towards the universe at large becomes truly 
 religious. Even definite religious beliefs may now 
 be adopted wholly as a result of love, which, in its 
 origin and evolution, has been of such profound 
 biological significance. 
 
 The instinctive basis of religious belief is simply 
 illustrative of the biological basis of many of 
 man's more spontaneous opinions and beliefs — the 
 ones least subject to exact scientific verification or 
 refutation. The conditions of man's age-long pre- 
 civilized and even prehuman life, during which the 
 primitive instincts arose and developed, probably 
 as chance variations or mutations preserved by 
 natural selection, or perhaps as racial habits be- 
 coming hereditary, account for the existence and 
 permanence of many present-day beliefs. 
 
On Truth and Survival Value 8 1 
 
 The further fact of the direct survival value of 
 certain beliefs, which renders them permanent in 
 human life, whatever may be the source from 
 which they arise, has already been pointed out in 
 other connections. Dr. Schiller's study of "Axioms 
 as Postulates"" is a striking illustration of a bio- 
 logical explanation of the rise and survival of prin- 
 ciples that have come to seem self-evident and 
 without need of historical origin. James has 
 spoken of the categories of our common-sense 
 ways of thinking as the discoveries of "prehistoric 
 geniuses whose names the night of antiquity has 
 covered up," and he has given a biological ex- 
 planation of the survival of these categories. Dr. 
 Schiller has recently pointed out that the accept- 
 ance of this life as real and not a dream, the re- 
 jection of solipsism, and the denial of pessimism, 
 all rest upon biological foundations."^ In a similar 
 manner I have discussed what I have called the 
 (i) hygienic, (2) moral, (3) industrial, (4) 
 scientific, (5) artistic, (6) social, and (7) legal 
 values of primitive religious beliefs, and the ( i ) 
 hygienic and (2) moral values of religious be- 
 liefs in the higher religions. ^^ These values have 
 all been of a fundamentally biological type. 
 
 ^Loc. cit. 
 
 ""Truth and Survival Value," loc. cit. 
 
 '"See above, Ch. I. 
 
82 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 III 
 
 Though, In the matter of explaining the genesis 
 and the present basis of significant beliefs, 
 especially religious beliefs, I am in precise agree- 
 ment with the biological treatment accorded to the 
 problem by such pragmatists as James and Dr. 
 Schiller, there arise, nevertheless, differences of 
 view that appear so striking as to have caused Dr. 
 Schiller to single me out"^ as representing in my 
 own errors two fallacies "to which all logic has 
 habitually been addicted.'"^ Both of these falla- 
 cies attributed to me, called the fallacy of ex post 
 facto wisdom and the fallacy of confounding the 
 persons, Live to do with the question of the rela- 
 tion between truth and value, especially survival 
 value. What I have called the pragmatic fal- 
 lacy^^ is involved in the argument. In my original 
 definition of this fallacy I insisted that truth was 
 a logical matter unrelated to the question of 
 value, and that the pragmatic fallacy consisted ot 
 taking value, especially survival value, as a test 
 of the truth of beliefs. Dr. Schiller, on the other 
 hand, like James in the later developments of his 
 i^riT-rmatic views, asserts that, even though truth 
 L.iid survival value are not identical, "it might be- 
 
 '\.nrnal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Meth- 
 00 v'ol. XV, pp. 508-10. 
 '' ../., p. 508. 
 ■Jte above, Chs. II and III. 
 
On Truth and Survival Value 83 
 
 come necessary to equate [them] In principle."^" 
 The whole question, in the last analysis, reduces 
 largely, if not wholly, to a question of verbal 
 usage — a question as to the application of the 
 word "truth." I accept without reserve Dr. Schil- 
 ler's account of the biological grounds of belief. 
 I would agree that "it is even possible that ulti- 
 mately and indirectly all [beliefs, though not all 
 'truth-values'] are affected by the survival value 
 test."^^ But I would assert that one goes contrary 
 to established usage of the term "truth" if one 
 asserts that the truth of beliefs is tested by thei'- 
 survival value. In regard to the biological impos- 
 sibility of pessimism as a permanent creed, I have 
 expressed views, ^^ independently of Dr. Schiller's 
 recent account of this matter, as I have already 
 remarked, that agree precisely with Dr. Schiller's 
 account. That is, I have maintained that it is bio- 
 logically impossible that pessimistic beliefs should 
 survive in the race, since, for biological reasons, 
 a pessimistic race would soon perish from the 
 earth. But, so far as pessimism is conditioned by 
 some disillusioning naturalistic type of philoso- 
 phy, scientists and philosophers might agree that 
 such a philosophy is true even though Its accept- 
 ance were psychologically and biologically Impos- 
 
 '"Loc. cit., p. 514. 
 
 ^'Schiller, loc. cit., p. 514. 
 
 ^'American Journal of Psychology, Vol. XXIX, pp. 383-92. 
 
84 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 sible for any very considerable number of people. 
 Common sense and science assert that "truth is 
 so," whether or not it is known by any human 
 mind. On the other hand, pragmatism of Dr. 
 Schiller's type asserts that truth is personal and 
 subject to psychological and biological conditions. 
 I would myself try to mediate between these two 
 contrary positions. I would say that common 
 sense and science are correct so far as the meaning 
 of the term "truth" is concerned, for, indeed, 
 common sense and scientific usage together deter- 
 mine the meaning of any term.^^ I would say also 
 that pragmatism is correct so far as its account of 
 the genesis and growth of beliefs in a fundamen- 
 tally biological context is concerned. But even be- 
 liefs that are universally grounded in biological 
 needs of human nature need not thereby be true. 
 They are believed true, of course, for to hold a 
 belief implies believing that the first belief is true; 
 but beliefs which were universally held might fail 
 to satisfy the scientific test of truth if sufficiently 
 accurate methods of scientific verification were de- 
 vised. 
 
 It was recognized by Aristotle that convention 
 establishes the meaning and denotation of words; 
 but philosophers, m.ore than any other class of 
 
 *^See the author's article, "Behaviorism and the Definition of 
 Words," Monist, Vol. XXIX (1919), pp. 133-40. 
 
On Truth and Survival Value 85 
 
 men, have persistently erred in insisting that a 
 given word means this or that, without asking the 
 simple, concrete question as to what, in actual 
 human usage, the word does mean. We may 
 illustrate the part that human usage plays in 
 establishing the denotation and the meaning of 
 words by referring to the original fixing of names 
 to objects in the growth of language, speaking, 
 for the sake of concreteness, in terms of an inci- 
 dent recorded in Hebrew mythology. When 
 Adam confronted an animal kingdom of unnamed 
 species, the cat became a cat when he called it a 
 cat, and in like manner the dog became a dog. 
 "Whatsoever Adam called every living creature, 
 that was the name thereof." Adam did not create 
 the animals, but he did create their names, to- 
 gether with the relations of reference that were 
 involved. Adam did not judge that this animal 
 was a cat, that, a dog, for there was no chance of 
 his being in error. The names of the animals 
 were a creation, not of Adam's judgments, but 
 of his acts of postulations. That is, Adam created 
 the symbols (the names of the animals) and arbi- 
 trarily determined what the symbols should de- 
 note. I have spoken figuratively; but for Adam 
 substitute the whole human community, for the 
 animal kingdom substitute the entire world of ob- 
 jects, and the situation is not altered except in the 
 extent of application of the principles involved. 
 
86 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 The question of the meaning of "truth" becomes 
 first of all the empirical task of asking just what, 
 in popular and in scientific usage, the word is used 
 to refer to. I submit that, in popular or common- 
 sense usage, "truth" is thought to mean simply 
 what is "so"; and in scientific usage it is taken as 
 predicable of theories, hypotheses, propositions, 
 and assertions that conform, in a definitely recog- 
 nized scientific manner, to the facts of the situa- 
 tions in question. Furthermore, in both popular 
 and scientific usage, the truth is taken to he en- 
 tirely independent of what anyone may like to 
 believe, or of what anyone may be led to believe 
 for subjective reasons. In other words, truth is 
 depersonalized in popular and in scientific usage; 
 truth is a logical matter and not a psychological 
 matter. 
 
 That the unsophisticated mind thinks of truth in 
 such impersonal and immutable terms is illustrated 
 by the first popular response to the pragmatic the- 
 ory of truth when interpreted as offering an excuse 
 for lying.^* Though pragmatism asserted that the 
 valuable in thought and belief is the true, still the 
 popular mind, more upright, perhaps, than the 
 mind of the pragmatist after it had become all 
 "sicklied o'er with the pale cast" of Protagorean 
 sophistries, refused to give up its respect for 
 
 "See Schiller, loc. cit., p. 510. 
 
On Truth and Survival Value ^7 
 
 genuine truth. An austere respect for truth as 
 something independent of all personal relations to 
 it, is well expressed by the poet when he stoically 
 asserts : 
 
 "It fortifies my soul to know 
 That, though I perish, truth is so." 
 
 The scientific ideal of depersonalized truth is 
 well expressed in the passage quoted above from 
 Mr. Russell. Scientists endeavor to establish laws 
 and theories which the objective facts, and the 
 facts alone, will substantiate. Sciences succeed so 
 far as they become mathematical and experi- 
 mental. Personal relations of the experimenter 
 to the processes which he is studying are not al- 
 lowed to prejudice conclusions or to decide issues 
 if it is possible to avoid such vicious influences. 
 
 One of the chief differences between the prag- 
 matic usage of "truth" and the scientific usage of 
 the term is presented in the example, cited by 
 James, of the Ptolemaic versus the Copernican 
 theory in astronomy. Pragmatism claims that 
 truth is personal, and fundamentally an attribute 
 or predicate of beliefs as psychological processes. 
 What is believed to be true, and proves service- 
 able for definite reasons, is declared by the prag- 
 matist to be true. Therefore the pragmatist as- 
 serts that the Ptolemaic theory was actually true 
 so long as it was believed true, since the belief 
 
88 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 proved serviceable in various ways. On the other 
 hand, those not pragmatists would say that the 
 Ptolemaic theory never was true, since it never 
 accurately represented the facts of the case, as has 
 since been proved. Scientists would assert, fur- 
 ther, only that the Copernican theory is probably 
 true. It seems to represent the facts accurately. 
 But, they will say, whether it is really true or not 
 depends, not upon the mere serviceability of the 
 belief, but upon its conformity to the facts. Per- 
 haps, scientists would admit, no theory can ever 
 be shown absolutely to be true, since the establish- 
 ing of its truth is a human and therefore an imper- 
 fect process. Scientists will insist, however, that 
 the truth of a theory, if it could be known abso- 
 lutely, would be found to depend entirely upon its 
 impersonal relations to objective facts. 
 
 Though the later developments of James's 
 pragmatism largely obliterated the distinction be- 
 tween truth and value, especially survival value, 
 James had the scientific theory of truth still m 
 mind in his earlier works. ^* Thus, according to 
 the earlier views of James's, though naturalism 
 might be the true philosophy, in the sense of being 
 the one that describes the facts of the universe 
 correctly, idealistic and theistic beliefs would 
 probably persist permanently in the minds of men 
 
 •See The Will to Believe, p. n6. 
 
On Truth and Survival Value 89 
 
 because man's emotional needs determine so 
 largely what he believes. The pragmatist would 
 here assert that theism is true because the belief 
 persists and "works" ; but those with a non-prag- 
 matic theory of truth would still maintain that, 
 in the universe of discourse in question, naturalism 
 would be true, even though theistic beliefs per- 
 sisted and were valuable, biologically and other- 
 wise. 
 
 In his controversy with Professor Perry, not so 
 very long ago,^" Dr. Schiller described the prag- 
 matic theory of the meaning of truth by means of 
 a concrete illustration. Speaking of the World 
 War, Dr. Schiller said: "What would happen if 
 the victors prevailed so utterly as to establish 
 their version of the truth? Would not the diver- 
 gent accounts be voted down as false? According 
 to Professor Perry some of these deserve to be 
 called truer, but is it not amazing that he should 
 regard the situation as not in the least derogating 
 from 'the theoretic truth' of the beliefs that are 
 rejected."" 
 
 On the contrary, it seems to most of us, I think 
 I may safely say, that it would be more amazing 
 if military victories should always be on the side 
 of the truth. "Divergent accounts would be voted 
 
 **Cf. Mind, N. S., Vol. XXIII (1914), PP- 386-95; Vol 
 XXIV (1915), PP- 240-49; pp. 516-24. 
 *'Mind, N. S., Vol. XXIV, p. 522. 
 
90 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 down as false," because they would be voted down 
 by the victors, but is the cause that lacks military 
 support necessarily false? Germany might con- 
 ceivably have prevailed over the Allies, but would 
 Dr. Schiller ever have accepted as true the views 
 for which Germany has stood? We are easily led 
 to think that right and truth have always been 
 on the winning side throughout military history, 
 but one reason for thinking so may be the fact 
 that those groups which have been victors by force 
 of arms have been the survivors and consequently 
 the final judges of the right and truth of the 
 issues involved. The biological struggle for exis- 
 tence is the most fundamental factor in determin- 
 ing what social, political, and religious beliefs shall 
 survive and be held as true, but it does not give 
 assurance of the truth of these beliefs. 
 
 So long as one maintains the distinction which 
 I have made between beliefs and disbeliefs 
 as properly to be regarded as positive and 
 negative responses to propositions, the prop- 
 ositions being non-psychological, and true or 
 false according to their relations to facts ex- 
 ternal to them, there can be no possibility 
 of committing the pragmatic fallacy. By cour- 
 tesy, as I have said, we may speak of true and false 
 beliefs and judgments; but fundamentally truth 
 is a logical matter in which only propositions, the- 
 
On Truth and Survival Value 91 
 
 ones, hypotheses, etc., are involved, while the 
 finding of these propositions, or the attempt to 
 find them, and to verify them, is wholly a psycho- 
 logical matter, of which truth and falsity may not 
 properly be predicated. This distinction between 
 logical and non-logical matters, between proposi- 
 tions and beliefs, allows for a clear-cut distinc- 
 tion between the value of beliefs subjectively con- 
 sidered, and the truth of propositions objectively 
 considered; and it conforms both to popular and 
 to scientific usage of the word "truth." 
 
 Furthermore, so far as this distinction is made, 
 the two fallacies which Dr. Schiller ascribes to me 
 are not found in my statements. The fallacy of 
 ex post facto wisdom, relating to "wisdom after 
 the event," as, for example, in the case of the 
 Ptolemaic and Copernican theories, is clearly nc 
 fallacy in the reasoning of one who separates the 
 earlier belief in the Ptolemaic theory from the 
 non-psychological aspects of the theory, and who 
 separates the present belief in the Copernican 
 theory from its logical aspects, and simply con- 
 tends that the Ptolemaic theory was false, even 
 though believed, just as the Copernican theory 
 might now be false, even though believed. I have 
 simply asserted that some false beliefs have had 
 valuable subjective effects, in the case, for exam- 
 ple, of religious beliefs in the course of human 
 
92 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 evolution ; and in asserting this I have committed 
 no fallacy of ex post facto wisdom. 
 
 The fallacy of confounding the persons, again, 
 can be asserted only of those who predicate truth 
 and falsity of psychological processes. Both pop- 
 ular and scientific usage, to which I have tried to 
 conform so far as the meaning of the term "truth" 
 is concerned, depersonalize truth; and usage of 
 the terms as well as the facts of the situation allow 
 one to assert of belief that a false behef, that is, 
 an acceptance of a false proposition, may some- 
 times have value in case the believer is unaware 
 of his error, because of the subjective effect of the 
 belief upon the believer. For example, the belief 
 in God might contribute to a man's happiness and 
 morality, even though there were no God. 
 
 Finally, the pragmatic fallacy is still a genuine 
 fallacy, committed by those who maintain that 
 the emotional effect of a belief upon an individual, 
 or the biological effect of a belief upon a race, is 
 a criterion of the truth of the proposition believed. 
 I agree with the pragmatic description of the 
 biological grounds of belief, but I contend that be- 
 liefs need not always be true in order to be valu- 
 able. To say that beliefs, because valuable, can 
 not be errors or delusions, but must be true, is to 
 commit the pragmatic fallacy. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 RELIGIOUS AND MORAL EDUCATION^ 
 
 nr^HERlE is no such thing as a modern infant. 
 -*• The modern individual begins his career at 
 precisely the same point at which each cave-man 
 started. Only in the world of mythology does an 
 individual spring forth, like Minerva, full-fledged 
 in wisdom. In the actual world a long period of 
 infancy, childhood, and youth must precede in- 
 tellectual and moral, as well as physical, maturity. 
 Present-day studies in genetic psychology have be- 
 gun to reveal the real needs of the child, needs 
 that are not at all the needs of the adult. Just as 
 the infant's physical food is not that of the adult, 
 so the intellectual, moral, and religious pabulum 
 of the child is not properly that of the mature in- 
 dividual. Psychology gives us a scientific basis for 
 requiring the child to speak, understand, and think 
 as a child, while expecting the man to put away 
 childish things. Especially in the field of religious 
 and moral education is it imperative to take into 
 account the needs of childhood and youth, and it 
 
 'This chapter is a combination of two articles published in 
 the American Journal of Psychology, Vol. XXVIII (1917), 
 pp. 504-507; and Vol. XXIX (1918),' pp. 371-82. 
 
 93 
 
94 T^he Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 is precisely these early religious needs that have 
 been persistently ignored. As President Hall 
 says,- "From the old New England Catechism to 
 President Eliot's latest pronouncements reducing 
 religion to ethical culture, American educators 
 have to an extraordinary degree ignored the na- 
 ture and the higher needs of the child, and persist- 
 ently assumed that whatever was good for them 
 was, of course, good for him." 
 
 My purpose in discussing the value of religious 
 beliefs in individual development, beliefs of dif- 
 ferent kinds for different stages of development, 
 is to combat two tendencies in present-day practice. 
 One modern tendency is to give the child and youth 
 absolutely no religious instruction. Many parents 
 who have no religious beliefs themselves oppose 
 the teaching of religion to their children on the 
 ground of its untruth. If, as Professor Leuba 
 has shown, ^ the majority of scientists do not be- 
 lieve in even the most essential of religious objects, 
 God and immortality, it is probable that many of 
 them would oppose the teaching of religion to chil- 
 dren for the reason that, as they think, religious 
 beliefs are false. Against such a view I would 
 urge the teaching of religion for reasons of its 
 value, regardless of its truth. Another class, the 
 
 *G. Stanley Hall, Educational Problems, Vol. I, p. 146. 
 *J. H. Leuba, The Belief in God and Immortality. 
 
Religious and Moral Education 95 
 
 class of religious believers, would, in many in- 
 stances, teach children the very same religious 
 views that they think fit and proper for adults; 
 and I would urge against this tendency the fact 
 that the religious needs of the child are not the 
 same as the religious needs of the adult. 
 
 I 
 
 The correct view-point from which to study the 
 problem of religious and moral education is best 
 furnished by the theory of recapitulation. This 
 essentially biological theory, when expanded into 
 a psychological theory, is important in giving a 
 proper genetic attitude towards instruction in 
 religion and morals. 
 
 The similarity between early human embryonic 
 stages and lower forms of life was observed by 
 embryologists early in the nineteenth century, and 
 the theory of recapitulation was first clearly stated 
 in its full evolutionary context by Fritz Miiller in 
 1863, and then by Haeckel, under the name of 
 "the fundamental law of biogenesis." Haeckel's 
 statement of the law is as follows:* "The rapid 
 and brief ontogeny [the life history of the indi- 
 vidual] is a condensed synopsis of the long and 
 slow history of the stem (phylogeny) : this syn- 
 
 *Ernst Haeckel (Joseph McCabe, translator), The Evolu- 
 tion of Man, Vol. II, p. 357, 
 
96 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 opsis is the more faithful and complete in propor- 
 tion as palingenesis [the reappearance or repeti- 
 tion of old, ancestral traits] has been preserved 
 by heredity, and cenogenesis [deviation from the 
 phylogeny of the group] has not been introduced 
 by adaptation." This statement includes both the 
 general law and its limitations. Each individual 
 in its development repeats its ancestral history, 
 but not precisely. Many ancestral traits are lost, 
 new traits appear, and there are numerous short- 
 cuts. 
 
 Though it is not maintained by any biologists 
 that the individual in all the details of its develop- 
 ment climbs up the ancestral tree, still the theory in 
 its broad outlines is accepted by practically all 
 biologists. That this is true is shown by the fact 
 that the theory is incorporated in the standard text- 
 books of biology and zoology. Human develop- 
 ment, viewed in the light of this theory, is seen 
 to be through stages represented ancestrally by the 
 protozoa, by a radially symmetrical stage, by 
 bilaterally symmetrical forms of life, /. e., by fish, 
 by amphibia, and by simian forms, before the in- 
 dividual becomes relatively human at about the 
 end of the second year. Such facts, unquestioned 
 by biologists, are so significant that anthropologists 
 and psychologists have carried the law of bi- 
 ogenesis further, to cover mental development 
 
Religious and Moral Education 97 
 
 through childhood and youth. There is not so 
 clear a case for mental recapitulation, yet it is 
 denied by few, and it is explicitly accepted by many. 
 Thorndike^ is one who denies the applicability of 
 the biogenetic law to human development, but his 
 arguments against it are very inconclusive. He 
 does little more than point out limitations of the 
 theory, and everybody admits that the theory has 
 limitations. Thorndike himself, however, accepts 
 the theory in some cases.® Baldwin^ and HalP are 
 among the most conspicuous psychologists who 
 accept and employ the doctrine. President Hall 
 perhaps carries it to somewhat extreme limits in 
 many cases, and yet his application of it to reli- 
 gious education is of inestimable value. McDou- 
 galP also accepts the theory, as does Freud.^** Pro- 
 fessor Coe" employs the theory in his discussion 
 of religious and moral education. 
 
 *See E. L. Thorndike, Educational Psychology, Vol. I, The 
 Original Nature of Man, Ch. XVI. 
 
 "Op. cit., Vol. II, p. 99. 
 
 'J- M. Baldwin, Mental Development in the Child and the 
 Race; Social and Ethical Interpretations; A Genetic Theory 
 of Reality. 
 
 'G. Stanley Hall, Adolescence, 2 vols.; Educational Prob- 
 lems, 2 vols. ; and other works. 
 
 *Wm. McDougall, Psychology, the Study of Behaviour, p. 
 180. 
 
 "See especially Sigmund Freud (A. A. Brill, translator). 
 Totem and Taboo, New York, 1918. 
 
 "G. A. Coe, Education in Religion and Morals. See 
 especially pp. 211-25. Mr. Cephas Guillet ("Recapitulation 
 and Education," Pedagogical Seminary, Vol. VII, pp. 397- 
 445) has made an extensive survey of the theory in its general 
 application to education. 
 
98 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 If not carried out in too extreme detail, the 
 theory of recapitulation is of at least some service 
 in explaining child development. As McDougall 
 says in the reference given above, "The study of 
 children . . . has been rendered far more fruit- 
 ful of results than it otherwise could have been by 
 the light thrown by the theory of organic evolu- 
 tion and by the principle of recapitulation." In 
 the first two or three years of life, the foetal stage 
 included, the individual recapitulates the prehuman 
 stages of evolution. Phylogenetically, prehuman 
 stages represent an evolutionary period many 
 times greater than the period during which man 
 has existed. Yet we observe that the individual 
 spends a much longer time recapitulating human 
 than prehuman stages. This, however, is in ac- 
 cordance with the general operation of the bio- 
 genetic law. The oldest forms of racial life are 
 recapitulated most rapidly, and the more recent 
 ancestral forms, more slowly. The length of time 
 taken to recapitulate a period does not depend 
 upon the phylogenetic duration of the period so 
 much as upon its recency in the ancestral series. 
 It is to be expected, consequently, that the re- 
 capitulation of the human racial stage, represent- 
 ing perhaps a duration of a million years, should 
 take a much longer time than the recapitulation of 
 all the prehuman phylogeny, though this repre- 
 sents a period of many million years. 
 
Religious and Moral Education 99 
 
 President Hall divides the stages of individual 
 development into four periods, which he calls those 
 of infancy, childhood, youth, and adolescence. 
 The stage of infancy, lasting until the end of the 
 second year, which has been called the simian 
 stage, does not concern us now, nor does the fourth 
 stage, of adolescence, occurring from the age of 
 about thirteen to twenty-five or thirty, except the 
 first few years of its beginning, for recapitulation 
 does not occur after the beginning of adolescence. 
 It is the stage of childhood, from two to eight, and 
 that of youth, perhaps better called that of later 
 childhood, lasting from eight to twelve or thirteen, 
 that are of greatest importance for our immediate 
 study. The age of childhood, with its imaginative 
 activities, represents the savage stage, marked by 
 a close relation to nature and a tendency to per- 
 sonify physical objects and to confuse the animate 
 and the inanimate. The period of youth repre- 
 sents racially, according to President Hall, the 
 culmination of a long line of savage development 
 — a long and relatively stationary period in racial 
 history. This is the age preeminently of physical 
 activity and practical adjustment. In adolescence 
 the stage of later civilization in the race gains 
 ascendency in the individual, and here the emotions 
 tend to predominate. 
 
 The plan of education on a recapitulatory basis 
 
lOO The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 is to furnish to the developing individual, as far as 
 this is possible, the appropriate environment for 
 his stage of development. In religious education 
 this means encouraging the natural succession of 
 religious beliefs, just as they have occurred in the 
 history of the race. 
 
 Religions may be divided historically into na- 
 ture and redemptive religions. The chief distinc- 
 tions between the nature and the redemptive reli- 
 gions may be expressed in terms of the difference 
 between human desires for satisfactions of a tem- 
 poral and earthly sort, and desires for transcend- 
 ent satisfactions. The earliest, preanlmistic type 
 of religion, a later type dominated by a generally 
 animistic philosophy, both types belonging to the 
 tribal stage, and the national, and more or less 
 legalistic religions, such as are best illustrated by 
 early Judaism, would all be included under nature 
 religions. Early Judaism is a nature religion for 
 in early Judaism Jehovah existed for the affirma- 
 tion of "this world." Such religions as Zoroas- 
 trianism, Mohammedanism, Brahamanism, Bud- 
 dhism, Judaism in its later development, and Chris- 
 tianity, are called redemptive religions. There is 
 a clear and recognizable distinction between those 
 religions in which gods are invoked to satisfy 
 man's desires for material prosperity, and other 
 religions that offer satisfaction to man's desire for 
 "the peace that passeth understanding/' 
 
Religious and Moral Education loi 
 
 It is possible, I said, to distinguish two classes 
 within the nature religions, that is, the primitive 
 and the morality religions. The morality reli- 
 gions, best exemplified by early Judaism, are still 
 nature religions, but they have advanced beyond 
 the stage of the primitive religions, because of the 
 development and moralizing of the gods, and es- 
 pecially through the rise of some form of mono- 
 theism. There is a moral element in the primitive 
 religions, e. g., in taboo, but such a moral sanction 
 is clearly on a lower plane than the morality of the 
 Mosaic code. Thus we may arrive at a three-fold 
 classification of historical religions, like Sie- 
 beck's,^^ including (i) primitive, (2) morality, 
 and (3) redemptive religions. Such a classifica- 
 tion is best for furnishing a background for the 
 recapitulation theory. 
 
 Roughly corresponding to the three stages of 
 religious evolution in the race, there may be dis- 
 tinguished three stages of individual development. 
 Childhood and the early part of what President 
 Hall calls youth correspond to the stage of the 
 primitive religions. The period of youth, 
 especially the later part, corresponds to the stage 
 of the morality religions. The beginning of ado- 
 lescence marks the rise of the redemptive religions 
 
 "See Hermann Siebeck, Lehrbuch der Religionsphilosophie, 
 pp. 52-161. 
 
I02 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 In the race. Such a correspondence, obviously, 
 holds only In a general way. There are wide vari- 
 ations from it, for individual differences are 
 great. It is an ideal correlation, which is never 
 realized completely, but there is value in trying 
 to approximate it. 
 
 Childhood and youth, according to the theory 
 of recapitulation, are stages of external authority, 
 for they correspond to times In racial history 
 when the individual was wholly subject to taboo, 
 to the "folk-ways," and to priestly control. Dur- 
 ing adolescence moral sanctions should lose their 
 external character. Beliefs in taboos have their 
 place In childhood, because of their moral influ- 
 ence ; and in youth belief in a God of law, whose 
 commands are right because commanded, likewise 
 possesses positive moral value. A recapitulatory 
 scheme of religious and moral education furnishes 
 a basis for discipline in the early stages of devel- 
 opment. Out of the Imaginative nature worship 
 of the child there should be allowed to grow a 
 conception of a God who is the author of 
 Inviolable law. Belief in a stern God of law 
 should only gradually give place to belief in a God 
 of love at the time of the emotional awakening 
 at the beginning of adolescence. However im- 
 practicable the theory may seem, since such disci- 
 pline is implied by it, it has actually been prac- 
 
Religious and Moral Education 103 
 
 ticed, deliberately or unconsciously, more exten- 
 sively than is commonly supposed. 
 
 The early belief in taboos, and, growing out of 
 this, the belief in God-given codes of law, are in- 
 strumental to the maintenance of desirable forms 
 of conduct during early life, and to the formation 
 of good habits that will persist after the disciplin- 
 ary beliefs that once supported them have disap- 
 peared. As it was with the race, so it should be 
 with the individual. Moral education should 
 begin with taboo, and belief in a God of external 
 authority is the strongest support of morality at 
 the dawn of adolescence. As Partridge says, sum- 
 marizing President Hall's view: "The wide- 
 spread view that morality can be taught without 
 religion is wrong. . . . Children must have a 
 sense of God as giver of laws, whose demand is 
 right because He wills it; and certainly at adoles- 
 cence there must be religion to guide the moral 
 life, if at no other time."" 
 
 The maintenance of a legalistic stage in the re- 
 ligious development of children may seem at first 
 thought like the imposition of undue rigor and 
 sternness, approaching ascetic discipline. A cer- 
 tain degree of asceticism, however, is defensible, 
 and necessary for the sake of future gain. The 
 universe does not grant immediate satisfaction to 
 
 *G. E. Partridge, Genetic Philosophy of Education, p. 185. 
 
I04 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 all of man's desires, and the habit of accepting 
 with calmness the evil with the good should be 
 established early. An element of Stoicism is need- 
 ed in every stable character, and the discipline of 
 early religious beliefs is valuable as a means to 
 the attainment of such a character. James in- 
 quires;" "Does not . . . the worship of ma- 
 terial luxury and wealth, which constitutes so large 
 a portion of the 'spirit' of our age, make some- 
 what for effeminacy and unmanliness? Is not the 
 exclusively sympathetic and facetious way in which 
 most children are brought up today — so different 
 from the education of a hundred years ago, es- 
 pecially in evangelical circles — in danger, in spite 
 of its many advantages, of developing a certain 
 trashiness of fibre? Are there not hereabouts 
 some points of application for a renovated and 
 revised ascetic discipline?" 
 
 The question of moral discipline divides Amer- 
 ican educational theorists into two camps. Pro- 
 fessor Dewey represents one tendency, which is, 
 in general, opposed to discipline. President Hall 
 and his followers represent another tendency, 
 which lays emphasis upon moral discipline. The 
 truth probably lies somewhere between these di- 
 vergent views. 
 
 "William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 
 p. 365. 
 
Religious and Moral Education 105 
 
 It is claimed by Dewey and his followers that 
 democracy and discipline are contradictory. Dis- 
 cipline is supposed to go along only with an auto- 
 cratic and militaristic form of society. The lead- 
 ing aim of American education, good citizenship 
 in a democracy, if it is to be achieved through the 
 operation of the principle of learning by doing, 
 requires, it is claimed, that children, the citizens of 
 tomorrow, shall learn the democratic principles of 
 self-government by governing themselves today. 
 President Hall accepts the theory of recapitulation 
 as the basis of his view that a certain amount of 
 discipline is necessary in the moral training of 
 children. Such a view maintains equally with 
 Dewey's that democratic citizenship is an impor- 
 tant educational aim, perhaps the one most com- 
 prehensive aim in American education. It would 
 point out, however, that democracy is the latest 
 stage in racial evolution, a stage which is still in 
 process of becoming established, and that indi- 
 viduals in the immaturity of their childhood and 
 youth ought to relive the earlier life of the race, 
 with its priestly control and its external constraints, 
 before being fitted to take up the duties belonging 
 to the highest stage of racial development. 
 
 Recognizing that the theory of recapitulation 
 implies moral descipline, Dewey no longer ac- 
 
lo6 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 cepts it," though he did so earlier." As a matter 
 of fact, an acceptance of the theory, with its im- 
 plied discipline, does not contradict democratic 
 principles; it simply prescribes a postponement of 
 their application in the nurture of children. 
 
 II 
 
 The questions of discipline and of the value of 
 taboo and of beliefs in legalistic religions are ques- 
 tions that merit consideration by themselves. 
 Freudian psychology may be able to contribute 
 something towards a solution of the problem. 
 
 There is among educational theorists and others 
 at the present time a somewhat general tendency 
 to rule out discipline, in favor of methods that will 
 allow free self-expression, with trial and error as 
 the first of the ways whereby the child is to learn 
 what is right and wrong. Thus Professor Holt" 
 argues against taboos for children. He contends 
 that unless the child is allowed to follow up his 
 impulses to their conclusions, and to learn avoid- 
 ing reactions in the case of undesirable and danger- 
 ous objects through experience with the objects 
 themselves, the proper integration of reflexes will 
 not occur to make later conduct reliable. This is 
 all true within limits: but in many cases the bad 
 
 ^Democracy and Education, 1916, pp. 84-89. 
 
 ^*The School and Society, 1899, p. 62. 
 
 "E. B. Holt, The Freudian Wish, Chs. Ill, IV. 
 
Religious and Moral Education 107 
 
 consequences of an act are so long deferred that 
 the child will never associate the consequences with 
 the cause; or the consequences may in some cases 
 be immediately disastrous, or perhaps fatal. In 
 such cases the child learns nothing from the ex- 
 periences, or else learns at too great a cost. 
 
 Professor Holt's argument against taboo is in- 
 adequate for it is based upon an inadequate con- 
 ception of taboo. His example of taboo is not an 
 instance of taboo at all. He argues that, in the 
 case of the child who is forbidden by the mother 
 to touch the flame, the child's behavior becomes a 
 function,^* not of the flame alone, but of the situa- 
 tion — the flame plus the mother. From this it 
 follows, Professor Holt says, that In the absence 
 of the mother, who is the source of the taboo, the 
 child will burn himself in the flame. But this is not 
 a case of taboo at all. Taboo involves belief in 
 some superhuman, invisible intervention in the 
 event of doing a forbidden act. So, in the case of 
 genuine taboo, there is no harm caused by be- 
 havior becoming a function of the object plus the 
 taboo-character of the object. The source of the 
 taboo is always present, and safe conduct is there- 
 by assured. In later life the belief in many, per- 
 haps all, earlier taboos will disappear, but proper 
 
 "See Professor Holt's definition of behavior, op. cit., Sup- 
 plement, "Response and Cognition," pp. 153-208. 
 
io8 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 conduct will continue in most instances for two 
 reasons: first, because the correct habits that have 
 been formed under the influence of taboo will tend 
 to persist and to act just as mechanically as original 
 instincts; and, second, because, for the more ma- 
 ture individual, new and adequate rational sanc- 
 tions for the continuance of the acquired type of 
 conduct arise and take the place of the original 
 taboos. No harm results even if all taboos do not 
 disappear, for, as James says, "The highest form 
 of character, . . . abstractly considered, must 
 be full of scruples and inhibitions."^^ 
 
 The two most fundamental instincts, from 
 which the other instincts have developed, are the 
 food-getting and the sex instincts. The regulation 
 of the sex instinct is one of the constant problems 
 confronting society. I would contend that, just as 
 all education in sex morality^" in the race began in 
 taboo, so sex taboo of some sort is necessary for 
 the maintenance of desirable standards of conduct 
 during the formative stages of individual develop- 
 ment. Miinsterberg^^ argued for a certain amount 
 of taboo in sex education. McDougall" advises 
 against too great a rationalization of the sex prob- 
 lem in early education. And Freud recognizes the 
 
 ^Talks to Teachers, p. 179. 
 
 "'See Ernest Crawley, The Mystic Rose. 
 
 "See Psychology and Social Sanity, pp. 17-19; 59-61. 
 
 "Social Psychology, 8th edition, pp. 419-21. 
 
Religious and Moral Education 109 
 
 necessity of inhibitions for physical and moral rea- 
 sons, as a part of the sublimation process. 
 
 Freud insists upon the necessity of early sub- 
 limation of sex energy into socially useful chan- 
 nels; and sublimation, though positive, requires 
 as its correlate a negative factor to check the pri- 
 mary expressions of sex in children. A recapitu- 
 latory theory of religious education provides both 
 the negative factor, some sort of taboo or reli- 
 gious interdiction, and also the positive conditions 
 that favor sublimation through supplying the 
 growing individual with an environment suited to 
 call out such activities as are socially acceptable 
 and also in accord with the developing interests 
 of the individual. Harm would result if the prim- 
 itive desires and activities of children were for- 
 bidden, and if at the same time no new positive 
 interests were encouraged ; but, along with the en- 
 couragement of new, socially desirable activities, 
 undesirable tendencies must be discouraged. 
 
 On Freudian principles religion is a valuable 
 form of sublimation, especially at the beginning 
 of adolescence, as well as earlier. Freud says: 
 '*Owing to the oppositional relation existing be- 
 tween culture and the free development of sex- 
 uality, the results of which may be traced far into 
 the formation of our life, the problem how the 
 sexual life of the child evolves is ... of very 
 
no The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 great importance in the higher stages of culture 
 and civilization."^^ Sublimation is the process by 
 which sexual energy is utilized in other, non-sex- 
 ual spheres, and in directions which are more ap- 
 proved of by society, and which are ultimately of 
 more value for the individual as well as for soci- 
 ety. Art and religion are the chief forms in which 
 sublimated sex energy expresses itself. 
 
 According to Freud, the child has numerous 
 perversions in his sexual predispositions. That is, 
 in his earliest years he has tendencies towards 
 homo-sexuality, exhibitionism, sadism, masochism, 
 etc. It is through sublimation of these perverse 
 tendencies that normal sexuality and a moral 
 character are developed. The "sexual latency 
 period," from about the fourth year to the begin- 
 ning of puberty, is the time when repression of 
 perverse tendencies, and sublimation, are neces- 
 sary. Inhibition of the early tendencies is neces- 
 sary if neurotic disturbances are to be avoided in 
 later life. Both normal and neurotic adults pos- 
 sess repressions in some degree. In neurotic in- 
 dividuals the repressions are not complete, and 
 they consequently manifest themselves as symp- 
 toms of the neuroses, while in normal, healthy 
 individuals repressed wishes are inert, or else they 
 
 "Sigmund Freud, Three Contributions to Sexual Theory 
 (A. A. Brill, translator), p. 85. 
 
Religious and Moral Education 1 1 1 
 
 manifest themselves only in dreams. Repression 
 alone, without sublimation, or substitution, will 
 always have bad results; but Freud and most 
 Freudians recognize the necessity of social and 
 religious restraints, inhibitions, and taboos, as a 
 part of the normal sublimation process. Thus 
 Brill says: 
 
 "Were it not for the severe checking the indi- 
 vidual constantly experiences from the very begin- 
 ning of his childhood, which causes him to give 
 up most of his desires, it would be impossible to 
 live in any society, savage or enlightened. . . . 
 
 "This inhibiting process begins in childhood 
 and is continued throughout life. . . . Through- 
 out the whole course of our existence, society 
 (religion and ethics) teaches us to curb our de- 
 sires and to give up what we want. We want 
 much and we get comparatively little, but we 
 never stop wanting.""^* 
 
 "Civilization, so called, simply consists of inhi- 
 bitions imposed upon the individual by religion 
 and society. The more one can inhibit his primi- 
 tive impulses the more cultured he is, and savages 
 and children must be taught inhibition to fit them 
 for society."" 
 
 There is no virtue, of course, in curbing desires 
 
 "A. A. Brill, Psychanalysis, pp. 40, 41. 
 'Ibid., p. 263. 
 
112 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 except for the sake of greater satisfactions; and 
 it is for precisely this result that many of the 
 desires of early childhood should be repressed and 
 sublimated. Later health, not only moral, but 
 also physical, requires sublimation, according to 
 Freud. Whether the activities of the child shall 
 develop into socially acceptable forms, depends 
 upon the success that attends sublimation. Later 
 neuroses result from unsuccessful sublimation and 
 repression. 
 
 Freud's psychology has a distinct recapitulatory 
 background. This is shown especially in his book, 
 Totem and Taboo, as is suggested by the sub-title, 
 "Resemblances between the Psychic Lives of Sav- 
 ages and Neurotics." Since the adult neurotic 
 individual represents a continuation of, or rever- 
 sion to, psychic infantilism in the sexual life, the 
 normal child, like the neurotic adult, is on a mental 
 plane corresponding to that of the savage. What 
 is normal for the savage and for the child, is a 
 symptom of disease in the civilized adult. 
 
 Freud probably overemphasizes the role of the 
 sex instinct in the economy of life, both in healthy 
 and in diseased conditions. Such is the opinion of 
 many critics. But critics such as McDougall,^* 
 while rejecting Freud's extreme emphasis upon 
 the centrality of sex, are glad to accept his notion 
 
 ''Op. cit., Supplementary Ch., II, "The Sex Instinct." 
 
Religious and Moral Education 113 
 
 of sublimation. Suppression of the primary 
 forms of sex expression, and sublimation of sex 
 energy into more desirable channels under the 
 guidance of religious belief, have definite results 
 of great value, as McDougall points out." 
 
 Much of the sublimation in later childhood 
 would, in an ideal scheme of things, take place 
 under the influence of religion of the legalistic 
 sort. Then at adolescence sublimation would re- 
 sult, as it actually does in numerous cases, in a 
 development into a new stage of religion, the stage 
 of the redemptive religions. As McDougall says,^* 
 "The intensification of thought and feeling [due 
 to sublimation] may affect principally the religious 
 interests, and then becomes a main condition of the 
 conversion which is so characteristic of adoles- 
 cence." So it is seen how religious beliefs corre- 
 sponding to beliefs of the legalistic stage in racial 
 evolution have positive value at the beginning of 
 adolescence in guiding the moral life and in caus- 
 ing continued sublimation and a normal growth 
 into the redemptive stage of religion. In the words 
 of President Hall: "Adolescence ... is a 
 period when, whatever may be the truth about it, 
 it is a wholesome pedagogical method to apply a 
 
 "Ibid., p. 424. 
 "'Ibid., p. 424, 
 
114 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 transcendental, supernatural cult."^® "Religion, 
 which has been the chief agent in regulating it 
 [sex] in the past, must be also looked to in the 
 future."'" 
 
 During early adolescence religious belief has a 
 pronounced moralizing influence from the fact that 
 the attribution of the new experiences, which are 
 more or less inevitable at this time, to "higher" 
 sources lends a seriousness and even sacredness to 
 the experiences and to life as a whole. The in- 
 dividual who, with truer scientific insight, perhaps, 
 attributes his new experiences of early adolescence 
 wholly to physiological processes, possessing no 
 religious significance at all, fails to get the inspira- 
 tion of high moral ideals that are so valuable at 
 this stage of development. The new emotions may 
 be interpreted grandly or meanly, from "above" 
 or from "below," idealistically or physiologically. 
 For those experiencing the emotions there is value 
 in the idealistic and religious way of interpreting 
 the experiences. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Directly continuous with the problem of re- 
 ligious and moral education is the problem of in- 
 
 ™"ColIege Philosophy," The Forum, Vol. XXIX (iQOo), p. 
 412. 
 ^Educational Problems, Vol. I, p. 460. 
 
Religious and Moral Education 115 
 
 struction in philosophy. The teacher of philosophy 
 tends to be so exclusively a system-builder, with an 
 eye single to the logical construction of his philos- 
 ophy, that the concrete, human needs of his stu- 
 dents are apt to be lost sight of. In general educa- 
 tional theory there is taking place a reform of 
 method, and a reaction against the mere teaching 
 of subject-matter regardless of the interests, apti- 
 tudes, and needs of the pupils. Teachers formerly 
 taught subjects of study; now they teach children. 
 The lesson learned from the elementary schools, 
 that teaching should be ordered primarily to fit 
 the psychological needs of the pupils rather than 
 the logical claims of the subject-matter, may with 
 profit be extended to the teaching of philosophy to 
 college undergraduates. 
 
 The vast majority of individuals never become 
 students of metaphysics in any technical sense of 
 the term. Of those who study philosophy in col- 
 lege, many simply "take courses," for sundry rea- 
 sons, without ever acquiring much interest in the 
 subject. With a large number of the students who 
 really become interested in philosophy, religious 
 doubt is the beginning of a philosophical interest 
 that arises in the attempt to bolster up a waning 
 faith. Metaphysical interests arise in others as 
 a direct outgrowth of the developing sex life in 
 early adolescence, as in the case of Don Juan, who 
 
1 16 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 "Did the best he could 
 With things not very subject to control, 
 And turned, without perceiving his condition, 
 Like Coleridge, into a metaphysician. 
 
 "He thought about himself, and the whole earth, 
 Of man the wonderful, and of the stars. 
 And how the deuce they ever could have birth."" 
 
 As the poet says, with true Freudian insight, "pu- 
 berty assisted" in bringing about Don Juan's phil- 
 osophical interests. 
 
 Mere intellectual curiosity, or the pure love of 
 wisdom for its own sake, is a possible though 
 negligible cause of a student's interest in philos- 
 ophy, at least at the beginning of his studies. As 
 a general rule, philosophy is valued at first only 
 as an aid in solving the fundamental problems of 
 life, and not as an end in itself. With prolonged 
 study, perhaps unfortunately, philosophy may be- 
 come an end in itself, divorced from all practical 
 problems of life, through a psychological process 
 like that involved in the case of the man who took 
 his first drink to save his life, and thereafter lived 
 to drink. 
 
 "Longings sublime and aspirations high" come 
 naturally enough during adolescence, and the in- 
 struction of college undergraduates should have 
 due regard for the moral needs of the students. 
 College students of philosophy desire little phil- 
 
 "Byron, "Don Juan," xci, xcii. 
 
Religious and Moral Education 117 
 
 osophic dogmatizing from instructors, but, on the 
 contrary, a free field in which to draw their own 
 conclusions. The trend of their speculations can 
 be guided, however, if instruction is insinuated 
 gently, and not applied bluntly. Since meta- 
 physics is a subject on which the most learned of 
 doctors disagree violently, disciples are free, to a 
 large extent, to choose metaphysical conclusions, 
 such, at least, as are really relevant to human con- 
 cerns, upon the basis of value, regardless of truth. 
 The question thus presents itself as to the sort of 
 philosophic beliefs that are most valuable for stu- 
 dents. This problem is similar to the problem of 
 the value of religious belief. 
 
 Whatever may be the latest philosophic con- 
 clusions of a teacher of metaphysics, they are usu- 
 ally not the same as his earliest conclusions. The 
 failure of a man's metaphysical views to broaden 
 and grow with continued study would be an indica- 
 tion of intellectual stagnation. In every special 
 science, at least some few results are established, 
 and accepted by all scientists without question. 
 Such results have become fixed in the standard 
 text-books. But metaphysics is a different matter. 
 There is no generally accepted text-book of meta- 
 physics. When it is the case that the teacher of 
 philosophy has come to have somewhat different 
 philosophic views from the ones that he held when 
 
1 18 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 he was a younger student, as is the normal case, 
 he is very likely to infer from this, if his attention 
 is called to the matter, that his own students will 
 not at first acquire philosophic truths in final form. 
 Even if there be final and absolute Truth in meta- 
 physics, the human acquisition of this Truth is a 
 psychological process, always incomplete and al- 
 ways imperfect. The teacher of philosophy, as a 
 teacher, should be primarily concerned, not with 
 absolute Truth, but with the psychological learning 
 processes of his students in their acceptance of some 
 views and rejection of others, for emotional as 
 well as for logical reasons. The student believes 
 that his conclusions are reached by purely intel- 
 lectual processes, but the educational psychologist 
 recognizes that the passional nature is a large fac- 
 tor in the process. 
 
 Since human nature is such as it is, idealistic 
 systems of philosophy, whether true or not, will 
 always appeal to students of philosophy, and will 
 be accepted by many for the reason that man's 
 emotional nature, in so many cases, requires some 
 sort of idealistic beliefs about reality. As James 
 says, man's "will to believe" will assert itself in 
 a large percentage of cases, and will accept an 
 idealistic view of things because such a view is 
 congruent with certain vital needs. Whether or 
 not many of the current systems of philosophy 
 
Religious and Moral Education 119 
 
 that are called idealistic really offer support to 
 man's specific religious beliefs, even the most 
 fundamental of them, is a question that need not 
 be raised. They at least seem to most students to 
 do so, to offer a refuge of respectable supernatu- 
 ralism against the encroachments of scientific 
 naturalism. Upon the basis of value, and regard- 
 less of objective truth, the teaching of the great 
 historical systems of idealism is certainly justifi- 
 able.^^ To force upon students a completely 
 naturalistic philosophy, even if such were the true 
 philosophy, a philosophy that proclaims the uni- 
 verse to be essentially indifferent to the ideals of 
 man, would be extremely disintegrating, especially 
 for those adolescents who were glowing with the 
 enthusiasm of new moral aspirations. Naturalis- 
 tic beliefs would crush out the incentive to noble 
 effort. But belief in idealistic philosophies, with 
 their appearance of devoutness, however vague, 
 lends grandeur to the universe, and zest to the 
 moral urgings of the individual life. Several men 
 of my acquaintance, recent graduate students in 
 philosophy and in other departments at Harvard, 
 have told me that, while not now calling them- 
 selves metaphysical idealists, they nevertheless 
 gained moral support and stability of character 
 through studying, when undergraduates, such 
 
 •See G. Stanley Hall, Adolescence, Vol. II, p. 551. 
 
I20 The Biological Foundations of Belief 
 
 sympathetic treatments of idealism in its modern 
 historical forms as are found in some of the chap- 
 ters of Royce's Spirit of Modern Philosophy. 
 This is, I think, a not uncommon experience. It 
 is reported"^ that Jowett encouraged the study of 
 the philosophy of T. H. Green by Balliol under- 
 graduates because of its religious value for the 
 students who were in search of a substitute for 
 their earlier religious beliefs. 
 
 Moral idealism is theoretically independent of 
 any particular religion or system of metaphysics. 
 It can be established to the full satisfaction of the 
 intellect along with a naturalistic metaphysic as 
 well as with an idealistic one. But practically, for 
 actual human beings, most of whom, fortunately, 
 are very incompletely intellectualized and de-emo- 
 tionalized, theoretical moral idealism can become 
 embodied in actual conduct only through the in- 
 strumentality of religious and idealistic beliefs. 
 Belief in God and immortality, for example, tends 
 to moralize the whole life, and to support such 
 forms of conduct as are judged by the theorist to 
 be right. The ethical theorist is concerned with 
 discovering what is right. The preacher is con- 
 cerned with influencing the will of man to do the 
 right, that is, with making man's conduct conform 
 to the standards set up by the theorist. Similarly 
 
 **See F. C. S. Schiller, Studies in Humanism, pp. 278-81. 
 
Religious and Moral Education 1 2 1 
 
 the teacher of philosophy has a mission to per- 
 form in offering to youthful students such phil- 
 osophic behefs as will encourage, not discourage, 
 moral effort on their part. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Aristotle, 84. 
 
 Baldwin, J. M., 97. 
 
 Belief, behavioristic account of, 
 53-54, 7i#- 
 Physiological eflfects of, 3, 
 
 7-8. 
 See "religious belief." 
 
 Beliefs of scientists, 3, 94. 
 
 Biological grounds of belief, 
 74, 76#. 
 
 Biological value of religious be- 
 lief, iff, 14, 74#. 
 
 Birth-rate and religious belief, 
 
 2lff. 
 
 Booth, M., 25-26. 
 Brightman, F. S., 42, 44#, 64-65. 
 Brill, A. A., III. 
 Browning, 18-19, 79-8o. 
 Byron, 1 15-16. 
 
 Caird, Edward, 9. 
 Calvinism, 58. 
 Carver, T. N., 4-5. 
 Classification of religious 
 
 values, 49j^. 
 Coe, G. A., 40, 41, 97. 
 Coulanges, Fustel de, 21-22. 
 
 Darwinism and pragmatism, 
 69#. 
 And religious truth, 43. 
 Dewey, J., 72, 105-06. 
 Discipline, moral and religious, 
 102 ff. 
 
 Education, and democracy, 105. 
 Religious, 93#. 
 Recapitulatory theory of re- 
 ligious, 9S#, I02#, 109. 
 
 Ehrenfels, C. von, 43. 
 Emerson, 79-80. 
 
 Fallacy of false attribution, 27, 
 
 35 ff, 41. 65 ff. 
 Frazer, J. G., 7-S. 
 Freedona, 55. 
 Freud, S., 79, 97, I09#. 
 
 God, 55#. 
 Goethe, 3-4. 
 Group selection, 10. 
 
 Haeckel, E., 95-96. 
 
 Hall, G. S., 94, 97, 99, 103, 105, 
 
 113, 119. 
 Hocking, W. E., 16, 36, 39-40. 
 Holt, E. B., 71, 106-07. 
 
 Idealism, 19, Ii8#. 
 Immortality, S5ff. 
 Instincts in jeligion, 78^. 
 Indeterminism, 55, 57-58. 
 
 James, Wm., 2, i6#, 28-29, 33#, 
 55#, 70-71, 75-76, 82, 87, 
 104, 108. 
 
 Kidd, B., 24. 
 Kipling, 36. 
 
 Leroy-Beaulicu, P., 23-24. 
 Leuba, J. H., 2, 4, 40, 94. 
 Lowell, 63-64. 
 
 Materialism, 2, 119-20. 
 McDougall, W., 9, 23-24, 26, 
 
 77 ff, 97-98, 108, 1 12-13. 
 Meinong, A., 43. 
 Metaphysics, iisff. 
 
 123 
 
124 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Moore, G. E., 6, 28. 
 Moore, J. S., 42, 47-48, 65#. 
 Morality and religion, 9, 120. 
 Miiller, F., 95. 
 Miinsterberg, H., 108. 
 Mysticism, 34#, 63. 
 
 Natural selection, 8, 14-15. 
 Nature religions, 14, 100-01. 
 Nitti, F. S., 23. 
 
 Optimism, and religion, 15-16, 
 18-19. 
 Browning's, 18-19. 
 
 Partridge, G. E., 103. 
 
 Perry, R. B., 33-34, 49-50, 89. 
 
 Pessimism, i6#, 69, 83. 
 
 Pfleiderer, O., 9. 
 
 Philosophy, religious and moral 
 
 value of, n4#. 
 Plato, 79- 
 Pragmatic fallacy, 19, 27ff, 42ff, 
 
 64-65, 67, 69, 82, 92. 
 Pragmatism, 29, 69, 84, 86#. 
 And Darwinism, 69#. 
 
 Rashdall, H., 7- 
 Read, C, sff. 
 
 Recapitulation, theory of, gsff- 
 Recapitulatory theory of re- 
 ligious education, 95#, I02#, 
 109. 
 Redemptive religions, 14, 100. 
 Religion, and morality, 9, 120. 
 And sex, 38, 40, 79-80. 
 Instincts in, 78#. 
 Religious belief, biological value 
 of, iff, 14, 74#- 
 
 Objects of, 55. 
 
 Values of, Bff, ssff, 6i#, 81. 
 
 Value of false, 2, 32. 
 Religious education, gsff. 
 Religious values, classification 
 
 of, 49#- 
 Royce, J., 39, 41. 
 Russell, B., 15-16, 23, 28, 75, 87. 
 
 Santayana, 63. 
 
 Schiller, F. C. S., 42, 68#, 8i#, 
 120. 
 
 Scientific attitude, 75, 87. 
 
 Sex and religion, 38, 40, 79-80. 
 
 Sex, sublimation of, i09#. 
 
 Siebeck, H., loi. 
 
 Soul, 55, 57. 
 
 Stages of individual develop- 
 ment, 99, 101-02. 
 
 Stages of religious evolution, 
 ioo#. 
 
 Sublimation of sex, I09#, 
 
 Survival value of religious be- 
 lief, 43, 81. 
 
 Taboo, 3, 7, lo-ii, 102-03, 106. 
 Theism, 33. 
 Thomson, J., 17. 
 Thorndike, E. L., 72, 97. 
 Truth, 28, 53-54, 63-64, 73-74. 
 82j^, 91-92. 
 
 And value, 6, 28-29, 68#. 
 
 Test of, 31, 37. 
 
 Value, meaning of, 43j!f. 
 
 Watson, J. B., 72. 
 Webb, S., 24-25. 
 World War, 89. 
 
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