Rabbi Isadore Isaacson 
 

THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
AMERICAN SOCIAL PROGRESS SERIES 
 
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AMEB1CAN SOCIAL PBOGBESS SEBIES 
 
 THE 
 SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 BY 
 
 SIMON N. PATTEN, Ph.D., LL.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF PENNSYLVANIA 
 
 AUTHOR OF " THE NEW BASIS OF CIVILIZATION," ETC. 
 
 Neftj f£0tfc 
 
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OS *■ 
 
 PEEFACE 
 
 I began writing this book with a simple plan, which 
 was the welding together of the ideas acquired in two 
 earlier fields of work. My "Development of English 
 Thought" was an endeavor to create an economic 
 interpretation of history. This, carried to its legitimate 
 consequences, would afford the objective basis of social 
 progress. I had written also in the field of social psy- 
 chology. From this a subjective view of these same 
 facts is derived. Religion seemed to me to be the point 
 of union between these isolated views. I thought to 
 use the economic interpretation of history to explain 
 the degenerate tendencies in civilization, and then to 
 employ social psychology to set forth the opposing 
 forces of regeneration. To put this in another way: 
 Degeneration is objective and economic, while regen- 
 eration is psychic and personal. This conforms to the 
 views held by religious reformers, and, if correct, gives 
 a firm basis to religious thought. Religion is by this 
 means given a scientific foundation and its doctrines 
 are transferred from the traditional basis to the realm 
 of social science. 
 
 [v] 
 
 943988 
 
PREFACE 
 
 On this plan I began to write, and I hope I have not 
 departed from it. There was, however, a break in the 
 process which to some degree modified my plan. After 
 I had written several chapters, a review called my 
 attention to the books of the late much lamented 
 William James. I was influenced by his view of prag- 
 matism, not that it seemed new, but that it was a better 
 expression of a view towards which economists like 
 myself were struggling, but into which they have never 
 clearly come. Professor James, I said, is a philosopher 
 turning towards economics: I am an economist on the 
 road to philosophy ; the two seemingly different views 
 should blend and make one truth. Animated by this 
 thought, I wrote several chapters restating pragmatism 
 from a social viewpoint. But in the end I cut out 
 these chapters. I could not enter into a full discussion 
 of pragmatism without turning my book from one 
 on religion into one on philosophy. Tempting as it is to 
 make this transition, the need of clear religious thought 
 seemed too great to permit such a modification of my 
 plan. Now, however, that the book is written, it will 
 help the reader to understand my thought if I contrast 
 it with the well-known views of Professor James. Our 
 likenesses and differences are of such a nature that this 
 can be done without entering into the general discussion 
 that would be necessary if there were not a common 
 
 fvil 
 
PREFACE 
 
 basis for our views. Professor James, in a touching 
 way, dedicates his " Pragmatism " to John Stuart Mill. 
 I have frequently taken a similar attitude, and I feel 
 that no honor would be greater than to be one of Mill's 
 disciples. From this common ground both Professor 
 James and I have gone forth. Each has tried to inter- 
 pret events in the manner and from the premises that 
 Mill would have employed. Two men may, however, 
 have a common master and yet move forward in differ- 
 ent directions. How this has happened in the present 
 case can be illustrated by starting with a restatement 
 of Mill's position on the points involved. 
 
 To understand Mill demands a study of his " Logic," 
 the place where his views are most fully presented. 
 He there tries to prove universal laws from general 
 inductive experience. This method is the same as that 
 of Professor James who, in his radical empiricism, has 
 the authority of Mill on his side. But a disciple has 
 the right to appeal from this to Mill's subsequent atti- 
 tude and to the later development of the social sciences. 
 The purpose of the " Logic " was to strengthen social 
 reasoning, and it is by this test that it should be judged. 
 Even while writing the "Logic," a change of opinion 
 came over Mill as to the nature of social proof. This 
 was due to the influence of Comte, by which he was 
 led to put universal historical proofs in the place of 
 
 fviil 
 
PREFACE 
 
 those derived from empirical observation. Even this 
 change did not prove satisfactory, for neither in Mill's 
 later writings nor in the oncoming development of 
 social science have either empirical data or crude his- 
 torical generalizations of the type proposed by Comte 
 served as the basis of progress. Mill made an attempt 
 to write an Ethology on the plan outlined in the 
 "Logic," but was forced to give it up. In its place 
 " Political Economy " appeared, and in this deductive 
 reasoning was freely used. All of his later books 
 follow the logic of his " Political Economy." We are 
 thus left without any evidence that radical empiricism 
 is a fitting method for social science. Nor has Comte 
 fared any better with his historical method. Neither 
 he nor his disciples have given the world anything but 
 crude generalizations, differing in no respect from those 
 obtained by other methods. Doubtless, Mill always 
 held to the hope that universal propositions could be 
 proved in the way he outlined. Professor James is 
 justified in taking up the task and trying to complete 
 the work the master left undone. At the same time, 
 another disciple is equally justified in following the 
 plan that Mill in practice used and which has been the 
 basis of subsequent progress. In no social science are 
 universal propositions accepted on data that would 
 have satisfied Mill and Comte. Particular laws have 
 
 f viii 1 
 
PREFACE 
 
 often been established, but their application is limited 
 to the field from which they are derived. There can 
 be no universal laws unless they are derived from some 
 other source. 
 
 &»*The most fruitful law of a general nature is Comte's 
 theory of the stages in the development of thought ; 
 but even this must be restated to meet modern condi- 
 tions. Comte affirmed that thought had three stages, 
 — the theological, the metaphysical and the positive. 
 The concept of stages of thought is valid ; but Comte's 
 description of them is defective. The theological stage 
 is really the traditional stage. The metaphysical stage 
 is better described by calling it the critical or skeptical 
 stage, while the positive stage should be renamed the 
 pragmatic stage. Early societies are "under the domain 
 of custom, of which religious traditions are a part. 
 Then comes a reaction that takes the form of skepti- 
 cism, criticism and individualism. This, in turn, is 
 displaced by positive doctrines tested by empirical 
 methods and pragmatic results. 
 
 While the validity of these stages is apparent, the 
 order in which Comte placed them is open to question. 
 He used the historical method, and by it the order of 
 the stages is correctly described. The historical epoch, 
 however, does not cover the whole development of the 
 race. The traditional attitude of early races is a result 
 
 [m] 
 
PREFACE 
 
 of earlier growth, and of this our knowledge is frag- 
 mentary. All traditions must have had a basis in 
 experience and have been proved valid by some facts. 
 The theological or traditional epoch of Comte could 
 not therefore have been the first epoch, and to get at 
 that some other method than Comte's must be used. 
 A better explanation is given by the economic interpre- 
 tation of history. By it history is divided into epochs, 
 each of which begins with notable economic changes 
 and ends with a social reorganization, bringing a read- 
 justment to the new conditions. In such an epoch the 
 stages of thought development are the reverse of those 
 in general history. The new conditions first affect 
 individuals and are pragmatically tested. Results are 
 formulated as general laws and are then made rules of 
 action. This is the deductive or metaphysical stage. 
 Finally, they become social customs and are enforced 
 as habits. This is the traditional stage to be found in 
 static societies. 
 
 If this is a correct statement of the evolution of 
 thought, it has a direct bearing on the way in which 
 universal laws arise and get their validity. New facts 
 are the basis of empirical laws which are tested by their 
 pragmatic results. If the tone of public thought is 
 metaphysical, an endeavor is made to give these new 
 laws a universal validity. A resort is therefore had to 
 
 [x] 
 
PREFACE 
 
 radical empiricism or to a priori reasoning to effect this 
 end. Another road is open that does not employ the 
 premises of rationalism in either of these forms. The 
 force of new empirical generalizations is due to the ap- 
 peal they make to men's interests and desires. The 
 value of general laws lies, not in the greater authority 
 that springs from broad generalization, but in the appeal 
 to new motives for action. The force back of them 
 is the imagination instead of the desires and interests 
 of men. The value of the metaphysical stage of 
 thought arises from its appeal to the imagination that 
 brings action into relation with the future. A double 
 motive for action and a double test of it are thus 
 obtained. Personal or empirical pragmatism is based 
 on present desires and interests. Social pragmatism 
 is based on the future results of acts, and for it to 
 displace the former, the imagination must be aroused 
 and the social motives made active. The metaphysi- 
 cal stage is thus a real advance, even if misused by 
 overzealous rationalists. The subsequent traditional 
 stage also has its advantages, since habitual action 
 is an economy ; it is also the only means by which 
 social control can be exercised over ignorant, defective 
 or degenerate men. Each of the three stages thus 
 creates new motives for action, and among them all 
 the truth is made manifest. 
 
 [n] 
 
PREFACE 
 
 If this is a correct description of forces back of the 
 progress of thought, the radical empiricism of Mill and 
 Comte and of James does not offer an adequate expla- 
 nation of thought processes. Universal propositions 
 and skeptical methods appeal to those who are in revolt 
 against the oversocialization of thought prevalent in static 
 societies. They are thus freed from the social control 
 over action which real progress demands ; in its place 
 they put their own personal standards or those derived 
 from physical sciences. Feeling and prejudice may for 
 a time give vogue to these substitutes for social mo- 
 tives; but in the end social standards and pragmatic 
 tests must reassert themselves, for they alone can arouse 
 the whole man to action. 
 
 The trouble with the radical empiricist, the skeptic 
 or the so-called positivist is that he tries to stay in the 
 first stage of thought development and thus is com- 
 pelled to make crude empirical generalizations and 
 personal standards the supreme test of truth. Out of 
 this comes, legitimately enough, a pragmatic attitude ; 
 but it is, after all, only one kind of pragmatism. There 
 are two tests of thought, the social and the individual. 
 The personal tests are satisfactions which appeal to 
 the desires. The social tests are objective and are 
 measured by the social results of action. Satisfactions 
 must always remain individual. They afford no test 
 
 [xii] 
 
PREFACE 
 
 of what society gains or loses by any outlined program. 
 These can be determined by the objective effects that 
 each measure produces. There are three such tests 
 of social results: the economic tests are prosperity, 
 peace and cooperation ; the physical tests are efficiency, 
 vigor and longevity ; the emotional tests are service, 
 public spirit and missionary zeal. In some of these 
 ways, or through a combination of them, every social 
 act can be objectively tested. The test of individual 
 satisfaction misleads except in crude economic situa- 
 tions where social action is ineffective. 
 
 There is thus a social pragmatism which should be 
 contrasted with the radical empiricism that Professor 
 James advocates. The difference between the two, 
 and the test of truth that each uses, may be made 
 clear by a statement of the four criteria that social 
 pragmatism sets up and must defend to make its posi- 
 tion valid. 
 
 First, the tests of truth are objective and social. 
 Psychic tests are defective, because any degenerate 
 tendency in a man makes his personal satisfactions 
 abnormal. Thought is not a test of truth unless it 
 leads to activity. The only valid personal test is 
 whether or not individual action conforms to social 
 standards. 
 
 Second, there are no universal laws. Action is 
 fxiiil 
 
PREFACE 
 
 aroused, not, as the rationalist assumes, by the correct- 
 ness of formal statements of truth, but by a group of 
 motives of which the formal statement of facts and 
 principles is but a subordinate, although an essential, 
 part. The test of truth is action, and this comes only 
 when the whole man is aroused. 
 
 Third, skepticism affords no test of truth. It is 
 merely a shifting from social to psychic standards, 
 resulting in the displacement of social law by individual 
 caprice. Skepticism is either a revolt against the 
 arrogance of social tradition or springs from degenerate 
 tendencies in those who are affected by it. In neither 
 case can it be a part of the forward movement of 
 thought. It may help the individual, but is always 
 socially destructive. 
 
 Fourth, the psychic test of truth as a relation between 
 an idea and its object is defective. A philosophical 
 pragmatist may, as Professor James says, accept this 
 as a matter of course, but social pragmatists must 
 look elsewhere for their test. Truth is a relation be- 
 tween thought and act, and not between feeling and its 
 external cause. The truth is not merely workable ; it 
 makes men work. If it does not do this, the man is 
 either economically dependent or psychically defective. 
 Ideas are not sense perceptions, but are social impress- 
 ments, due to activity carried on by men in society. 
 
 [xiv] 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Their relations are not, primarily, to physical atoms 
 about them, but to the social environment from which 
 they are derived. Thought is adjustment socially 
 acquired ; activity is adjustment biologically inherited. 
 All tests of truth must be measures of this joint adjust- 
 ment, not of the relations of individuals to the objec- 
 tive world. 
 
 [*v] 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Preface v 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. Introduction 1 
 
 II. Scientific Method . . . .17 
 
 III. The Economic Interpretation of His- 
 
 tory 31 
 
 IV. The Social Interpretation of Thought 45 
 V. The Social Process .... 63 
 
 VI. The Stages of Thought Development 83 
 
 VII. Morbid Degeneration . . . .105 
 
 VIII. Senile Degeneration . . . .119 
 
 IX. The Will 135 
 
 X. Character 149 
 
 XI. Inspiration 165 
 
 XII. Historic or State Religion . .179 
 
 XIII. Social Religion 191 
 
 XIV. The Social Mission of the Church . 207 
 XV. The Socialization of Religious 
 
 Thought 225 
 
 [xvii 
 
Sin is Misery; Misery is Poverty; 
 the Antidote of Poverty is Income 
 
 I xviii ] 
 
CHAPTER I 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
This book is not an apology for religion, but a con- 
 structive defense. Itidenttfes religion; hot witt moral- 
 ity, but with the social reaction against degeneration 
 and vice. Were all men moral and normal, religion 
 would have less vitality ; it grows in power as the pres- 
 sure of external conditions forces men into degradation 
 and misery. Religion and morality are the reverse sides 
 of a larger scheme of purifying and elevating humanity. 
 
 A generation ago the defense of religion was a subject 
 of popular discourse. Thoughtful men wrote books 
 on Christian Evidence that were widely read and made 
 the basis of popular discussion. Many books are still 
 written about religion, but they are mainly occupied 
 with an exposition of its moral doctrines. It is regarded 
 sufficient if it is shown that personal morality is advan- 
 tageous and beyond the assaults of adverse critics. It 
 seems to be taken for granted that the beliefs of earlier 
 generations have been overthrown and that religion 
 must utilize its waning forces to uphold morality and 
 social stability. The Christian plan of salvation, how- 
 ever, is as important as ever and as capable of defense. 
 
 [3] 
 
f\ 
 
 THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 It has fallen into disrepute, not because it lacks proof, 
 but because its historical setting has been lost through 
 the increase of knowledge and through better methods 
 of investigation. If we make religion social instead of 
 historical, proof can be found for its essential doctrines. 
 I do not mean that all modern thought is in harmony 
 with the Christian scheme of salvation, but that an 
 energetic defense of it has a fair chance of success. This 
 is made clear by a restatement of the plan of salvation 
 so as to emphasize its modern aspects. The following 
 are its essential doctrines expressed in social instead of 
 theological terms: — 
 
 1. The doctrine of one supreme God. 
 
 2. The doctrine of the fall of man, or of social de- 
 generation. 
 
 3. The doctrine of regeneration, or the reincorpora- 
 tion of social outcasts into society, in contrast with the 
 doctrine of elimination. 
 
 4. The doctrine of a personal uplift through con- 
 I tact, influence and suggestion, in contrast with the 
 \ doctrine of evolution through biologic variation. 
 
 5. The doctrine of progress through peace and love, 
 in contrast with progress through conflict. 
 
 6. The doctrine of the Messiah, or of lofty inspiring 
 leadership, in contrast with the material concept of 
 civilization. 
 
 [4] 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 7. The doctrine of service, in contrast with self- 
 centered aggression. 
 
 8. The doctrine of social responsibility, in contrast 
 with individual rights. 
 
 9. The doctrine of personal responsibility in con- 
 trast with fatalism or external domination. 
 
 10. The doctrine that the wages of sin are death. 
 
 1 Each of these doctrines is capable of a vigorous de- 
 v< fense, and if stated in social terms the opposition to them 
 Of does not come from science, but from a mistaken concept 
 JN of history. Science is a method of proof, not a dogma. 
 Any problem becomes scientific when it is so formu- 
 lated that evidence may be collected, sifted and di- 
 i rected to a decision. It is true that every proposition 
 c v about religion is subject to dispute ; but it is equally 
 true that none is without many verifying facts and 
 principles. 
 
 The real cause of the decline of religious aggressive- 
 ness lies in an opposition not so fundamental, but more 
 potent than science presents. Our beliefs are in the 
 main not directly scientific, but cultural. Ideas and 
 modes of thought are adopted not so much on their 
 evidence as through their power to arouse freshness 
 and vigor of action. Science is merely a contributing 
 element whose dogmas resolve themselves into cultural 
 attitudes rather than scientific facts. All well-estab- 
 
 [5] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 lished beliefs grow or decline in vigor as the cultural 
 emphasis is shifted to or from the basis on which they 
 rest. We must look to these cultural changes for the 
 causes of the decline in faith. Only when the premises 
 of culture are altered, or those of religion changed so as 
 to harmonize with them, can a revival of Christian zeal 
 be anticipated. 
 
 The change in culture that has paralyzed religious 
 thought has many phases but few causes. Expressed 
 in terms of history, the Renaissance, with its revival 
 of Greek learning, and the modern emphasis of nature 
 stand out prominently as causes. Interpreted in eco- 
 nomic terms, the cause of the change lies in the shifting 
 of civilization from Southern regions subject to famine, 
 disease and war to those of the North, where peace, 
 security and prosperity abound. Stated in either 
 way, the fact develops that religious thought is bound 
 up with the cultural, economic and political experiences 
 and exigencies of the Southern races. It reflects their 
 views and gives them a universal validity to which the 
 evidence gives no warrant. Culture has returned to 
 the primitive attitude of the pagan world ; religion 
 has resisted the change. In consequence, the power 
 of culture has dampened the ardor of those who inter- 
 pret Christianity in harmony with traditional views. 
 Changes in science are needed much less than a re- 
 
 [6] 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 vision of the foundations of Christian tradition. A 
 broader view departing from this conventional attitude 
 would give religion a basis in economics and psychology. 
 Religion would thus obtain a general rather than a 
 local validity, and be freed from the dominance of any 
 particular situation or mental temperament. If this 
 transformation can be wrought, there is little to fear 
 from science ; for it, like religion, gets its basis and its 
 dogmas from the prevailing social atmosphere. The 
 two will harmonize when they have the same cultural 
 antecedents and get their inspiration from the same 
 ideals. 
 
 An example of the contrast between cultural and 
 religious ideas is afforded by the doctrine of the super- 
 natural, so often cited to show that religion and science 
 are opposed. Religion uses the language of the desert 
 or of vile material surroundings. Hence nature is 
 something bad — the bottom below which men cannot 
 fall. The natural man is a degenerate because he is 
 the type such conditions evolve. To get away from 
 nature means to approach God. With such ideas, it 
 is proper to speak of Him as supernatural. In cul- 
 tural language, nature is the highest, not the lowest, 
 category; for its terms have been coined by men in 
 happy physical surroundings with nature at its best. 
 To them the natural man is not the sodden brute of 
 
 [7] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 want and disease, but an ideal to be attained under 
 favorable conditions. " Supernatural' ' thus becomes 
 a meaningless term, because nature is the highest state, 
 and the natural man better than the best of men. It 
 is this view of nature that clashes with religious 
 thought. Either culture must give up its use of 
 "natural," or religion must adapt itself to it by a 
 change in its terminology. If the cultural usage is 
 accepted, "supernatural" must be replaced by some 
 other term expressing the idea but avoiding the con- 
 fusion of conflicting usage. This does not imply that 
 religious thought is wrong in the contrasts it deems 
 vital. The depraved and the divine are as far apart 
 when other terms are employed as when "natural" 
 and "supernatural" are used. And in making this 
 contrast, science is on the side of religion ; for culture 
 in its nature worship shuts its eyes to the bad that 
 creates depravity in man. We have only to alter 
 terms to give scientific form to this important religious 
 concept. 
 
 The doctrine of the fall of man is another instance 
 of the seeming conflict of science and religion that, 
 rightly understood, proves groundless. In this case 
 the opposition does not lie in any essential element of 
 the religious position, but to the way in which it is 
 stated. The attributing of the fall to the eating of 
 
 [8] 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 an apple is absurd. It is equally plain that there has 
 been a moral and physical fall of man when the man of 
 the historical epoch is compared with preceding ages. 
 There may have been no garden of Eden, but there 
 was an earlier epoch when men attained their maxi- 
 mum of vigor and longevity. Our heredity calls for a 
 life of ninety years, some say of one hundred and fifty 
 years. Man, previous to the last century, did not live 
 on the average more than thirty years, and his health 
 and vigor were far below the normal. From what he 
 was to what he became there is a real fall, justifying 
 the religious doctrine, even if the story picturing it is 
 a myth. This view is supported by the increase of 
 disease, war, famine and crime, bringing degradation 
 to men subsequent to the rise of civilization. The 
 aggregation of great populations in the lowland dis- 
 tricts, due to the change from pastoral to agricultural 
 life, the spread of disease, the exploitation of rulers, 
 the decline of physical resources, pushed men down to 
 the lowest limits of misery, poverty and vice. It is 
 in these regions and under these conditions that re- 
 ligion takes its rise ; its statement of facts is historically 
 correct and its doctrine sound, even if their pictorial 
 setting does not bear investigation. 
 
 A further illustration of how religious doctrines have 
 fallen into disrepute because of the way of stating 
 
 [9] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 them is to be found in the contrast between the ma- 
 terial and the spiritual. To be religious we do not 
 need to deny that we have material elements in our 
 nature, but only that we are not dominated by them. 
 Religious interest is not in our bodies but in our wills ; 
 and freedom is a matter of control, not of essence. We 
 can be spiritual, even though we are material. The 
 real contrast with the spiritual is the traditional. It 
 is the dominance of habit and routine that kills the 
 spirit, not any fatal predetermination of our bodily 
 powers. The "law" to which Paul objects is not a 
 part of our heredity, but the social impressment of 
 past ages. The traditional is objective and social in 
 origin; the spiritual is a psychic reaction against it, 
 a yearning for the freedom that social uniformity 
 prevents. The conflict of religion is between social 
 habit and social feeling. The spiritual is the inner 
 self in contrast to the social self. It is a suppressed 
 heredity battling with the routine and habit of an 
 external world. That there is such a conflict and that 
 the inner self, championed by religion, should be vic- 
 torious, no careful student of human nature would 
 deny. The right is with religion, even if it states its 
 case in a wrong way. 
 
 Another difficulty of the present situation is the use 
 of the term " normal* ' in the sense of the average man 
 
 [101 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 instead of making it designate the man of full develop- 
 ment. The average man has many abnormalities, some 
 permanent, others temporary; and so long as we 
 think in terms of him, no clear contrast can be made 
 between normal and abnormal men. This contrast is 
 of importance not only in religion but likewise in 
 every branch of social investigation. A second change 
 of usage is demanded in our concept of mind. A struc- 
 tural concept has prevailed that makes thought a 
 definite, predetermined product of some mechanism, 
 material or otherwise, molded by predetermined con- 
 ditions. The materialist tells us that the mind secretes 
 thought as the liver secretes bile. The transcenden- 
 talist is no less positive about the mechanism of the 
 mind, even if he expresses his thought in general laws 
 instead of material examples. Both are parts of a 
 preevolutionary view that persists because no recon- 
 struction of our general concepts has taken place in 
 harmony with our increased knowledge. 
 
 In contrast to this structural concept should be put 
 the genetic concept of mind that causes us to judge it 
 by its products instead of by its structure or ante- 
 cedents. The mind modifies its content not only as 
 it grows but also as the external pressure varies from 
 which its ideas come. There is no mechanism for 
 producing ideas. The individual gets them from the 
 
 [in 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 society of which he is a part. They are handed on by 
 an objective social process instead of being the result 
 of the mental mechanism which each individual in- 
 herits. Thought is immaterial because its ideas are 
 social, not structural, products. This genetic viewpoint 
 which subordinates brain structures to the social 
 process controlling thought opens up the only way to 
 free mental science from the materialism that structural 
 concepts promote. The brain may be ever so material 
 without doing damage so long as thought originates 
 socially and dominates the action of the brain through 
 the reactions, growth and change it evokes. Similar 
 to the change in the concept of mind is the change 
 demanded in our concept of God and the Universe. 
 So long as space concepts dominate, the universe is 
 thought of as a predetermined structure, definite in 
 parts and unified in character, making God a being 
 with functions complementary to those of men. This 
 attitude is easily understood when we recognize that 
 thought is social and that material and spatial con- 
 cepts were useful at an earlier date than those of time. 
 Our thought processes thus favor structural views of 
 mind, of God and of the universe. We can change 
 from them to genetic views of fundamental relations 
 only with much difficulty, and against them is always 
 the weight of authority, tradition and language. 
 
 [12] 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Religion begins not with a belief in God but with 
 an emotional opposition to removable evils. It is a 
 psychic reaction, not an intellectual conviction, and 
 its one essential element is its program for saving social 
 outcasts. Our social instincts are thus evoked in its 
 favor, and its opposite lies in the selfish tendencies 
 that would force to the wall those not fitted for the 
 struggle demanded for survival. Out of this back- 
 ground all religions have risen; they will continue to 
 evoke human sympathies and generate religious en- 
 thusiasm so long as the present rigid conditions of 
 survival remain. Social activity readily assumes a 
 religious form when men recognize that they sink 
 through degeneration and may rise again through 
 regeneration. Degeneration, regeneration and the will 
 are thus religion's first problems, from which all others 
 are derived. When religion emphasizes degeneration 
 as a starting point, its position assumes both a scientific 
 and a pragmatic quality. The subnormal — below 
 us — is to be avoided ; the supernormal — above us 
 — is to be striven for. Religion voices our opposition 
 to the one and our aspiration for the other. So long 
 as men hope to be better, and fear to become worse, 
 religion cannot die out. It cures degeneration through 
 the development of character. Degeneration is the 
 worst of evils ; the will is the greatest of forces. Only 
 
 [13] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 when these two are put in opposition is progress safe 
 and the supernormal attainable. 
 
 The discussions that follow may seem disconnected 
 because they bring together several viewpoints that 
 have thus far been isolated. One of the evils of the 
 division of science into minute parts is that the same 
 views may be held by different groups of specialists, 
 and yet through differences in terminology they may 
 be kept distinct and thus, although one in reality, 
 seem to be parts of distinct disciplines. It is hard to 
 break through these artificial barriers and get at the 
 essence of the recent advances of science. Many seem 
 to resent the restatement of ideas in terms other than 
 their own. Some time ago I wrote to a scientist in a 
 field far removed from my own, and congratulated him 
 on a discovery that seemed to me to be of importance 
 in my field as well as his. I received from him a curt 
 reply, saying that he hoped I would not use his thought, 
 because he was sure I would discredit it by using it in 
 a bad way. Doubtless this is an exaggeration of pre- 
 vailing tendencies, but enough of it exists to keep apart 
 subjects that are closely related. Science defeats its 
 own ends by a narrow specialization that isolates and 
 antagonizes its workers. As a result, the broader 
 aspects of recent progress are not worked out in a 
 way that furthers general changes in thought which 
 
 [141 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 legitimately flow from it. Antiquated scientific ideas 
 persist because the viewpoint of workers is still molded 
 by the ideas of an earlier generation. Little endeavor 
 is made to recast them in harmony with the results 
 these same workers have wrought. Scientific tradi- 
 tion, whether in its social or physical aspects, may 
 become as bad as theological tradition, and for much 
 the same reasons. Philosophy also has become a creed 
 with a tradition as narrow as that of the other groups. 
 Under such conditions the reshaping of general con- 
 cepts in harmony with newer facts becomes a matter 
 of difficulty. Evidence of these changes cannot be 
 found in any one field of investigation, nor is there any 
 single discovery that would lead to their acceptance. 
 A writer can at best offer only partial proof, and much 
 he uses will be second-hand material, of which other 
 specialists know more than he does. This difficulty 
 is involved in any general change in thought, and 
 must be faced by any one who attempts it. Whether 
 I succeed or not others must judge, but failure does 
 not necessarily mean that my method is wrong. I 
 shall at least outline problems for others to solve. 
 
 [15] 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 SCIENTIFIC METHOD 
 
 3 
 
II 
 
 Religious impulses and sentiments are among the 
 oldest of the race, and have existed with all kinds of 
 institutions, civilizations and degrees of culture. 
 There is no race without some form of religion, and 
 nowhere can it be found so separated from other 
 social facts that it can be studied by itself. It is an 
 alloy hard to isolate, because blended with every other 
 part of the social structure. Every activity is to 
 some degree religious, but none is purely so. Put 
 religion by itself and it disappears, or becomes merely 
 a formal institution, with no vitality outside of its 
 routine. To isolate phenomena of this sort demands 
 a special method and much preliminary study, but if 
 the key is once found and the field of religion plainly 
 demarcated, the subsequent stages of research will be 
 rapid and sure. 
 
 A study of method must therefore precede even a 
 definition of religion, for definitions are of no avail 
 when the subject matter is never found alone and 
 nothing else is found except in some way compounded 
 with it. To define is to contrast, and what is there 
 
 [19] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 to contrast with religion ? At first thought one might 
 say the secular and the religious give a contrast, but 
 here only the organized aspects of religion get a defi- 
 nition. The secular can be contrasted with the ecclesi- 
 astical but not with the religious, for the secular life 
 of a nation may express the religious tendencies better 
 than the ecclesiastical. Again a contrast is made of 
 science and religion, but there can be a scientific re- 
 ligion as well as an irrational one. To take for granted 
 that religion is irrational is to give away its case. 
 There are many other contrasts, and yet none of them 
 would define religion. Its essential qualities would be 
 as indefinite as before and as incapable of clear analysis. 
 Only a sound method of investigation can clear away 
 these difficulties and furnish the basis for a clear 
 demarcation of religion from other fields. 
 
 The method of physical science seems to many the 
 only one that has advanced human knowledge; in 
 addition, however, the method of economics deserves 
 consideration. Economics for the past century has 
 been the representative social science, forced into the 
 foreground because its material has been so abundant. 
 In the old division of the sciences natural philosophy 
 had the field now taken by the various physical sciences, 
 while moral philosophy had the province now occupied 
 by the social sciences. Had many social sciences de- 
 
 [20] 
 
SCIENTIFIC METHOD 
 
 veloped on a par with each other, the methods of these 
 sciences could be obtained by comparison. But the 
 moral philosophers of England, stimulated by the 
 success of Adam Smith, turned themselves into econ- 
 omists and won their victories mainly within its 
 preserves. For a whole century politics, psychology, 
 sociology and morals were merely by-products of 
 economics — the crude generalizations of men whose 
 main interest was in the promotion of economic thought 
 and the impressment of economic standards on public 
 opinion. It is no wonder, therefore, that the victories 
 won were economic and not sociologic, psychologic or 
 moral. The study of the methods of these thinkers is 
 valuable mainly in economics, and the method they 
 used can properly be called the economic method of 
 investigation, even if it should prove to be the best 
 method for all the social sciences. What, then, is the 
 essence of this method, and how does it differ from 
 that of the physical sciences ? 
 
 The method of investigation in the physical sciences 
 is not so simple that it can be formulated in terms 
 that would provoke no opposition, yet its leading 
 features can be easily described. It is agreed that all 
 knowledge must be founded on the observation of 
 facts, and that all laws must be capable of an empirical 
 verification. Even if there is some intermediate de- 
 
 [21] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 duction, a student of a physical science must start with 
 facts and end with them. Observation, experiment and 
 verification are thus the main tools of physical sciences, 
 and many would claim that they should be its sole tools. 
 To employ this method effectively, the object under 
 investigation must be isolated from other objects and 
 contrasted with them. This necessity creates the de- 
 mand for laboratories, since success in investigation 
 demands complete isolation and exact measurement. 
 
 In contrast to this process of isolation and detailed 
 study is the economic method dealing with wholes or 
 with a composition of forces that can neither be iso- 
 lated, nor studied as single units. Society is a living 
 organism. It cannot be put in a laboratory, nor can 
 its various elements be studied apart from the whole. 
 The method of physical science cannot go beyond 
 a mere statement of what is, and if one attempts to 
 follow it in social studies, he must fall back upon crude 
 historical generalizations or upon equally bad ones 
 derived from a comparative study of nations. These 
 difficulties have forced economists to begin with the 
 study of great changes, which, when consummated, 
 produce modifications so prominent that their effects 
 can be observed. The whole society before a given 
 change can be compared with the same society after 
 the change only when the results are conspicuous. The 
 
 [22;] 
 
SCIENTIFIC METHOD 
 
 introduction of free trade into England so radically 
 altered industry and commerce that its results could 
 be easily perceived. In the same way the change 
 from an absolute to a constitutional government pro- 
 duces effects that can be readily measured. 
 
 A series of prominent events of this kind gives a 
 body to economic doctrine which can be increased 
 so long as important changes produce effects visible 
 enough to constitute a verification. A direct exami- 
 nation of current facts can never prove an economic 
 theory. The verification only comes in a subsequent 
 epoch when the changes in question have worked out 
 their logical consequences. The economic unit is an 
 industrial epoch, all of which cannot at any one time 
 be directly under observation. Society, as it is, must 
 be put in contrast with itself plus or minus some im- 
 portant condition. Minor changes are ignored, and the 
 whole alteration is imputed to the major modification 
 that society is undergoing. It is this ignoring of minor 
 disturbing causes that creates the marked contrast be- 
 tween economic method and that of physical science. 
 Natural science can isolate minor causes and measure 
 them; social science cannot. It must therefore leave 
 out of account events so unimportant that their results 
 cannot be readily determined. Every important cause 
 is assumed to have one effect and each effect is im- 
 
 [23] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 puted to some single cause. This method works 
 admirably so long as important changes are under 
 consideration. That it often fails must also be ad- 
 mitted, but if it is the only method of advancing social 
 knowledge, the way in which it proceeds is worthy of 
 consideration. 
 
 The contrast between natural science and economic 
 methods can be made clearer by saying that the one 
 endeavors to ascertain qualities, while the other seeks 
 for consequences. Qualities appear when an object is 
 isolated or when accurately tested by a series of ex- 
 periments and studies. Consequences follow and are 
 clearly seen only in a distant epoch. The qualities of 
 a germ cell may be observed through a microscope, 
 but no one has ever seen a plant evolve out of some 
 other species. Consequences can be measured only 
 by the changes resulting over long epochs ; they are 
 never found in a laboratory. If time is involved, the 
 economic is the only method of investigation. 
 
 When this method is used in social science, two 
 distinct types of investigation come into prominence. 
 There must first be found the qualities of men and 
 nature, reappearing with such regularity that they 
 may be said to be the common qualities of men and 
 nature. Most of this work was done by the natural 
 theologians before the reorganization of their work as 
 
 [241 
 
SCIENTIFIC METHOD 
 
 economics. The concepts of a normal man and of a 
 beneficent nature were inherited by the economists 
 from their predecessors. All they have done is to 
 bring out more clearly the characteristics of the 
 normal man and the natural laws that work to his 
 advantage. The successful work of the economists 
 has been in another type of investigation, which also 
 has at its basis an assumption of the natural theo- 
 logians. If man is good and nature perfect, what is 
 the cause of evil ? The economist restates this prob- 
 lem by asking what is the cause of misery ? Evil may 
 be subjective, and hence sin, or objective, and then it 
 is misery. The economist has simplified the problem 
 by assuming that sin is a consequence of misery. 
 Remove misery, and sin will disappear. It has no 
 independent existence apart from the misery that bad 
 conditions create. It is but a step from this to the 
 thought that misery is the result of poverty, and thus 
 dependent on industrial conditions. Sin, misery and 
 poverty thus become one problem, and their antidote 
 is income. All three can be wiped out by changes in 
 industrial conditions. 
 
 I know of no place where the problem of the econo- 
 mist is better stated than by Henry George. Why 
 does poverty persist with progress ? If George had 
 not been in a hurry to give his answer, he would have 
 
 [251 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 brought out other assumptions that lie in such dis- 
 cussions. If man is good and nature beneficent, 
 poverty is due to specific causes that can be removed. 
 Economics thus becomes a study of the relations of 
 poverty and misery to bad industrial conditions. It 
 is here that the "one cause and one effect" doctrine 
 gets its importance and reveals its truth, which I will 
 illustrate by the doctrine of free trade. The theory of 
 competition that lies in the background assumes the 
 existence of a normal man and of a beneficent nature. 
 English misery must therefore be due to some specific 
 cause not inherent in normal men nor in nature. Pro- 
 tection is such a cause out of harmony with natural 
 and economic law. Its removal will restore England 
 to a natural condition and enable human nature to 
 express itself more fully in industrial activity. All 
 other causes of misery are for the time ignored, and 
 protection viewed as its sole cause. These assump- 
 tions may not be accurate, but if enough misery is 
 removed by a change of industrial policy to make the 
 effect in social betterment plainly visible, the change 
 in policy will be justified. And so it is with other 
 economic slogans. Child labor, the use of alcohol, the 
 lack of labor organizations, the growth of rent, exploi- 
 tation and woman's emancipation — these like many 
 other doctrines, are boldly asserted and defended by 
 
 [261 
 
SCIENTIFIC METHOD 
 
 the same arguments, and the success of each agitation 
 is measured in the same way. The net elimination of 
 human misery furnishes the verification to which they 
 must submit. The method fails only when measures 
 are adopted out of their order of importance. The 
 greater evils must be attacked first. Small causes pro- 
 duce no effects until their natural antecedents — the 
 great changes — have produced their results, and men 
 are restored more nearly to normal conditions. The 
 fight for the normal is always made by the elimina- 
 tion of abnormalities. They alone can be tested and 
 measured by the changes that historical epochs pro- 
 duce, and hence their study and prevention is the first 
 work of the economist. 
 
 The value of this method cannot be properly appre- 
 ciated until its power to generate faith in progress 
 and energy in action becomes manifest. The first 
 step in a social reform is a clear contrast between 
 existing conditions and those now possible. It must 
 ^p- also be recognized that present evils are due not to 
 ^ * general but to particular causes. If there is no con- 
 trast between the "is " and the "might be," the imagina- 
 tion has no chance to work ; if evils are due to general 
 and not to local conditions, there is no way of altering 
 them. When clear contrasts are made and the local 
 nature of evils becomes manifest, a social program can 
 
 [27] 
 
 & 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 be formulated that, setting aside local evils, makes the 
 "might be" into a reality. Take, for example, the 
 social program now forming that would eliminate 
 poverty. To make it effective, people must first see 
 how different the world would be if poverty were 
 removed. But to make this picture an effective 
 motive, poverty must be shown to be due to definite 
 causes. The older view did not permit the isolation 
 of the causes of poverty because they were viewed as 
 resulting from defects in human nature or in natural 
 conditions. The doctrine of total depravity made 
 poverty a general condition from which there was only 
 occasional relief. The law of diminishing returns, 
 coupled as it was with the "niggardliness of nature" 
 doctrine of the classical economists, had a like effect. 
 The abolition of poverty can become a social program 
 only when both these viewpoints are displaced and 
 the particular causes of poverty are separated from the 
 general conditions of prosperity. We can conceive of 
 progress without poverty only as we ascribe poverty 
 to some specific cause. 
 
 Picture again the change that is coming in the 
 South because of the recognition of the hookworm as 
 one cause of its misery. The older view assumed that 
 the characteristics of the Southern people were due to 
 their climate and physical conditions. People in hot 
 
 [28] 
 
SCIENTIFIC METHOD 
 
 climates, it was said, are lazy, indolent and imprudent. 
 It lies in the nature of things that they should be so, 
 and that only people north of the frost line can be ener- 
 getic and efficient. Southern misery thus becomes a part 
 of a general situation — a condition without a remedy. 
 All this is changed by the discovery of the hookworm 
 as a cause of laziness, languor and misery. We can 
 now picture what the Southern States would be with- 
 out hookworms to destroy the vitality of their people. 
 And this vision of greatness creates the motive of 
 power to work out the change. When an "is" can 
 be put in contrast with a "might be," the "ought to 
 be" looms up with sufficient clearness to make the 
 change. To localize evils always generates enough 
 will power to remove them. The method of isolating 
 evils and ignoring their minor causes is justified by 
 the moral awakening it evokes. 
 
 To make use of these facts, tendencies and forces 
 is the end of economic method. The first picture is 
 of the normal man possessing all the qualities of the 
 race, and thus a contrast is created with abnormal 
 environments in which degeneration and subnormal 
 tendencies prevail. Then comes the thought of a 
 normal environment that evokes ennobling human 
 characters, and is never the source of degeneration nor 
 of its consequences in vice and crime. The primal 
 
 [29] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 cause of degeneration is failing resources or some mis- 
 use of them. Sin is misery, misery is poverty, and the 
 antidote of poverty is income. Such is the message of 
 hope delivered by economics and natural theology 
 when their principles are blended in one discipline. 
 This is the method that should be used in determin- 
 ing what religion is and how it works. No empirical 
 study of religion can get beyond the petty details that 
 confuse and mislead, but which, when once understood, 
 serve as good illustrations of the principles involved. 
 First the essence and then the details is the only 
 method that will make religion a study fit to be com- 
 pared with other sciences. 
 
 [SO] 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION 
 OF HISTORY 
 
 2 
 

 Ill 
 
 The concept of a normal man and of normal indus- 
 trial conditions has thrown into the foreground the 
 motives that create progress. The resulting isolation 
 of the abnormal and local from the normal and general 
 generates the enthusiasm that leads to reform. To 
 localize an evil and to show its abnormal character 
 evoke the spiritual unrest that is the forerunner of 
 revolution. Interest evokes progress ; enthusiasm de- 
 mands regeneration. These two primal forces are 
 aroused and intensified by a skillful use of the eco- 
 nomic method of investigation. The method however, 
 has its dangers as well as merits. It succeeds when 
 the relative importance of evils can be accurately 
 measured and public attention concentrated on the 
 greatest of them. But when problems are taken out 
 of their natural order, or the enthusiasm of reformers is 
 dissipated by wrong standards of normality or by the 
 emphasis of minor evils before the removal of their 
 logical antecedents, the path of progress may be barred, 
 and should the dissension persist, a downward move- 
 d [33] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 ment may result. To insure progress, more than a 
 sound method is necessary. Some way must be found 
 to select between proposed alterations and to test the 
 evidence which various advocates present to promote 
 their reforms. 
 
 To meet this urgent need is the aim of the economic 
 interpretation of history. To simplify history and to 
 separate its truths from its errors, some type of society 
 must be accepted as normal, and other societies be 
 judged through its standards. The dominance of 
 economic motives and the urgency of economic needs 
 give to economic societies a legitimate claim to be 
 regarded as normal ; and if we further assume that 
 modern nations are more advanced than those of the 
 ancient world, there is little room for doubt but that 
 industrial nations should provisionally be accepted as 
 the standard by whose events the abnormalities of 
 other societies must be judged. The only other wide- 
 spread form of society is the military, whose defects 
 and transient nature are so obvious that no one seems 
 willing to adopt it as a standard by which to measure 
 social structures. It is often put forward as an objec- 
 tion to the economic interpretation of history that 
 there are just as strong grounds for a social, an intel- 
 lectual or a religious interpretation as for an economic 
 interpretation. Such critics fail, however, to perceive 
 
 [34] 
 
ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 
 
 the essential difference between an economic inter- 
 pretation and those contrasted with it. The qualities 
 of mankind are divided into two groups, the natural 
 and the acquired. For many thousand years there 
 has been little or no change in natural characters. As 
 biologic beings we are to-day what our ancestors were 
 when historians began to keep records : all the changes 
 have been within the group of acquired characters 
 which are in the main economic. Religious, social, 
 intellectual and sexual feelings cannot be regarded as 
 the causes of the changes appearing in history if these 
 feelings have not varied in intensity during the his- 
 toric epoch. It is only their relation to economic 
 events that has altered, and in this way many institu- 
 tions have arisen that reflect or reenforce the natural 
 feelings. Institutions, however, are acquired phenom- 
 ena, and their alterations give evidence of changes 
 within the realm of economics to which natural feel- 
 ings must adjust themselves. Should industrial habits, 
 methods of production and institutions become stable, 
 while new natural characters appeared, or the older 
 ones gained in strength, a period of history would 
 begin in which progress must be interpreted in other 
 than economic terms. The present epoch, with its 
 fixed natural characters and rapid industrial changes, 
 can have but one valid method of interpretation, 
 
 [35] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 and that is in terms of its acquired characters im- 
 pressed and modified by the pressure of economic con- 
 ditions. 
 
 A second reason for beginning social investigations 
 with an economic interpretation lies in the exaggerated 
 importance the economic factors acquire in periods of 
 decay and of diminishing productivity. The poorer 
 the resources upon which a nation depends, the greater 
 is the amount of time that its people must give to 
 earning a living, and the less they have for other activi- 
 ties. The economic discipline thus becomes more 
 severe, and its habits being more deeply impressed, 
 determine more fully the history and institutions of 
 such nations. Those whose energies just suffice to 
 earn a living must lead a life capable of an economic 
 interpretation. Even nations with great natural re- 
 sources are not free from this exaggeration of economic 
 tendencies, for they have been in the regions most 
 subject to invasion and conquest. Where a military 
 caste, by absorbing the surplus, keeps the workers in 
 poverty, they have conditions no better than workers 
 in nations with meager resources. Exploitation ex- 
 aggerates the force of an economic discipline even 
 more ruthlessly than does a poverty of resources. 
 These forces were still further increased during the 
 historic epoch by the drying up of the region in Western 
 
 [36] 
 
ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 
 
 Asia and Southern Europe, where the early civilizations 
 were located. In this way region after region felt 
 the force of decaying resources, and went down before 
 physical obstacles they could not surmount. The 
 civilization that arose on this basis could not but bear 
 the impress of the economic events which shaped it. 
 There was no passing on of an improved heredity from 
 one nation to its successors. Only the traditions, in- 
 stitutions and acquired characters were transmitted, 
 and these, from the necessities of the case, were mainly 
 industrial. For such a history there can be no other 
 key than an economic interpretation. If any other 
 viewpoint should in the end prevail, it must have its 
 basis in modern times, when industrial stability is once 
 more secured and the pressure of economic conditions 
 made less severe. But even here economic pressure is 
 too evident to be set aside, and other factors in civiliza- 
 tion cannot be fully appreciated until economic forces 
 have been isolated and their laws formulated. 
 
 The expansion of this last thought gives a third 
 reason why social investigation should begin with an 
 economic interpretation. The pressure of economic 
 events has modified, dwarfed and subordinated the 
 natural characters so that their present manifestations 
 do not at all represent their full vigor. I freely admit 
 that the social, moral and religious traits are funda- 
 
 [37] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 mental and of earlier origin than those characters to 
 which economists give attention. In principle, Adam 
 Smith was right in investigating sympathy before he 
 wrote a book about self-interest ; but in practice every 
 one fails, just as he did, who tries to study social and 
 moral problems before the effects of economic pressure 
 on these natural traits have been ascertained. The 
 natural man has little chance to express himself when 
 held in subjection by the pressure of external condi- 
 tions. The revolts against environmental control 
 have been too feeble and of too short a duration to 
 show the vitality and power of the social and moral 
 traits suppressed beneath the routine of daily life. 
 
 This subordination of natural traits is often ap- 
 proved because it carries with it the weakening of the 
 impulses and passions of the primitive man. Fear, 
 anger, hatred, jealousy and the sex feelings are par- 
 tially suppressed by the economic pressure making 
 courage, prudence, patience and forethought and 
 moral restraint the leading characters of civilized 
 races. Were these the only effects, we might con- 
 gratulate ourselves on the change and think of our 
 moral advance as a net gain. But the suppression 
 has extended to all the natural traits, the good as 
 well as the bad. There is a general blurring of the 
 sentiments that unfavorably affects religion, art and 
 
 [38] 
 
ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 
 
 poetry. We lose in inspiration more than we gain by 
 the suppression of passion. The drudgery of modern 
 industry may keep men from becoming very bad, but 
 it likewise prevents them from reaching the loftier 
 ends to which the free working of natural motives 
 would lead them. So long as natural instincts are 
 repressed, we cannot measure the force and vitality of 
 religion and art, which depend so fully on what nature 
 did for man in those earlier days before the economic 
 regime forced a life of routine drudgery on the great 
 mass of mankind. 
 
 We regard many characters as natural that are 
 acquired, because they appear so regularly in cur- 
 rent events, while the underlying natural traits, seen 
 only in distorted forms, are misjudged and under- 
 estimated. In this way sympathy is displaced by 
 selfishness, religion sinks into superstition, democracy 
 yields to imperialism, cooperation is displaced by class 
 struggle, competition gives way to monopoly, and 
 liberty to absolute power. In each case acquired 
 views and habits gain a dominance that so subordi- 
 nates and distorts natural traits as to make them 
 servants to economic needs instead of masters of our 
 lives and activities. Economic interpretation gives 
 the only method that will unravel the tangled skein 
 of social events and permit us to reach the ultimates 
 
 [89] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 through whose dominance alone the goal of civiliza- 
 tion may be reached. 
 
 Important as are these facts, they do not give the 
 real reason for starting social investigations with an 
 economic interpretation. There are two ways of 
 creating an advance : by bringing out more clearly 
 what is the normal, and by removing abnormalities 
 that obscure it. To get at the normal we need an 
 economic interpretation, but we need it even more to 
 isolate the abnormal and to make plain its source 
 and cause. Evil and sin are either the result of defects 
 in human nature, and hence without a remedy, or they 
 are due to external conditions that mar human nature 
 by producing abnormalities. If the latter view is 
 accepted, the word "economic" must be substituted 
 for "external" in describing the conditions that origi- 
 nate evil and sin. While many good things are natural, 
 most bad things are economic. The good is also the 
 outcome of general laws ; the bad is the result of local 
 conditions that may be altered. Evils thus have 
 specific causes that may be isolated and removed. 
 They never arise from the general laws of nature nor 
 from the native impulses of men. Neither nature nor 
 man needs to have his laws altered. Nature is benefi- 
 cent and man is good ; they become malignant forces 
 only under local conditions that prevent the full ex- 
 
 [40] 
 
ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 
 
 pression of natural law and keep men from following 
 their better impulses. To remove the temptation to 
 sin means to do away with starvation, poverty, dis- 
 ease, overwork and bad conditions which depress 
 workers and turn virtue into vice. There is no general 
 law either of nature or of man that forces misery and 
 vice on men. They are local and definite in origin, 
 and may be removed one by one through modifying 
 economic conditions or by the use of the surplus which 
 economic conditions create. 
 
 So simple is all this that it would be axiomatic if 
 it were not for misunderstandings that have arisen 
 through the injection of a false philosophy, confusing 
 the economic interpretation of history with a ma- 
 terialistic conception of history. Historical material- 
 ism has as its opposite historical idealism. The one 
 claims that ideal or spiritual facts have their basis in 
 material events, while the [opposite doctrine is held by 
 the idealist. In economic interpretation the problem 
 is not of the dominance of spirit or of matter, but 
 whether a first place shall be given to history or to 
 economics. Shall past events be interpreted in the 
 light of present events, or shall present events be 
 judged by similar events in the past ? Both idealism 
 and materialism are historical interpretations, and thus 
 stand opposed to the economic method that interprets 
 
 1411 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 past events in the light of the present. Abnormal 
 societies, the economist holds, should be judged by 
 normal societies ; past nations were more abnormal 
 than those of the present ; industrial societies are 
 more normal than those of any other kind. The 
 force of an economic interpretation is increased by the 
 assumption that acquired characters are economic and 
 that the history of the race is a record of their evolu- 
 tion and modification. It is still further intensified 
 by the fact that evils creating social abnormalities are 
 economic in origin, local in nature, and have specific, 
 not general, causes. The end of economic interpreta- 
 tion is to separate the normal from the abnormal and 
 to raise the level of society by removing the abnormali- 
 ties that check progress and prevent clearness in social 
 thought. 
 
 Viewed in this way, economic interpretation is not a 
 new method of investigation, but only a new name for 
 one long in use. The economists derived it from their 
 predecessors, the natural theologians, and have de- 
 veloped it into an accurate instrument of research. 
 Its value consists in the emphasis put on studies of 
 normal life as an antecedent to any investigation of 
 the complexities of modern or historical problems. To 
 show its relation to religion, we must put ourselves in 
 the attitude of the natural theologians who sought to 
 
 [42] 
 
ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY 
 
 separate the good from the bad and to assign the bad 
 to local, temporary causes. Had they had the thought 
 that evils were economic in origin and might be re- 
 moved by specific changes in the social environment, 
 they would not have been so easily displaced, and their 
 system might have withstood the shock that evolution- 
 ary concepts gave it. Their attitude can be readily 
 revived by reasoning based on an economic interpre- 
 tation of the confusing facts of history. Only thus can 
 the thread of social progress be followed, and the 
 abnormal be so clearly apprehended that it may be 
 opposed and removed. 
 
 Just as economic interpretation had a predecessor 
 in natural theology, so it has a contemporary in the 
 pragmatism of to-day. The two views are the same in 
 their essentials, and stand in contrast to the rationalism 
 and skepticism of the preceding epoch. Both make 
 values ultimates, and measure truth by its effects. To 
 judge the past by the present is to judge by consequences 
 and not by causes. Economic interpretation is thus 
 a particular instance of the pragmatic attitude and the 
 best field in which its worth may be tested. The dif- 
 ference seems to lie in the fact that economists have 
 come to this position from an interest in social problems, 
 while the pragmatists are philosophers tending towards 
 the social viewpoint. Both groups of thinkers are thus 
 
 [431 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 more or less inconsistent, because they have not wholly 
 cast off the dogmatic attitude impressed by their edu- 
 cation. The errors and inconsistencies of predecessors 
 are not so easily cast off that they may be discarded by 
 a single generation. So radical a change as that in- 
 volved in pragmatism or in a thoroughgoing economic 
 interpretation of history is a slow growth; but as the 
 various movements blend, they will produce changes 
 comparable with any of the great thought move- 
 ments of the past. The interpretation of history 
 is but an instance of the interpretation of thought. 
 Analysis should begin with history, because its data 
 are more recent and its material more accessible. 
 Thought is older and more socialized, and its origins 
 are less readily interpreted in terms of the living 
 present. No more principles are demanded for its 
 interpretation than are needed for the interpretation 
 of history. The present is the key to both, and out of 
 it all the categories of thought and history arise. 
 
 [44] 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE SOCIAL INTERPRETATION OF 
 THOUGHT 
 
 S 
 
IV 
 
 The principle of interpretation set forth in the last 
 chapter has brought out the fact that, while the good 
 is general and nature beneficent, evil is local and eco- 
 nomic. The evil can therefore be separated from the 
 general good and removed. The economic interpreta- 
 tion of history thus carries us a long way towards our 
 goal but not to it. It settles a number of the initial 
 problems of progress, but leaves untouched many of the 
 more intricate. To get at the whole truth, the same 
 process of interpretation must be applied to thought as 
 to history. The best records of the past are not in 
 documents handed down to us but in the ideas we get 
 from our mental environment. Error is to thought 
 what evil is to the race. The true and the false are 
 merely particular manifestations of the good and the 
 bad. There is no criterion of truth except that it is 
 good, and none of error except that it is bad. The 
 same law applies to error as to evil. It is specific and 
 local in its origin and can be removed by making defi- 
 nite changes. We need, therefore, to interpret the 
 relation of truth and error just as we have done that 
 
 [47] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 of the good and bad. The chief obstacle lies in the 
 assumption that we have a faculty for the perception 
 of truth just as we have for seeing red or hearing 
 sound. An act of cognition permits of no interpreta- 
 tion. We must take it at its face value. But if truth 
 is a process and not a perception, we must discount 
 this face value by every element of error that enters 
 the process. 
 
 Is, then, truth a process or a perception ? A ready 
 and apparently conclusive answer to this is given by 
 those who say that ideas are copies of external things, 
 and that their truth is determined by a simple com- 
 parison of the mental impression and its external 
 object. False ideas are thus those that have no ex- 
 ternal cause ; true ideas are those that have something 
 external which they resemble. When this primitive 
 standpoint is abandoned, no firm resting place is found 
 until it is recognized that ideas are social products. 
 We do not start with ideas ; we get them as we increase 
 our adjustment. Ideas, moreover, come at the end of 
 a period of progress and not at its beginning. We do 
 not get ideas and adjust ; we adjust and then get ideas. 
 Adjustment is a social process. If this be true, the 
 ideas that come out of it are also social, and not the 
 product of any one mind. 
 
 The history of particular ideas brings out the same 
 [48] 
 
SOCIAL INTERPRETATION OF THOUGHT 
 
 fact. Each social movement begins with vague notions 
 as to how the old adjustments are failing and how 
 some new adjustment is to be reached. Thousands 
 express their dissatisfaction in crude ways, and others 
 vaguely feel there is a goal ahead worth striving for. 
 Out of these struggles and failures comes a clearer 
 perception both of old evils and of new advantages ; 
 finally some one, but slightly in advance of his fellows, 
 sees clearly both the goal and the differences between the 
 old and the new. He sums up the change in a few 
 words, and the resulting contrast opens up to the whole 
 society a new adjustment. Every idea that is a part 
 of our mental atmosphere represents the end of a fierce 
 struggle through which the race has passed. Ideas are 
 our most precious heritage, for they guard us from more 
 evils and lead us to more goals than all other devices 
 and powers. 
 
 In face of such facts one wonders how a writer like 
 Professor Green can say that every philosopher starts 
 with a " problem " and a " method," the problem to 
 be solved by the method. 1 Locke, to whom this asser- 
 tion is specifically applied, is said to start with the prob- 
 lem of the origin of ideas and to solve it by looking into 
 his own mind for their origin. Yet nothing is plainer 
 than that both Locke and his contemporaries stumbled 
 1 Work* of T. A. Green, Vol. I, p. 6. 
 i T491 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 about for a long time in the maze of a new adjustment. 
 He and others wrote for decades before seeing their 
 problem or the method of its solution. Their evolution 
 was social, and when clearness came, the epoch of 
 which they were a part was at its end. So is it with 
 all writers and with every epoch. Volumes are written 
 by each great thinker before his clear contrasts come; 
 he gets them not on his own initiative, but through 
 the pressure exerted by his fellows, who are moving 
 with him in the process of adjustment. Why is it that 
 every new thought has from two to a dozen fathers, 
 if the process that creates them is not social and the 
 goal ahead is not some new form of adjustment in 
 which the whole society participates ? The reply is 
 that we do not, as individuals, see or create ideas ; we 
 get them out of the current of life. The truth of an 
 idea is established before it is an idea. Its presence is 
 its best verification. 
 
 We get the same results when ideas are treated ana- 
 lytically. In every idea, sensation, passion, memory 
 and imagination are blended because it has been acted 
 upon many times by each of these faculties before it 
 is clearly perceived. It has also been contrasted with 
 other elements in present adjustment and with the 
 cruder ideas in preceding stages of progress. Not 
 only must it be compounded, analyzed and recom- 
 
 [50] 
 
SOCIAL INTERPRETATION OF THOUGHT 
 
 pounded, but it must also be capable of communica- 
 tion and transmission. If ideas did not express other 
 people's adjustment as well as one's own; if the next 
 generation could not acquire them by contact, illustra- 
 tion and example, the net adjustment of the race would 
 be too meager to make men intelligent or life desirable. 
 True ideas promote adjustment; false ideas obstruct 
 it. The greater the adjustment, the greater the truth. 
 There are but two measures of adjustment, the normal 
 and the true. The normal expresses in life what the 
 truth expresses in ideas, for the truth is adjustment 
 made conscious by ideas. 
 
 These general tests are too vague or difficult to be 
 available. The practical test of truth is the absence 
 of error. There are few who expect to reach new truth 
 by argument. Most men expect to find it in hidden 
 corners and in unexpected ways after an arduous search 
 in which our fellows join and for which they are partly 
 responsible. But when we want to remove error, we 
 all follow the plan of argumentation, and expect cold 
 facts and skillfully stated syllogisms to drive error out 
 as the sun dissipates the mist or as light displaces 
 darkness. 
 
 This attitude overlooks the social nature of error 
 and of its need of interpretation. Every error has a 
 history and is a force. We see this plainly in the case 
 
 [51] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 of a superstition or a myth. We know that they have 
 value, and that those who have them do not desire to 
 get rid of them. A creed, a cult, a platform or a pro- 
 gram of any sort is tenaciously held, and yields to new 
 social alignments only under great pressure. The 
 cause is the same in all these and other similar cases. 
 They are social in origin, formed from an aggregate of 
 separate elements to voice the sentiments and aspi- 
 rations of a given age, sect or party. To make a creed 
 or platform enough demands are blended into one 
 program so that, when carried out, definite, measurable 
 changes are wrought in society. All parts of the creed 
 are valued for this gross result, although some one or a 
 few of its tenets may have been the sole cause of the 
 advantage. The tariff and the greenbacks after the 
 Civil War acquired a value because of their association 
 in the platform of the Republican party along with 
 the demand for free labor and national unity. These 
 latter demands, sanctifying the errors in tariff and 
 monetary discussions, have created a situation from 
 which we are extricating ourselves with difficulty. 
 Errors of this kind do not disappear before the mere 
 presence of truth. They have a social worth due to 
 their origin and connection that makes them dear to 
 their defenders. They are the surviving part of an 
 earlier social unit, and get their value from some his- 
 
 [52] 
 
SOCIAL INTERPRETATION OF THOUGHT 
 
 toric source. We impute to this remnant the utility 
 of the earlier whole, and defend it in the name of the 
 antecedent creed or cult whose emaciated part the error 
 is. Errors are thus historic products or the results of 
 abnormal psychology. In either case their origin is 
 definite and their causes removable. The good is gen- 
 eral ; evil is local and specific. The truth is likewise 
 general, while error has definite causes. The good and 
 the true are measures of adjustment which evil and 
 error prevent. There is but one final test of all of 
 them — the utility or disutility following the adjust- 
 ment they create or destroy. 
 
 Utility, however, is a standard to be taken only 
 when the loss or gain involved needs no interpreta- 
 tion. This simplicity is seldom attained, for in social 
 matters only great changes can be accurately meas- 
 ured. We must, therefore, in most cases resort to 
 deduction and gain simplicity by connecting evils and 
 errors with their causes in abnormal conditions. But 
 deductive arguments can be accepted at their face 
 value no more than can events or satisfactions. They 
 are subject to the same errors and stand the same need 
 of interpretation. This fact is covered up by the logical 
 canons that science uses. We seem to give certainty to 
 conclusions by the logical chain that unites them to 
 premises, when in reality what we give them is value. 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 All that passes down the chain from premise to con- 
 clusion is the value stored up in the premise. When 
 the logical chain is complete, the conclusion gets the 
 value past experience has given to the premise. That 
 A is B means nothing unless B, by some previous 
 experience, is a source of satisfaction, and in this case 
 there passes from B to A a utility equal to its own. 
 The satisfaction of the consequent is equal to that of the 
 antecedent. The logical chain is merely a wire over 
 which more or less' satisfaction passes just as more or 
 less is stored up in the primary reservoir. The wire, 
 however, is of no consequence if the battery is not 
 charged. 
 
 The real facts come out, however, when arguments 
 are considered in detail and the effects observed that 
 follow their acceptance. All primary beliefs are social. 
 By this I mean all beliefs have a value stored up in 
 them that may be imparted to anything deduced from 
 them. Utilities are divided into two classes, inherent 
 utility and imputed utility. The inherent utility of 
 an object always goes with it, no matter where placed 
 or what its relations are. Sugar has an inherent utility 
 in its sweetness, and bread in its life-giving qualities, 
 but the utility of sugar in a cake is an imputed utility. 
 We know what the whole utility of the cake is, but how 
 much of it is due to sugar, and what to other ingredients, 
 
 [54] 
 
SOCIAL INTERPRETATION OF THOUGHT 
 
 is a matter not of perception but of judgment. This 
 judged utility is its imputed utility, and only through 
 a judgment can the utility of any part of an enjoyed 
 whole be determined. There are two rules in deciding 
 upon the imputed utility. If the part is essential to 
 the whole, then the utility of the whole is imputed to the 
 part, and the value of the part becomes the same as that 
 of the whole. If, however, the whole has value without 
 the part, or something else may be substituted for the 
 part, the utility of the part is equal to the difference of 
 the utility of the whole with and without the part. 
 This is called the marginal utility, and it is the utility 
 imputed to most objects. Social units do not follow 
 this rule. The part is essential to the whole, and thus 
 each part must have imputed to it the same utility 
 that the whole has. Logical values are social values. 
 Consequences thus get by imputation the value of their 
 antecedents. The social belief that the premise repre- 
 sents gives all the value the conclusion possesses. 
 
 Premises thus are predicates about beliefs and not 
 about reality. The social value of the belief is imputed 
 to all its consequences. A belief, in other words, is a 
 value that has been socially tested. A creed is a group 
 of these beliefs blended into an harmonious whole, and 
 back of creeds are tribal rites, dietary laws, moral codes, 
 folk ways and other early and crude ways of measuring 
 
 [551 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 social values. Every social predicate must bring with 
 itself consequences so clear and definite that every 
 member of the group can see its utility. It must not 
 only be proved but proved many times over. All 
 minor values not capable of demonstration are imputed 
 utilities made important by their relation to larger so- 
 cial wholes. Early creeds and moral codes are the best 
 examples of the action of this social process, but the 
 additions made to our beliefs in more recent times follow 
 the same law. Every epoch gives birth to new creeds 
 and moral codes which are tested in the same crude 
 way. The new whole is born a social unit, to the parts 
 of which utilities are imputed. The creation of the 
 new precedes the decay of the old, for decay means not 
 skepticism but a new imputation of values. Some of 
 the older units blend with the new social creeds, and 
 thus get a renewal of their vitality, while others, failing 
 of this, lose the utility imputed to them through their 
 connection with earlier creeds. They die a slow death, 
 as the creed or moral code of which they are a part 
 loses its vigor. Yet, in spite of this tendency, imputed 
 values seem to grow as their social backgrounds fade 
 away. The vulnerable points of a creed are naturally 
 first attacked and most bitterly opposed. As a defense 
 its advocates impute more utility to the parts under fire, 
 until, in its final form, many curious distortions appear. 
 
 [56] 
 
SOCIAL INTERPRETATION OF THOUGHT 
 
 The weak points are extolled as of prime value, and the 
 essentials are neglected because unopposed. A dying 
 creed thus seems an irrational product of the imagina- 
 tion, and yet if its history is followed, each step towards 
 irrationality is a logical process impelled by the need of 
 imputing utility to vulnerable points. As an illustra- 
 tion, take the growth of the Southern creed about 
 slavery. As the advantages of free labor became 
 more manifest and the opposition to slavery grew, the 
 South gave more importance to slavery. Religion, 
 constitution and economic welfare all became subordi- 
 nate to it, and its defense became more logical as its 
 basis became weaker. Such a history has been repeated 
 many times, and each case shows the distortions that 
 beliefs undergo as the imputation of utility to its vul- 
 nerable points becomes more apparent, 
 v' While this decay in creeds is taking place, another 
 process is transforming their valuable parts into forms 
 not subject to loss. Premises or first principles are the 
 common elements of the various social creeds. To 
 them we impute all the utility of the creeds under 
 comparison. Ethics in the same way is the common 
 element of the various moral codes. The Golden Rule 
 and the ethical imperative represent the essence of the 
 various moral codes, and to them we give a value greater 
 than that of the codes, under consideration. This com- 
 
 [571 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 parative method is at the basis of all predicates that we 
 call universal or absolute, and by it we seem to get 
 away from the social basis on which judgments rest. 
 Yet the process is one of valuation, even if it be dis- 
 guised. All universals rest on imputed, not on inherent, 
 utility. Truth is merely desocialized values made 
 infinite in amount by the character of the social facts 
 on which it rests. We get at truth through the impu- 
 tation of value that follows agreements. We fall into 
 error when the principles that made creeds valuable 
 have been transformed into truths. The decaying creed 
 is thus upheld by a wrong imputation of utility until 
 the skeptic faces it squarely and tests its efficiency. 
 
 While skepticism is a natural stage in the progress 
 of thought, no mistake is more fraught with evil than to 
 assume that it is the first stage. It is interpretation 
 and not skepticism that clarifies, simplifies and adds 
 to the positive aspects of thought and blends its units 
 into larger, more homogeneous wholes. As skepticism 
 grows, men become pessimistic. As interpretation 
 proceeds, men become optimistic. Which is the simpler 
 and earlier tendency ? The principle of interpretation 
 is nothing more than the first canon of logic — the 
 method of agreement — stated in terms of values. If 
 two objects have certain qualities in common, the 
 value is imputed to these common qualities and not to 
 
 [58] 
 
SOCIAL INTERPRETATION OF THOUGHT 
 
 those in which they differ. There is nothing in an inter- 
 pretation except a judgment about likeness. The clear, 
 the simple and the essential are raised in value by every 
 agreement, while their opposites lose in the same meas- 
 ure. Skepticism is more complex, for it imposes some 
 external standard not based on mere likeness. 
 
 The skeptic comes into religion with the preestab- 
 lished premise that there is no supernatural. This 
 he does not get from religious evidence, but from some 
 outside discipline from which he draws his premises. 
 This external standard is necessary in every skeptical 
 judgment. A is always judged through B, never 
 through its own evidence. This means that a skeptical 
 conclusion is always a secondary, not a primary, judg- 
 ment, and is more complex in its character than are 
 judgments based on simple agreements. Judgments 
 of difference or of disutility come later, and have more 
 elements than those of value and agreement. In social 
 affairs we become aware of differences and evils only in 
 epochs of decay. Skepticism and pessimism appear 
 when beliefs and creeds have lost their vigor. This 
 invariable order shows belief to be simpler and earlier, 
 and that interpretation is the first of our logical pro- 
 cesses. Growth preceded decay, truth is older than 
 error, affirmation comes before denial, prerequisites 
 come before consequences. 
 
 [59] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 In experience we find ideas, beliefs and creeds so 
 fused that they seem but phases of some one process, yet 
 in origin they are distinct, and must be treated geneti- 
 cally to bring out their differences. Ideas are social 
 products individually acquired. They are the acts of 
 society reacting on the individual, while beliefs are the 
 acts of men reacting on society. In spite of the fact 
 that ideas are only found as constituents of beliefs, the 
 ideas preceded the beliefs in society, while beliefs in 
 men precede the social control they exercise in society. 
 Beliefs start in individuals and at first reflect only per- 
 sonal experience. They are local in origin and reflect 
 the activity of some one man before they are elevated 
 into social forces. This man dominates his group or 
 tribe, and hence his belief becomes theirs and is propa- 
 gated as a social fact. A local environment is thus 
 projected beyond itself and made the background of 
 social thought. A creed is a union of beliefs derived 
 from a local environment and of such importance that 
 its value can be objectively measured. Its local utility 
 leads to its spread and adoption in larger areas, where 
 it either blends with other creeds and rises into social 
 truth, or, losing some of its essential elements, it 
 sinks into error and blocks progress. This upward 
 blending movement forms the social predicates on which 
 all persons act but no one can test. The downward 
 
 [60] 
 
SOCIAL INTERPRETATION OF THOUGHT 
 
 movement of their remnants forms the superstitions, 
 myths and ceremonies that chain men to the past. 
 Beliefs and the creeds formed from them are never 
 static. They are at first local and vital, then good or 
 bad, and finally true or false. Genetically, all beliefs 
 are vital in origin and get their values from this fact. 
 The vital, the good and the true are but phases of one 
 judgment. The transformations of vital values into 
 judgments of morality and truth merely impute value 
 to elements unperceived in the original judgment. 
 
 61 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE SOCIAL PROCESS 
 
 * 
 
The preceding analysis of mental powers and social 
 relations has proceeded genetically, beginning with the 
 simpler forms of life and society and ending with the 
 complex. The method has been one of interpretation, 
 and the steps taken have all been positive. When we 
 are close to the origin of thought, all its complexity is 
 reduced to a few elements, all its values are vital and 
 its laws are based on the method of agreement. The 
 contents of mind in this primitive condition are sensa- 
 tions, reactions and values, each of which the simplest 
 mind has some mental mechanism to produce. There 
 is, however, a fourth content, ideas, for which there is 
 no mental mechanism. There is no idea producing 
 faculty. The mind neither sees nor manufactures 
 them ; for ideas are social products acquired from the 
 medium in which the thinker exists. They form a 
 subjective environment of individuals so vital to every 
 act that they are valued more highly than the native 
 products of mental activity. Because of his social 
 proclivities, each individual starts life with a super- 
 valuation of the acquired. It is only by the subordi- 
 p [651 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS, OF RELIGION 
 
 nation of his natural instincts to his social needs that 
 survival in complex conditions is possible. 
 
 When the social is analyzed into its elements, in the 
 later stages of thought development, fundamental rela- 
 tions seem to be between man and nature and not, as 
 before, between man and society. This stage, however, 
 comes in not by the creation of new faculties but by 
 the recognition of new values. There is but one type 
 of judgment ; for all values are in origin vital, sinking 
 or rising as new forms of adjustment place men in closer 
 relation to the world about them. Human progress 
 from primitive times to the present has not resulted 
 from the evolution of additional faculties, but from 
 their utilization in new ways. Each stage in this 
 progress has added new types of value without dis- 
 placing the earlier ones from which they were derived. 
 The evolution of thought and of faculties differs in that 
 thought changes growing out of new vital relations are 
 not due to alterations in psychic powers. Thought 
 changes are environment changes influencing men 
 through the appearance of ideas produced by new adjust- 
 ments. Thought change is thus a social change, not a 
 structural change within the mind itself. It is genetic 
 in growth not only for the race but for each individual 
 and age. Each epoch and each person recapitulates 
 the thought history of the race ; the new always begins 
 
 [661 
 
THE SOCIAL PROCESS 
 
 with crude vital values which are gradually transformed 
 into those that more fully express our complex civili- 
 zation. Nothing is lost ; all is transformed. Maturity 
 keeps active the values of childhood. They are absent 
 only in abnormality or old age. Thought is abnormal 
 when some stage is omitted, or when the final stage is 
 not reached. The omission or displacement of stages 
 of thought thus affords tests of abnormality by the use 
 of which we can judge abnormal thought as objectively 
 as we can abnormal bodily traits. No one can rightly 
 take his subjective states or social ideas as ultimates 
 until he has tested them through the normal standards 
 of his age and race. 
 
 Appearances and contradictions are indeed made by 
 our faculties, but it is to abnormal and not to normal 
 psychology which we must look for their origin. Every 
 defective faculty presents reality in a distorted fash- 
 ion, with resulting contradictory appearances. But 
 these distortions of the truth are temporary. Ab- 
 normal psychology merely reflects the defects of the 
 environment. The normal alone is carried along by 
 our heredity, and it would, if dominant, reflect the 
 real and make an ever present contrast with the defects 
 and absurdities of abnormal life. It is otherwise with 
 the social process by which our ideas are formed. It 
 works through the acquired traits, and superimposes 
 
 [671 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 the values of each moment on the next. In the earlier 
 stages of human progress instincts were developed that 
 forced each person to do what his immediate future de- 
 manded. With the growth of complex conditions in- 
 stincts became less effective and covered less fully the 
 field of human activity. Where instinct failed, con- 
 scious motives and acquired traits had to be substituted, 
 and they were made effective only as values increased. 
 The social process cares nothing for error unless it im- 
 pedes action, and hence it seizes every combination, no 
 matter if inherently contradictory, to attain its ends. 
 Our ideas are social, and become individual only through 
 the routine imposed on the young by their elders. Each 
 man is drilled to see the world as his predecessors saw it, 
 so that their values may become his values. Language, 
 habit and social conventions all conspire to give us a 
 heritage that makes appearances seem more important 
 than the fundamental concepts outside the social pro- 
 cess. Appearances and error once having been social- 
 ized, it is difficult to get rid of them, even if they 
 become injurious. The social perpetuates itself by 
 repetition and imitation. Another principle than that 
 which originally made things social carries them along. 
 Thought becomes social through its value ; it continues 
 social through the routine that habit and imitation im- 
 pose. 
 
 [68] 
 
THE SOCIAL PROCESS 
 
 It is these two forces together — valuation and 
 routine — that make the social process, and both of them 
 are elements in the creation of appearance and the 
 submergence of reality beneath the temporary interests 
 that impose contradiction and inconsistency upon us. 
 It is not in our perceptions but in our thought that these 
 inconsistencies lie. Our faculties have developed to 
 make perception accurate ; thought has developed to in- 
 crease motives. Thought is thus so blended with per- 
 ception that we seem to have a unity where diversity 
 exists. The error of thought is that it uses past values 
 given by the social process instead of present values at- 
 tested by our faculties. Each moment is thus domi- 
 nated by the values of past moments, and present per- 
 ception is distorted to put its products into a form that 
 conforms to the need of the past reflected in the present 
 by its values. To the real of the present is added the 
 acquired of the past, and the two, when blended, seem 
 to be a product of our faculties. The simplicity is, how- 
 ever, only apparent. There is always an inherent con- 
 tradiction when the social has been blended with the 
 natural, for thought processes and psychical processes 
 neither work on the same material nor have the same 
 basis. 
 
 There is only one way that thought can be brought into 
 harmony with reality, and that is through the method of 
 
 [69] 
 
THE SpCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 agreement. y No inconsistencies in thought exist so long 
 as it is used ; for it has none of the errors arising from 
 the influence of values on thought. To get at reality 
 we must eliminate every element coming from defective 
 faculties or from social values. The acquired gives us a 
 measure of the social ; sound psychology enables us to 
 eliminate the abnormal. Contradiction and inconsist- 
 ency arise from the influence of one or the other of these 
 sources. The purely real thus becomes the truly nor- 
 mal — the residual left over after the social and the ab- 
 normal have been eliminated. This is not something 
 beyond experience but the essence of it. The normal 
 is as much a part of the present as the social or abnormal. 
 Cut off all the acquired factors and disregard the psy- 
 chic abnormalities of depressed conditions, and a simple 
 reality stands revealed that may be tested by the method 
 of agreement and verified by the normal as seen in 
 the present. This is the genetic as contrasted with the 
 structural view of thought, and is a legitimate conse- 
 quence of the displacement of the mechanical view of the 
 universe by the evolutionary. The genetic has origins 
 and consequences but no is, for it is complete not in a 
 single moment but only in a series of events. Change 
 from the structural to the genetic viewpoint, and the 
 present of things and ideas is not their elements but 
 their value. The reality of things is their origin 
 
 [70] 
 
THE SOCIAL PROCESS 
 
 and consequences, for they are all that time changes 
 reveal. 
 
 Is thought an act in time or an element in a mech- 
 anism? As we answer this question we decide 
 whether the structural or the genetic shall have first 
 place. And from the decision flows a series of conse- 
 quences that determine our view of life and character. 
 The structural view puts elements in the foreground 
 that can be compounded into wholes. Movement be- 
 comes less important than its machinery. The genetic, 
 however, is synthetic, and its reality is revealed in 
 the normal, which expresses for the moment that which 
 extends into the past and will continue into the future. 
 The abnormal is the temporary, the defective, the un- 
 real. The normal is the permanent, the abiding and 
 the good. 
 
 A long evolution has developed in man two powers, 
 the appreciation of objects and the appreciation of ends. 
 Each of these has undergone many changes, but the 
 normal man has both of them in a well-developed form. 
 To keep life going is fully as important as to react suc- 
 cessfully against external objects, and the mechanisms 
 by which the normal is preserved are as fully developed 
 as are those that acquaint us with external objects. 
 The normal includes all that is carried along from gen- 
 eration to generation by the physical heredity of the 
 
 [71] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 social group. Normal men have enough energy to pre- 
 serve life and to perpetuate the group. The subnormal 
 lack this energy or in some way have a defective hered- 
 ity. The supernormal have the complete heredity of 
 the normal, but more energy than is demanded for race 
 preservation. This energy is used for ends other than 
 race perpetuation and makes for the group its social 
 values. The aims and ideals of society are thus set by 
 the supernormal and accepted by the subnormal. The 
 imitative instinct, reenforced by social suggestion, is 
 stronger than that of self-preservation. The whole 
 society is thus transformed from a realistic to a telic 
 basis, which disregards the inherited instincts of self- 
 preservation and even the utilitarian calculus that natu- 
 rally dominates men. The social is the blending of 
 agreements into unity so that they may become the 
 basis of action. Thought development depends on the 
 evolution of these agreements, and through them the 
 social process gains in strength and clearness until it 
 is woven into the very warp of our being. Differences 
 do not blend into unity the way agreements do. Never 
 capable of interpretation, they remain mere limits to 
 activity until the scientific stage of progress is reached. 
 Primitive men act on agreement and stop at the per- 
 ception of difference. All early motives but fear are 
 aroused by similarities, which invite approach and as- 
 
 [72] 
 
THE SOCIAL PROCESS 
 
 similation. The blind instinct of fear is the only unso- 
 cial force, and it is active enough to keep men out of the 
 dangers that differences create. So long as fear is domi- 
 nant, thought processes do not need to recognize differ- 
 ences. The evolution of thought is thus social until the 
 progress of mankind has gone so far that fear is no longer 
 a sufficient safeguard against evil. Then the canons 
 of logic are extended so as to recognize difference, and 
 science comes into being. 
 
 There are thus three stages in progress from the reign 
 of instinct to that of reason. In the first, both action 
 and defense are mechanical reactions against the stimuli 
 of the environment. In the second, action passes be- 
 yond the instinctive stage, but defense and protection 
 remain unchanged. In the third stage fear ceases to 
 afford protection, and the basis of defense becomes in- 
 direct as well as that of action. The second stage is the 
 social. Defense is still instinctive, and all differences are 
 opposed or avoided. In this respect little advance is 
 made beyond the mere animal stage. A sharp, clear 
 demarcation shuts out everything except what has a 
 dominant element of likeness . Within the realm of agree- 
 ments values rule, because here indirect methods dis- 
 place the direct. The social is the resulting expansion 
 and evolution of agreements. A vague, hazy opposition 
 to the unlike keeps the unfamiliar beyond the realm of 
 
 [73] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 investigation. Mankind has not yet passed out of this 
 stage, for slight differences in race, color or speech still 
 arouse instinctive distrust and prevent the awakening 
 of social feelings. If this is still partially true, we can 
 easily imagine the earlier social stage that arbitrarily 
 shut out differences and thus kept reasoning within the 
 realm of agreements. Then the first canon of logic was 
 its sole canon. The only ends were those of action, and 
 the only values were economic. Men measured what 
 they did by its consequences, and instinctively rejected 
 what they did not like. The consciousness of agreement 
 arouses the motive power by which ends are reached and 
 the vitality of the race preserved. Ideas are agreements 
 that reveal the path along which the race can safely 
 reach its ends. They bind together clear perception and 
 effective action, gaining in value as they stand the test 
 of experience. 
 
 The social process, however, has gone beyond the 
 realm of testable ideas and established social predicates 
 that no individual can verify, but which, nevertheless, are 
 acted upon by every normal person. The social forces 
 compel men to live beyond themselves and act as though 
 they were supermen, with powers and faculties above 
 their own. Society anticipates evolution, sets stand- 
 ards above the actual and makes predicates that men 
 act on but cannot verify. The progress of the society 
 
 [74] 
 
THE SOCIAL PROCESS 
 
 living up to them or acting on them gives them their 
 validity. Only the complete evolution of the race can 
 test them. In the meantime, we move along the lines 
 that society has found workable and with the con- 
 fidence that past experience has given to agreements 
 and actions dictated by them. The social predicates 
 are truths, not facts. Through their pressure the 
 superman of to-day becomes the normal man of to- 
 morrow. God, reality, causation, responsibility r and 
 immortality are tested elements of the realm towards 
 which the race is pushing, but into which none of us 
 can go. They are the agreements of racial experience 
 raised by social pressure above the discord and im- 
 perfection of the world of sense. If sin, error, skepti- 
 cism and pessimism arise out of local and special differ- 
 ences not yet harmonized with the wholes of which they 
 are parts, agreements that ignore them have a social 
 validity that no empirical evidence can overthrow. 
 
 Of these predicates the concept of God is most impor- 
 tant and also most liable to misconception. The popu- 
 lar conception starts with some depreciation of men, and 
 thus makes room for a God to fill in the gap between 
 man and perfection. Some larger task is thus assigned 
 to Him of which men are incapable, with the resulting 
 dependence of men on their Creator, Judge or Ruler. A 
 God of tribulation, poverty and disease is a consolation 
 
 [75] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 in disaster, and the accompanying philosophy always 
 springs into prominence when nations, races or con- 
 ditions decay. This functional God, however, is not a 
 social predicate. Socially, God is purpose, not cause ; 
 will not function. He shapes ends, not beginnings. He 
 is the eternal purpose that runs through events, and not 
 the force that initiates them. He does not supplement 
 men and society ; he does what they do on a larger scale, 
 with a better plan and in more efficient ways. We rise 
 as we accept His will and bring our plans in line with 
 His. The social God is telic, not functional, and is 
 made manifest in the progress of men and not in their 
 failures. 
 
 These two concepts are so blended in religious thought 
 that they seem one, and yet they are opposing concepts 
 due to radically different conditions. They arise from 
 the relative emphasis which thinkers give to the con- 
 cepts of space and time. If the universe is pictured as 
 an object in space, and all its contents are measured in 
 spatial terms, God acquires a different meaning from 
 that He has if the universe is thought of as a process 
 in time. Matter and energy each represent a view of 
 the universe, the one in terms of space and the other in 
 terms of time. The mental process, however, by which 
 we attain these two views of the universe is the same. 
 Ask for foundations; separate them from the super- 
 
 [76] 
 
THE SOCIAL PROCESS 
 
 structure, and the spatial view of reality is acquired. 
 Ask for continuity and activity; view as temporary 
 everything that does not continuously manifest itself, 
 and we exclude from the ultimates of the universe all 
 temporary conjunctions and dead relations. What is 
 it, however, that has continuity and activity but no 
 permanent spatial form? We must ask this question 
 to get a clear contrast between space and time realities, 
 and we must acquire habits of thought that make 
 continuity and activity persistent before the crust of 
 habit will be broken, favoring a spatial view of the 
 universe. 
 
 Philosophy, following the lead of the earlier physical 
 sciences, has committed itself thoroughly to the spacial 
 view. The social sciences have at least partially freed 
 themselves from its control, and it is in them that a 
 better development of time concepts has taken place. 
 This has been due to the need of using history and to 
 the fact that the units making a society are not per- 
 manent. The units representing the normal type are 
 constantly changing, and yet the type persists and gives 
 to nations their unity and history. The normal is 
 thus a time concept as important in its field as is the 
 corresponding concept of matter in the realm of space. 
 Shut out all the incidental qualities of material things, 
 and the concept of atoms arises. Shut out the tern- 
 
 [771 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 porary qualities of men, and the normal is the endur- 
 ing residual. The abnormal is always prominent and 
 apparently dominant, yet it is only a temporary phase 
 which is constantly reappearing but never enduring. 
 Back of it are the normal processes which hold human- 
 ity to its standards and from which alone the trend of 
 progress is ascertainable. The real is that which may 
 be incorporated into the normal. All that is normal 
 is real. All that is real may be made normal. It is 
 not the oneness of things but the oneness of type that 
 gives unity to the universe. 
 
 To show that time concepts are fundamental, and not 
 an offspring of those of space, needs a thorough realiza- 
 tion of the fact that all ideas are social and the result 
 of a process instead of being immediately given or 
 psychologically made. To socialize an act through 
 habit and imitation and to conceptualize an element 
 in consciousness are different phases of one process. 
 We cannot form and retain a concept except as it is 
 passed over to others, and its usefulness is tested in their 
 experience as well as ours. The concepts a man uses 
 are not the full reality of his experience, but only that 
 part of it which has been socialized. Conceptualized 
 time is the part of time reality that has been socialized, 
 and for like reasons conceptualized space are those 
 elements in space reality that have become socially 
 
 [78] 
 
THE SOCIAL PROCESS 
 
 useful, and hence constantly revived and passed on 
 by social habit. Concepts in neither case are taken 
 directly from reality by perception, but are imposed 
 on individuals by the social process antecedent to 
 experience. They are never all of reality. There is 
 always a residual in reality which concepts never 
 reveal. 
 
 Concepts are a heritage, not an individual creation. 
 They always fall short of the real because they repre- 
 sent the socially useful, and are never modified or 
 enlarged except as new aspects of nature become im- 
 portant to men. Beyond them is always a residual 
 that is constantly encroached upon by the growth of 
 thought, but is never exhausted. The normal repre- 
 sents the parts of the social process that are complete ; 
 the residual is the beyond, always directing men's 
 efforts, but never being completely absorbed in the 
 normal. The supernormal includes elements of the 
 residual plainly in sight but not yet embodied into nor- 
 mal life. By it the normal is elevated, and the social 
 is extended into new fields. The link between the unin- 
 corporated residual and the normal is thus the super- 
 normal, and to it all the telic processes are due. The 
 normal must move towards the supernormal, which is 
 made real by the elements of the residual capable of 
 being incorporated into the normal. 
 
 F791 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 It is a practical reversal of our religious education to 
 associate God with the residual instead of the primary 
 forces of nature ; and yet this is what we are compelled 
 to do if we shift over from a view of the universe that 
 makes space concepts fundamental to one that gives 
 a first place to those of time. Space reality demands 
 a basis on which the shifting, unstable sensual appear- 
 ances can rest. God thus becomes that from which all 
 else springs and through which it obtains its unity. 
 This concept of God is made real by the feeling of de- 
 pravity so firmly associated with religious life. We 
 feel that there is something in us that leads to destruc- 
 tion unless our weaknesses are supplemented by a power 
 higher and stronger than ourselves. To think of God 
 as a residual force demands that we put the normal 
 in the foreground, instead of missing functions and 
 depravity. Both these concepts presuppose the normal, 
 and would be meaningless without it ; and yet the ordi- 
 nary person has had depravity so thoroughly impressed 
 on him by the imperfections of life that he thinks of 
 humanity as being in a subnormal condition, and thus 
 without hope except by the intervention of the super- 
 natural. The corresponding concepts in time reality 
 are parts of experience. The subnormal, the normal, 
 the supernormal and the residual are all within expe- 
 rience and are separated by no absolute lines. The nor- 
 
 [80] 
 
THE SOCIAL PROCESS 
 
 mal can sink into the subnormal or rise into the super- 
 normal, and the residual, although indefinite and un- 
 measurable, is always in sight and is incorporated into 
 the normal by every progressive social change. God and 
 man are not distinct in kind, but as man incorporates 
 the godlike into himself by his social progress, newer 
 views of the residual that lie between himself and per- 
 fection make God appear to be even more different 
 from himself than He formerly seemed to be. God is 
 a being on whose trail we always are, but whom we 
 never can overtake. We approach Him only to find 
 ourselves farther off than before. 
 
 [81] 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE STAGES OF THOUGHT DEVELOPMENT 
 
 * 
 
VI 
 
 Of the various attempts to coordinate the sciences, 
 that of Comte is the best known. Each member in 
 his series is more special than the one before it, and 
 depends upon the facts of all the sciences preceding it. 
 The first and most general of the sciences is thus astron- 
 omy, while the last in order, and most concrete, is soci- 
 ology. Between them come physics, chemistry and 
 biology in the order named, with a possible place for 
 psychology, when this subject gets its facts well enough 
 coordinated to show its worth. Back of this scheme, 
 however, and serving as its basis, is Comte's doc- 
 trine of stages in human thought. In the early epochs 
 of history men are theological; then they become 
 metaphysical, and finally positive in their thinking. 
 The theologian disappears before the philosopher, and 
 he in turn gives way to the man of science. The 
 scientist does not start in a virgin field, but begins his 
 work after myth, superstition, creed and dogma have 
 been formed by the theologian and further distorted 
 by the metaphysician. 
 
 If Comte 's conclusions are to be doubted, the real 
 [85] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 issue is not to be taken with the sequence of the sciences, 
 but with the preliminary work by which the field is 
 cleared for scientific investigation. If it is asked how 
 did the philosophers displace the theologians ? the reply 
 must be, "Mainly through their skepticism and pessi- 
 mism.* ' It is true that the philosophers had dogmas, 
 but they laid the foundation for their principles through 
 skepticism and not through positive research. Comte 
 overthrows metaphysics by using the skepticism phi- 
 losophers devised to discredit the theologians, and thus 
 clears the field for the positive methods of the sciences. 
 In this way skepticism lies at the basis of Comte's 
 system. If the philosophers were wrong in using it to 
 discredit theology, Comte is in the wrong when he em- 
 ploys it to clear the field for positivism. 
 
 What, then, is the basis of skepticism ? Here is the 
 fundamental problem on which all else turns. Skep- 
 ticism cannot be made the logical starting point of 
 science if it presupposes the very things that science 
 must establish. To be skeptical we set up objective 
 standards so that the object under criticism is judged 
 by something different from, and superior to, itself. 
 Skeptical conclusions thus depend on the truth of the 
 second logical canon, the method of difference. And 
 this method can seldom be used except where experi- 
 mentation is possible. It presupposes the uniformity 
 
THE STAGES OF THOUGHT DEVELOPMENT 
 
 of nature, and thus cannot be used to prove the very 
 law its premises assert. To doubt involves an affirma- 
 tion, and no doubt is effective unless it assumes some 
 antecedent objective truth. Theology and metaphysics 
 must have left something positive, or science would have 
 been unable to start on its most useful mission. 
 
 In contrast to the method of skepticism is that of 
 interpretation. If skepticism fails to give a starting 
 point, it is worth while to test what interpretation can 
 do. It depends on the principle of identity and simi- 
 larity, or, in other words, on the first canon of logic. 
 The method of agreement is based on observation, and 
 decides which of two similars is simpler, clearer or more 
 valuable. The method is always positive, never nega- 
 tive. There is a comparison of A with B, and the con- 
 clusion is merely that A and B are identical, or that 
 B is not like A, and hence has none of its qualities or 
 value. Two like objects have the same value, but if 
 they are unlike, the inherent value of the whole lies in 
 only one of them. The other, a nonessential, is thrown 
 aside as spurious. Interpretation thus simplifies and 
 brings to the fore the great objects of human interest. 
 Its method is always positive. It adds to social values, 
 enunciates principles, and gives simplicity to whatever 
 it is applied. The evolution of thought it promotes 
 retains the essence of each stage to form the basis of 
 
 [871 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 the next. The crude beliefs of the primitive world are 
 refined and elevated, until they finally appear so dif- 
 ferent from what they were that they seem new crea- 
 tions. They are, however, the same beliefs in a new 
 guise, for the evolution of thought has been positive 
 except where it has been disturbed by skepticism. Had 
 philosophers used positive methods, this view would 
 have been clearly established long ago ; but in their 
 haste to overthrow theology they used the cruder and 
 faster working tools of skepticism, with the result that 
 they fashioned weapons which discredited their own 
 work and forced science into an illogical position. 
 
 Physical science deals in uniformities ; social science 
 deals in values. Which is the older viewpoint, and 
 which helps us most in understanding the evolution 
 of thought ? It is so generally admitted that the first 
 stage of thought is theological that we will hardly do 
 wrong to begin our investigation there. Folklore, 
 myths, superstitions and creeds are so plainly matters 
 of belief that the verification they found in the primitive 
 mind must have been based on their usefulness. All 
 original values are handed down from generation to 
 generation as beliefs formulated in creeds and moral 
 codes. The acquisition of the useful thing creates a 
 social habit which in turn crystallizes into social law. 
 As old usages sink into superstition, new ones more 
 
 [881 
 
THE STAGES OF THOUGHT DEVELOPMENT 
 
 suited to progress spring up to support the social fabric. 
 Values grow in every society and form the test of prog- 
 ress. The metaphysician tries to get a basis for these 
 values by attaching them to something beyond. This 
 would have been a useful process if he had not com- 
 bined it with skepticism in a crude and forceful attempt 
 to destroy primitive beliefs. The result, however, was 
 confusion and the need of a new start; for skepticism 
 utilized its advantages so skillfully that it discredited 
 first principles of philosophy as fully as it did old 
 religious beliefs. 
 
 The new start lacks a good name because the two 
 names often applied to it have associations that mis- 
 lead. To call it utilitarian is to associate it with a 
 narrow type of morality ; and to call it economic brings 
 to mind modern business problems instead of those of 
 the primitive world. In a broad sense economy is 
 the relation of effort to return, and in the economic 
 world beliefs, like goods, rise in value as they increase 
 the surplus of reward above effort. At the basis of 
 every economy are two laws : the law of parsimony 
 and of the uniformity of nature. We now attribute 
 the uniformity of nature to science, and this is true 
 if we think only of the modern extensions of the law 
 that have given it universal validity. But the earlier 
 examples of the law were found in agriculture, com- 
 
 1891 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 merce and industry. The return of the seasons, the 
 growth of crops and the propagation of plants and 
 animals taught men the uniformity of nature long 
 before laboratories were thought of. All these uni- 
 formities were capable of direct observation, and were 
 useful in pushing men over from a nomad state to 
 agriculture and commerce. The nomad could truly 
 be called a theologian and a metaphysician, while the 
 agriculturist was a utilitarian and an economist. 
 
 Comte was wrong in saying that the positive stage 
 of thought follows the metaphysical. Had he lived in 
 our day, he probably would have made the pragmatic 
 the third stage instead of the positive. The contrast 
 between the metaphysical and pragmatic is clearer and 
 more important. The metaphysical judges through 
 causes and antecedents. The pragmatic, through 
 consequences. This change in thought clearly marks 
 one of its epochs. In social science economic interpre- 
 tation is also a judgment through consequences, and 
 therefore a part of the same thought epoch. The real 
 contrast is with the historical method, judging the pres- 
 ent through its antecedents. Comte's method is his- 
 torical, and thus he falls into the errors natural to ration- 
 alism. It may be a question what he would do if he had 
 our knowledge and mental attitude. There can be no 
 doubt but that we should divide the development of 
 
 [90] 
 
THE STAGES OF THOUGHT DEVELOPMENT 
 
 thought into different stages from what he did and make 
 the order of its development social instead of rational. 
 
 There is also in his plan a mixture of two thought 
 movements, the one that the race follows in its uplift, 
 and the other that the individual follows in his growth. 
 The stages in race progress are all positive, and follow 
 changes in the social attitude. In this way we get the 
 theological, the metaphysical and the pragmatic. The 
 individual, however, begins in an epoch of faith, after 
 which comes an epoch of depression and skepticism, 
 and this in turn is followed by an epoch of idealistic 
 realization. Depression and skepticism are an almost 
 universal stage in the forward movement of individual 
 thought, but he who outgrows it may pass on to an 
 idealism that gives a vision of remarkable clearness 
 and power. The social, however, has stages neither of 
 skepticism nor of idealism. They reflect merely a per- 
 sonal movement of thought, which becomes a source 
 of confusion when attempts are made to give it a 
 social basis. Individuals tend to become idealistic, 
 but the societies of which they are a part move steadily 
 towards the pragmatic goal. The forward movement 
 of thought is thus from theology through metaphysics 
 to pragmatism. The epoch of science comes much later, 
 and is not so much a new epoch as a wider extension 
 and a fuller appreciation of the uniformity of nature. 
 
 foil 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 The oldest and best-established uniformity is that 
 between effort and reward. When this is perceived, 
 men begin to judge acts by their consequences, and social 
 values arise, displacing the primitive beliefs which 
 recognize no causal relation. The will of man may be 
 or may not be itself caused, but the consequences of 
 acts can be definitely foreseen and measured. The first 
 predictions thus relate to happiness and misery and 
 create the social values we call utilitarian. This early 
 economic stage of thought, with its empirical standards, 
 did not abide. Men pressed on to a higher level not by 
 displacing empiricism but by transforming its cruder 
 values into higher forms. Logic is a device to test 
 values. It gives to each part of an economic whole the 
 value that makes its continuance or reproduction pos- 
 sible. The law of parsimony is but a general state- 
 ment of the economic law of the greatest gain for the 
 least effort. Keep economics concrete and logic ab- 
 stract, and the two seem to depend on separate mental 
 processes and predicate the existence of distinct facul- 
 ties. If, however, the logical process does not affirm 
 reality, and the law of causation is a social, not an ob- 
 jective fact, it has nothing to distinguish it from the 
 process of valuation the economists use when they com- 
 pare the utilities which various articles possess. Value 
 measures effort through product, cause through conse- 
 
 [92] 
 
THE STAGES OF THOUGHT DEVELOPMENT 
 
 quence and the object through the feelings it evokes. 
 Logical values impute to the part the value of the 
 whole. The laws of logic are thus the laws of imputing 
 utility, the same laws that the economist uses to measure 
 utility in any complex act of production or consump- 
 tion. To judge by consequences is the utilitarian or 
 moral stage of progress; to judge consequences by 
 their antecedents is the economic or logical stage. The 
 one gives prominence to the empirical measures of value, 
 while the other uses deductive tests. The end of logic 
 is thus to test the imputation of value following the use 
 of social predicates. The belief in the whole implies 
 a belief in the parts. Every right imputation increases 
 efficiency, while every wrong imputation creates misery 
 and maladjustments. Logic thus prevents waste, and 
 is the first form of the conservation of energy. We 
 must recognize and conserve human energy before we 
 can that of the universe. 
 
 Much of the confusion about the relation of logic 
 to social facts arises from the overemphasis of space 
 concepts. Sensations and material objects relate to 
 space, and they create contrasts more definite and more 
 easily seen than those of time. The result is that they 
 have received greater attention, and when men begin 
 to doubt they start with denying time relations. The 
 ultimates of the universe are thus shifted over into 
 
 [931 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 space, and reality is defined in its terms. Exclude the 
 genetic from thought, and a static universe is manifest. 
 Exclude, however, all space relations, and the resulting 
 categories give a view of the universe that cannot be 
 so readily unified, and if pictured, it must be not as a 
 mechanism but as a movement. All mechanisms are 
 spacial ; time is a process, not a completed whole. 
 
 It is easy to understand the subordination of time to 
 space which has taken place in philosophy when we 
 realize how it has been helped on by the growth of 
 language. The older substantives are spatial concepts 
 because the interests of the primitive man are material. 
 Things are his reals, for on them his welfare depends. 
 He thinks of time through the modifications it makes 
 in things, and hence the words he uses to describe 
 change are adjectives. When conscious materialism 
 begins in a later epoch, this state of the language favors 
 the contention that the essence of things is material. 
 All primary qualities are now said to be spatial. Only 
 the extended is real. In this way time relations appear 
 to be secondary qualities having no place among the 
 ultimates of the universe. This advantage in sug- 
 gestive power has been largely lost by the later devel- 
 opments of language due to the increase of scientific 
 knowledge. Many time concepts have a substantive 
 form of expression, so that we may think in terms of time 
 
 [94] 
 
THE STAGES OF THOUGHT DEVELOPMENT 
 
 almost as readily as in those of space. We can excuse 
 Hume, Kant and others of their age for their over- 
 emphasis of space, but the same emphasis to-day is 
 due merely to habit, continuing modes of thought that 
 should be modified or displaced. With our improved 
 language it is no more difficult to think in terms of 
 energy than of matter, and we can picture the world 
 as a process quite as readily as an abstract "thing in 
 itself." For the purpose of contrast I shall place our 
 leading space and time concepts in parallel columns. 
 This will help the reader to judge which are to him the 
 clearer and more fundamental. 
 
 Matter 
 
 Form 
 
 Position 
 
 Perfection 
 
 The infinite 
 
 The real 
 
 The omniscient 
 
 Structure 
 
 Static 
 
 Force 
 
 A thing in itself 
 
 The absolute 
 
 God as creator 
 
 Materialism 
 
 Energy 
 
 Motion 
 
 Activity 
 
 Evolution 
 
 The normal 
 
 The valuable 
 
 The supernormal 
 
 Function 
 
 Dynamic 
 
 Will 
 
 A process 
 
 The genetic 
 
 God as purpose 
 
 Idealism 
 
 95] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 The spatial terms need no explanation, but it may be 
 worth while to bring out more fully the time element 
 in some of the words in the other column. The normal 
 is the present of that which has had a past and will 
 have a future. It is thus a time concept, even if 
 it perpetually renews itself in material forms. The 
 supplement to the normal is the supernormal, but the 
 line between the two must not be drawn in the same way 
 as between the corresponding space concepts. The 
 supernatural implies being completely outside of nature, 
 and the superhuman is divorced from organic life, but 
 the supernormal is natural and in some of its expres- 
 sions it may be human. The best of men continually 
 reach out beyond the normal and incorporate in them- 
 selves some of the supernormal. The normal is con- 
 stantly rising and making the supernormal a part of 
 itself. The supernormal thus loses on one hand through 
 the growth of the normal, and gains on the other through 
 a clearer concept of the process by which the universe 
 unfolds itself. It is not an independent whole, but a 
 residual always losing to the normal, but never disap- 
 pearing. This residual element separates time con- 
 cepts from those of space. Evolution is always going 
 on, but never complete. Processes find new energy to 
 continue them. Unity and perfection are spatial. 
 Time is full of residuals that block their attainment. 
 
 [96] 
 
THE STAGES OF THOUGHT DEVELOPMENT 
 
 The stages of thought thus far enumerated are due 
 to positive evolution based on interpretation and the 
 use of the canon of agreement ; the age of faith is thus 
 transformed into the age of dogmatic assertion ; this is 
 displaced by the moral stage, where acts are measured 
 by their consequences ; and then comes the age of logical 
 valuation and economic deduction, which tests the impu- 
 tation of social values and brings out clearly the rela- 
 tion of effort to result, cause and consequence, will and 
 achievement. Social values are thus dissolved into 
 their elements, while their clear ideas and ultimate 
 predicates are measured by their intrinsic, and not by 
 their imputed worth. When this is done, the basis for 
 the age of experimentation is laid and the second canon 
 of logic, the method of difference, can be used to test 
 everything not bound up in social predicates. Social 
 units never can be tested experimentally because the 
 parts cannot be isolated from their wholes. 
 
 Society is a process, not an objective fact open to 
 observation. The past and the present are so inti- 
 mately related that the one cannot be understood 
 without a knowledge of the other. The traditions, 
 habits and modes of thought coming from the past 
 have not remained unchanged, so that they give us a 
 correct account of past events. What we call the 
 past is not the pure past in the way that atoms and 
 a [97] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 extension are pure space. The past is made by the 
 present, or at least so reshaped that its purity as a past 
 event is lost. What we know of the past is altered 
 by every new force that makes the present. What 
 made yesterday also makes to-day. If we understand 
 these forces, and get a clear view of the normal connect- 
 ing the past with the present and running through both 
 of them, the main elements for the interpretation of 
 past records are at hand. The true past has left no 
 record. The social process carries along nothing but 
 what is of use in the present, and that it remodels 
 to meet present needs. The valueless drops out of 
 memory, is lost sight of by the historian and is elimi- 
 nated by the thought processes that are centered on 
 the present. We must know the present to know the 
 past, for only through its laws and pressure can we 
 discover the way the past has been altered to meet our 
 needs. These facts give validity to the economic 
 interpretation of history and make it necessary to begin 
 a study of social science within the realm of economics. 
 The moving values of to-day are economic, and through 
 them is the best entrance to the study of the forces 
 shaping the present and thus determining normal life. 
 So much for the general principle. Time forces 
 must be studied in the present and not in their records. 
 The present of the past is its values, which remain the 
 
 [98] 
 
THE STAGES OF THOUGHT DEVELOPMENT 
 
 one sure test of how past activities react in the present. 
 Records, traditions, words and thought only tell us how 
 the past appears in the present, but not its real essence. 
 The constantly repeated is the true, and this is the 
 normal. Conditions make values, values make motives, 
 motives shape character and character is the index of 
 normality. All the real is thus in the present and can 
 be observed at first hand. We can only unfold the 
 present by starting with conditions and ending with a 
 study of the normal life that matches them. Condi- 
 tions, and not antecedents, are the source from which 
 the social sciences arise. Antecedents are thought, 
 not reality, and have in them the errors that our thought 
 processes create or absorb from the social medium in 
 which they arise. 
 
 The beginnings of social science thus being in present 
 conditions, economics is the first social science and the 
 basis on which all the others rest. To go out from the 
 present practically means to go out from economics, for 
 it is the science of normal life and its values. If all 
 time antecedents are appearances, the data of to-day's 
 life must be studied to get the key by which past records 
 and memories can be understood. There is another 
 view, however, which gives the same results without 
 so much abstract thinking. The traits of men are 
 either natural or acquired. Conditions act on men 
 
 [991 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 through their acquired characters. The routine of life 
 is impressed on individuals from without with such 
 force that the natural characters are suppressed. We 
 cannot begin with a study of natural characters, because 
 they are revealed to us only in such mixtures with 
 acquired traits that our observations have little value 
 unless we have first measured the extent and activity 
 of the acquired characters. Most of the social, as well 
 as the economic, forces lie within the realm of acquired 
 characters and give them their dominance. What we 
 think to be natural is mainly acquired. Tradition and 
 economic routine mold our lives so early and firmly 
 that we accept their impressments as a part of our- 
 selves. The acquired characters must therefore be 
 studied first, and then the social process by which the 
 acquired traits are impressed. Only when these two 
 are thoroughly understood can natural^ characters be 
 investigated to advantage. They are a residual which 
 in real life becomes isolated enough to make scientific 
 study possible only as a remnant for which the laws 
 of acquired traits can give no explanation. 
 
 The peculiarities of religion are due to these facts. 
 It is not an instinct nor any single motive, but a com- 
 plex due to the pressure of external conditions on deep- 
 seated race traits. The external conditions are mainly 
 economic; the internal reactions they arouse make 
 
 [1001 
 
THE STAGES OF THOUGHT DEVELOPMENT 
 
 social psychology. The form of religion in any age is 
 due to the interaction of these forces, and it has devel- 
 oped as men have become more conscious pf the inherent 
 opposition between the pressure that creates routine 
 and the freedom which permits a» £ull ; 8X}>res3ioju ;cf 
 inherited traits. This opposition takes on a social 
 form when it becomes manifest that external pressure 
 lowers vitality and eliminates the weak. To sink to a 
 lower level of vitality is degeneration. To reincorpo- 
 rate the weak into society demands their regeneration. 
 Degeneration and regeneration are thus complementary 
 themes, and from their union comes the plan of salva- 
 tion that is the center of religious thought. 
 
 Religion is thus a natural movement based on social 
 feeling, and focused by external conditions. It is an 
 expression of a reaction against conflict, degeneration 
 and depravity. God's activity is the complement 
 of men's endeavors to restore the normal and to 
 elevate social standards. When men's depravity and 
 helplessness were appreciated in primitive times, a 
 God of infinite power and knowledge became a neces- 
 sary part of religious thought. 
 
 It is a reversal of the order in which religious ideas 
 developed to make religion begin with God, instead of 
 basing it on the natural phenomena out of which it 
 has arisen. The problem of God will lose its difficulties, 
 
 [101] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 if men once become familiar with the laws making them 
 fear degeneration and hope for regeneration. The 
 key. to religion lies in these problems. Having ex- 
 plained the economic pressure creating degeneration, we 
 must next treat of the psychic problems that arise be- 
 cause of its prevalence. The seemingly sudden change 
 from the discussion of external pressure to internal 
 psychic reactions is justified by the really close relation 
 that exists between the two. The social psychology of 
 religion is either a group of acquired traits due to ex- 
 ternal pressure or a natural reaction against it. Neither 
 element can be studied except in close connection with 
 the objective conditions that create them and arouse 
 their activity. First the economics of religion and then 
 its psychology. 
 
 When, however, the proper preliminary studies have 
 been made and the laws of the present have been 
 thoroughly investigated, a field of fruitful inquiry is 
 opened up to which neither economics nor a knowledge 
 of the social process gives the key. The routine of 
 life imposed by external conditions suppresses the 
 natural characters and makes them more difficult of 
 study. Only the strong emotions arouse them and 
 make them dominant. It is in the field of passion 
 we see the power of the natural traits and have 
 them vigorous enough in their manifestations to render 
 
 [102] 
 
THE STAGES OF THOUGHT DEVELOPMENT 
 
 their study profitable. The discipline that deals with 
 passion and emotion is religion, and for this reason its 
 study becomes the second in order of the social sci- 
 ences. Economics emphasizes objective conditions and 
 mental routine. Against these, religion is a revolt. 
 Through its emphasis of passion and emotion, it brings 
 into prominence the residual in human nature that 
 economics neglects. We call natural traits depravity 
 when their activity should be suppressed. We call 
 them inspiration when they should be followed. As 
 we become religious, the natural characters are evoked ; 
 as we become economic, they are submerged beneath a 
 life of routine. The two disciplines thus supplement 
 each other and between them the elementary facts of 
 social science are brought into the light. There is no 
 other entrance to social science so fruitful of results as 
 that which puts into separate fields the study of natural 
 and acquired characters. There has always been a 
 crude tendency to make this division even before the 
 basis on which it rests was clearly seen. Now, however, 
 it is possible clearly to demark the two fields, and to 
 give to each its appropriate place. 
 
 [103] 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 MORBID DEGENERATION 
 
 * 
 
vn 
 
 The discussion of degeneration has passed through 
 so many phases that a lack of definiteness has arisen in 
 the use of the word. Various problems have been 
 brought together which must be handled separately 
 before clearness of thought can be attained. The 
 primary confusion is due to a lack of differentiation 
 between cases where individuals fall below the possi- 
 bilities of their heredity and those where two types 
 with somewhat different heredity are mingled in one 
 society. We call thieves and prostitutes degenerate 
 because they lack normal traits. Yet they may have 
 developed their heredity as fully as have the people 
 with whom they are compared. They may be survivals 
 of an earlier condition in which so-called degenerate 
 qualities may have been normal attributes. It is 
 better to call these persons static than degenerate. It 
 will then appear that the normal individual is a product 
 of evolution, and not that his social inferior comes into 
 being through a degeneration in type. 
 
 The prevailing terminology is an outgrowth of the 
 old concept that men began in a perfect state and 
 
 [107] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 hence that present deficiencies are degenerations. It 
 will take time to get rid of this primitive concept, and 
 so long as it persists the prevailing social use of the 
 term will obstruct clearness of thought. There is a 
 concept of heredity that also helps to keep alive this 
 view of degeneration. It is often asserted that all 
 differences in individuals are due to differences in the 
 germ cell with which development begins. For each 
 character manifested at maturity there is said to be a 
 determinant in the germ cell to which its appearance 
 is due. Heredity builds true; hence diversity in 
 results shows antecedent differences. Degeneration 
 thus comes to mean a lack of some of the germinal 
 elements that appear in normal persons. There can 
 be no doubt that degeneration of this type takes 
 place. A comparative study of animals shows that it 
 is going on all the time. Still, it may be doubted if 
 this sort of change is at the bottom of the prominent 
 differences manifest in human beings. It is a process 
 that accounts for changes in type rather than for 
 those found within a given type. If each type has a 
 normal standard about which it varies, the deviations 
 from it in one way or the other must have some other 
 cause than that which produces new types through 
 natural selection. We might, without much abridg- 
 ment in the use of popular terms, call those germinal 
 
 [108] 
 
MORBID DEGENERATION 
 
 differences that result in a lower type of organization 
 abnormalities. We may then contrast with them 
 maldevelopments which indicate the wrong direction 
 in which growth processes have been forced. In such 
 a contrast, abnormalities would be due to difference in 
 heredity ; maldevelopments to external agencies. Ab- 
 normalities are also negative, since the abnormal per- 
 son lacks in his heredity some determinant that normal 
 people have. Maldevelopments, on the contrary, are 
 positive and represent a growth — a change from the 
 normal type due to a turning of vital forces in a wrong 
 direction. In a maldevelopment, the energy that 
 should go out in the normal direction at a given time 
 goes out in some other direction or at a premature or 
 overdue period. Maldevelopment is thus a problem 
 of energy and not of heredity. If this contrast be- 
 comes clear, the two ways in which deviations from 
 the normal take place can be readily understood. 
 
 Another way of illustrating this difference is to 
 make a contrast between the germinal forces, that 
 develop into the mechanism by which life processes 
 are carried on, and the nutritive forces, that give the 
 organism its efficiency. The mechanism of life comes 
 from the germ cell. To this nothing can be added by 
 the growth of the organism. Nutrition comes from 
 without. It is constantly absorbed and given off. 
 
 [109] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 Hence its presence or absence at critical stages of 
 development does much to determine the direction or 
 lack of direction in the subsequent growth of the 
 organism. It is an error to regard a germ cell as 
 having within it but one group of possibilities. It is 
 more in accord with the facts to say that development 
 from the germ cell proceeds in a certain general direc- 
 tion within limits that vary as the external conditions 
 promote or retard its progress. Heredity is a reality, 
 but it is not so definite nor so mechanical as is generally 
 supposed. Nutrition is responsible for much that 
 passes for heredity. Only after its effects have been 
 definitely ascertained can the real mechanism of hered- 
 ity be understood.' Why, for example, does each or- 
 ganism reach maturity and finally sink into old age ? Is 
 there a determinant in the germ cell that when active 
 checks growth ? Does the mechanism of life run pro- 
 gressively to a certain point and then refuse to act ? 
 Or is maturity merely a state of maximum nutrition 
 and old age a running down because nutrition fails ? 
 To state the problem in another way, Does a given 
 organ cease to grow because the possibilities of its 
 inherited mechanism have become exhausted, or does 
 growth end because nutrition fails when the energy 
 of the organism is turned in other directions? The 
 latter is, I believe, the sounder view. Each organ 
 
 moi 
 
MORBID DEGENERATION 
 
 grows while nutrition comes its way; it stops grow- 
 ing when a more favored part absorbs the energy that 
 hitherto made its growth possible. 
 
 There is no mechanism that stops growth except by 
 turning the flow of energy in some other direction. 
 The organs or parts develop in turn, each checking 
 the growth of its predecessors by absorbing the energy 
 they have previously had. If new organs appear at 
 the right time, the growth of the whole organism is 
 normal. If the new organs appear sooner or later than 
 normal, maldevelopments arise. In such cases, the 
 flow of nutrition to the older parts is either extended 
 beyond the normal time or taken from them before 
 they have attained their normal growth. Maldevelop- 
 ments are thus nutritive in origin and arise whenever 
 the ordinary sequences of development are disturbed. 
 If the growth of an organism is accelerated, — that is, 
 if new parts appear before the older ones have attained 
 their normal development, — the latter are pre- 
 maturely checked, and the organism is maldeveloped. 
 So also if the newer parts are slow in development, 
 their predecessors keeping the extra nutrition longer 
 than usual, the former grow in unusual ways. Re- 
 tardations and accelerations in growth thus cause 
 organisms to deviate from the normal. Heredity has 
 no way of keeping growth along normal paths except 
 
 [1111 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 by starting new organs at the right time. Older parts 
 will grow until nutrition is taken from them. They 
 cannot reach the normal standard if a premature 
 change in the flow of energy takes from them the 
 basis of growth. Normality is thus a problem of 
 nutrition and not of heredity. Acceleration and re- 
 tardation in growth are the cause of maldevelopments. 
 This thought merits further expansion, because if 
 true it leads to important results. Growth has two 
 conditioning factors : (1) the constitution of the germ 
 cell with its effect on subsequent development; and 
 (2) nutrition, which coming from without may create 
 states of surplus or of deficit. A surplus of energy 
 causes parts to grow longer or in a different way than 
 they would if the surplus were less or if it had been 
 turned in other directions. These overgrowths are 
 malformations, judged by normal standards. They 
 are natural growths, however, and are injurious be- 
 cause they use up energy which could be more use- 
 fully expended in creating newer parts. If older or- 
 gans have too vigorous a growth, the newer ones are 
 but partially developed or are less active than the 
 older. The organism thus assumes a type similar to 
 that produced by a lower or defective heredity. It 
 shows atavistic traits, not because of a defective germ 
 cell, but because of an overgrowth of its lower organs. 
 
 [112] 
 
MORBID DEGENERATION 
 
 A shift in the relative growth of parts reveals at 
 maturity the same characteristics that come from a 
 defective heredity. The balance of an organism once 
 disturbed, subsequent development never rights itself. 
 It continues along abnormal lines just as if this direc- 
 tion had been given it by an original impetus coming 
 from the germ cell. Defective heredity and mal- 
 developments thus give the same results and have 
 the same marks. They lower the general tone of the 
 organism, submerge its higher traits and make promi- 
 nent the characters of its primitive ancestors. Re- 
 tardations are thus overgrowth of the older parts that 
 check the upward movements of an organism. There 
 seems to be a lack of the higher faculties or only a 
 partial development of them. This, be it remembered, 
 is due not to any failure in heredity, but to the dwarf- 
 ing influence of an overgrowth of the older parts. 
 The drop in the scale of existence is not a permanent 
 one; for if the overflow of energy to lower organs is 
 stopped, normal development is resumed. In any case, 
 the next generation will not be affected unless the ex- 
 ternal conditions causing overgrowth are repeated. 
 Acquired characters have no vigor apart from the 
 conditions that produce them. 
 
 In contrast with retardations due to overgrowth, 
 accelerations cause energy to flow too rapidly from 
 
 [1131 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 lower to higher parts. The lower parts are dwarfed 
 instead of the higher. An earlier maturity results 
 with all the vital organs more or less deficient in their 
 development. Each organ falls short of its full develop- 
 ment in ways that can plainly be observed. Yet we 
 regard the organism as more advanced because early 
 maturity gives an appearance of superiority. Bright 
 children are usually classed higher than their more 
 slowly developing comrades. The mental powers are 
 especially stimulated by this acceleration, and to 
 them we give undue weight in determining the rela- 
 tive rank of individuals. A lack of nutrition checks 
 the growth of a part prematurely and if severe causes 
 actual decay. The renewal of energy starts the 
 growth of higher organs and leaves the lower ones in 
 an incomplete form. A series of changes are thus 
 made with more than normal rapidity, and a pre- 
 mature development results, followed by an equally 
 premature old age. The marks of acceleration are 
 thus the same as those of old age. The resulting 
 mental powers may for a time indicate superiority, 
 but this superiority is temporary. Persons so endowed 
 must therefore be classed as degenerates, even though 
 they come up to social standards and do not show the 
 tendency toward vice and crime that is so often mani- 
 fest in those whose development is retarded through 
 
 [114] 
 
MORBID DEGENERATION 
 
 the overgrowth of lower faculties. In neither case 
 has normality been reached, and by both the level of 
 humanity is lowered. 
 
 Heredity has no mechanism that determines the 
 rate of progress. Parts do not stop growing because 
 of some vital limitation coming from the germ cell. 
 So long as nutrition is abundant, growth continues. 
 The only check to growth is a deficit in the nutritive 
 supplies. New organs stop the growth of older ones 
 by draining off their supply of vital energy. If the 
 check comes at the right time, we call the part normal ; 
 but if premature or delayed, the balance of growth is 
 disturbed and degeneration sets in. Degeneration is 
 not therefore defective heredity, but growth out of 
 balance. Heredity determines the direction of prog- 
 ress. The rate of growth as contrasted with its direc- 
 tion is mainly, if not solely, due to the supply of nu- 
 trition. A deficit causes parts to lag behind their 
 normal growth; a surplus pushes them ahead of it. 
 Both tendencies are usually found in the same organ- 
 ism. By the law of compensation, an overgrowth in 
 one direction leads to a meagerness in growth in others. 
 This fact should not cause confusion in the study of 
 degeneration, because its two causes are easily dis- 
 tinguished and have readily observed effects. Over- 
 growths we call morbid ; for accelerations or the pre- 
 
 [1151 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 mature stoppage of growth the best term is senility. 
 Described in this way we get ready objective tests of 
 the kind of degeneration any organism undergoes. If 
 we remember that any growth beyond the normal 
 standard is wrong growth, the morbid becomes merely 
 an extra supply of energy destroying the normal 
 balance of the organism. That morbid growth is 
 cured by the draining of this extra energy, by strenu- 
 ous exercise or by dieting shows that its basis is in 
 nutrition and not in heredity. Senility is likewise a 
 problem of nutrition. There is no natural old age. 
 Its source is always in some unnecessary restriction of 
 vital processes. Organisms are naturally immortal, 
 not mortal. 
 
 I have avoided the moral stigmata of degeneration 
 because they are the effects of the physical characteris- 
 tics that have been described. Every kind of moral 
 degeneration usually accompanies some kind of phys- 
 ical degeneration and is a function of it. The pres- 
 sure that disturbs the normal balance of an organism 
 creates morbidity in some parts and senility in others. 
 There are nevertheless two distinct types of immoral 
 action conforming to the two kinds of degeneration. 
 Morbid degeneration shows itself in emotionalism and 
 an excess of passion. It is this type of immorality 
 that first strikes the attention because of its naked 
 
 [116] 
 
MORBID DEGENERATION 
 
 opposition to social ends. Emotionalism and passion 
 reveal an existence below the social level, and no society 
 can hold together that does not exert a strong pres- 
 sure to keep them in subjection. They do not, how- 
 ever, constitute the only manifestation of the anti- 
 social spirit. The egoist with self-centered desires 
 undermines the social spirit quite as effectively as the 
 passion of the morbid degenerate. The line between 
 the selfish and the social is not fixed by heredity nor 
 by the constitution of the mind. It is imposed by the 
 necessities of social existence. The sharper the pres- 
 sure, the more clearly defined is the contrast between 
 the two, and the more effective is the urgency with 
 which the demands of the ego present themselves. It 
 is often claimed that selfishness is a normal motive 
 and that the social spirit is in some way derived from 
 it. No such derivation is possible, for selfishness is a 
 disintegrating, not a constructive, force. It is easy to 
 go from the social to the non-social, for this is the 
 path of degeneration; but there is no road from 
 selfishness to generosity. The social ego contrasts 
 society with nature. The self-centered ego contrasts 
 society with itself. The distribution of products 
 rather than their acquisition from nature thus gets 
 first place, and all is subordinated to gratifications 
 that meet intense momentary wants. 
 
 [117] 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 SENILE DEGENERATION 
 
vm 
 
 The preceding discussion should make clear the 
 variety of uses to which the word " degeneration " has 
 been put. Progress consists in relating these uses to 
 one another by separating the fundamental from the 
 casual and by giving the right emphasis to elements 
 that are likely to be overlooked. It is easy to see 
 why defective heredity should have received early 
 attention, for the abnormalities it produces can be 
 readily measured. Such studies were necessarily first 
 in order of time, for without a clear understanding of 
 the relations of higher to lower organisms no scientific 
 research in defects and abnormalities could be made. 
 This knowledge, however, does not solve the prob- 
 lems of degeneration. It only clears the way for more 
 careful study. There are external factors in degenera- 
 tion, as well as those of heredity, and they produce, 
 not merely reversion to lower types, but changes more 
 truly deserving the name of degeneration. Of these 
 objective causes, nutrition is the most prominent. Its 
 effects, favorable and unfavorable, open up a field of 
 investigation as important as the influences producing 
 
 [121] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 atavistic traits. Disturbances in nutrition throw 
 organisms out of balance. In subsequent stages of 
 development some parts have more, and some less, 
 than the normal degree of growth. If growth is 
 superfluous or ill-directed, a part so affected is morbid ; 
 if it has less than the normal growth, it is senile. Mor- 
 bidness is primarily an overflow of energy; senility a 
 loss of vital power. The one leads to disease, the other 
 to decay. They are both found in abnormal persons, 
 because an overflow of energy in one direction leads to 
 its diminution in others. The marks of the two, how- 
 ever, are so distinct that they can readily be separated 
 and studied. Of the two, morbidness is more closely 
 allied to defective heredity, and hence the stigmata of 
 the two are practically the same. Defective heredity 
 is the more deep-seated; the morbidness of over- 
 nutrition shows itself in a stunted development of the 
 higher faculties. Its cause is an arresting of the 
 normal diversion of surplus energy from the lower to 
 the higher organs. Morbidness ends in disease when 
 the local surplus becomes unmanageable; it creates 
 mental abnormalities through indirect effects on the 
 higher powers. Disease, hysteria and insanity are its 
 most pronounced manifestations; but it has so many 
 minor symptoms that its abnormal effects cannot be 
 related to their cause without the most careful study. 
 
 [1221 
 
SENILE DEGENERATION 
 
 However, so much has been done in this field that a 
 restatement is scarcely needed. Morbidness and defec- 
 tive heredity are overemphasized elements in the 
 study of degeneration. They need further investiga- 
 tion much less than a clear demarcation from other 
 forms of degeneration not so well known. 
 
 If cases of defective heredity are isolated from those 
 in which degeneration is due to objective factors, the 
 stigmata of each can be plainly recognized. When 
 causes are objective, the later, more complicated 
 hereditary qualities will be more affected than the 
 earlier, more simple ones. When growth is not pro- 
 gressive, we may be sure some objective factor has 
 come in to deflect it from its normal course. If a 
 child resembles a distant ancestor in all stages of its 
 development, we may assume that a real atavism has 
 occurred and that the cause lies in the germ cell. But 
 if the reversion is only in the later stages of growth or 
 is there more pronounced than in earlier ones, it is 
 reasonable to assume that the growth of the person is 
 out of balance and that its causes are objective. An- 
 cestral resemblance in such cases will be partial, either 
 on the side of morbid growth or of premature arrests 
 in development. Surplus and deficit of nutrition are 
 thus the objective causes of degeneration, and their 
 physical stigmata are a one-sided growth or arrest of 
 
 [123] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 growth that deviates more widely from the normal in 
 higher than in lower stages. Morbidness in a part is 
 the physical mark of surplus nutrition. Premature 
 arrest of development is likewise a sure sign of deficient 
 nutrition. This, when continued, creates a condition 
 of senility. The objective causes and physical stig- 
 mata of degeneration thus seem easy of recognition 
 and detection. To complete the study, however, we 
 must note also the mental stigmata of degeneration. 
 In at least one aspect, it is easy to do this. The con- 
 nection between morbidness and emotionalism has 
 often been pointed out. Morbidness is the overgrowth 
 of the lower faculties and the dwarfing of the higher. 
 Emotionalism is waste energy going out in activity 
 instead of growth. Had the higher powers not been 
 arrested in growth, this energy would have been 
 diverted into useful channels. The emotions would 
 then have ceased to be active or at least have been 
 kept under control. 
 
 A clearer idea of emotionalism may be gained by 
 referring to its physical basis. Irritability and con- 
 tractibility are the two elementary manifestations of 
 organic life. Irritability is activity without an end. 
 There is change and often intense excitability without 
 any useful reaction. Contractibility may be said to be 
 organized irritability. The same energy that in a 
 
 [124] 
 
SENILE DEGENERATION 
 
 disorganized part creates irritability in a normally 
 organized part effects some definite useful end. The 
 upward change is thus from irritability to contraction. 
 If this higher outlet of energy is created, the emotional 
 manifestation of irritability diminishes or disappears. 
 We are scarcely cognizant of the working of a normal 
 part. There is no waste energy for emotional mani- 
 festations. If this be true of the upward tendencies 
 of an organism, the reverse would follow in the case 
 of degeneration. The part acts imperfectly, and con- 
 traction degenerates into mere irritation. Surplus 
 energy is kept from its natural outlet and manifests 
 itself in emotion, which, if strong, becomes hysteria. 
 Emotion is thus the effect of waste energy and appears 
 when morbid changes in lower organs check normal 
 activity. It grows with degeneration and disappears 
 beneath the changes that evoke normal growth. 
 
 Emotionalism, then, is the mental sign of morbid- 
 ness and of surplus energy with no effective outlet. 
 What is the corresponding mark of the arrest of de- 
 velopment caused by a deficit of energy? Here is a 
 field in which little has been done, and in making a 
 start the same difficulty is encountered that obstructed 
 progress in the study of morbid degeneration. Its 
 fundamental contrast shocks because it unsettles 
 popular beliefs. To say that genius and insanity are 
 
 [125] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 allied states, and that the great men of the past have 
 been unbalanced rather than superior minds, seems to 
 border on absurdity. Yet until this plain truth has 
 been driven home the doctrine of degeneration cannot 
 get a hearing. The criterion in this case is not whether 
 genius is useful or is worthy of admiration. Both of 
 these facts may readily be admitted. We may go 
 even further and say that genius is indispensable; 
 that without its rise the history of the world would 
 be a series of ignoble events. The real test is whether 
 a genius is an elevation above the normal or a deviation 
 from it. If all the world were made on his plan, 
 would there be a rise or a fall in the scale of human 
 existence ? Only when we answer this question can we 
 recognize the peculiar qualities that ally the genius, 
 of superlative social value, to the insane. Society 
 cannot move upward by acquiring the physical and 
 mental traits of the genius any more than it could by 
 approximating those of the insane. It is not his effect 
 on heredity that gives the genius his place, but the 
 effect he has on society. He disappears and leaves 
 no lineal descendant; but the laws he created, the 
 victories he won, the inventions he made, the books 
 he wrote or the example he set are a precious heritage 
 in which all participate. The gains that come through 
 genius are in the field of acquired traits, and are handed 
 
 [1261 
 
SENILE DEGENERATION 
 
 down from generation to generation as a social heri- 
 tage, but not through heredity. His relations to the 
 insane are of no social consequence. Neither he nor 
 they are of the normal group who pass on our physical 
 heredity to coming generations. How normal people 
 become supernormal is a radically different problem 
 from telling how victories are won or inventions made. 
 The one is a problem of heredity; the other belongs 
 to the history of civilization. As civilization advances 
 by social means more than by changes in heredity, a 
 decline in heredity may go along with an increase of 
 civilization and culture. This is what happens when 
 progress comes through heroes instead of through the 
 rise of normal citizens. It is a well-attested generali- 
 zation that heroes come when the nation they succor 
 is in a state of decline. They are thus the index of a 
 degeneration in race traits even though they give a 
 compensation in higher civilization. 
 
 With these facts and analogies in mind it will be 
 easier to approach the problem of the mental stigmata 
 of an arrest of development. At the start a generali- 
 zation must be made similar to that affirming the 
 close kinship of genius and insanity. Genius is a form 
 of insanity ; in like fashion reason is a mark of the senile. 
 I mean by this that the growth and increasing domi- 
 nance of the reasoning faculty involve a sapping of the 
 
 [127] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 vital forces. Just as thegenius is insane, so may it 
 be said that the great thinkers — the founders and pro- 
 moters of intellectual systems — suffer from wasting 
 disease that drains their vitality and forces them out of 
 the channels of normal growth. They show the marks 
 of accelerated growth, have meager physical powers, 
 and lack the plasticity of thought that normal people 
 enjoy. The thinker is born old; like John Stuart 
 Mill, he has no youth. The rational and the senile are 
 so closely allied that any mark of the one can readily 
 be found in the other. They are both arrests of de- 
 velopment due to a drain on the vital powers. Neither 
 is normal, nor does either mark the line along which 
 race progress moves. The thinker, like the genius, is 
 worthy of all praise ; but it is a civilization of acquired 
 traits that he molds, not the race progress that comes 
 through improved heredity. He helps progress by a 
 social uplift that others enjoy, not by leaving descend- 
 ants to reap what he has sown. The latter — not the 
 praises of society — is the real test of a normal life. 
 
 We are so accustomed to laud reason as the culmi- 
 nation of human powers that an opposing view seems 
 absurd, and to question its supremacy seems to un- 
 dermine morality as well as rationalism. These ob- 
 jections have a common origin. The superiority of 
 reason is based on a contrast between the emotional 
 
 [1281 
 
SENILE DEGENERATION 
 
 and the rational. A long race struggle has established 
 this supremacy and the morality that goes with it. 
 That the rationalist is less likely to indulge in emotional 
 vices may readily be granted. So, also, it may be freely 
 admitted that calculated indirect action is more ef- 
 fective than the emotional and direct variety. It is 
 not, therefore, the superiority of reason over emotion 
 that is questioned in this view. It is urged merely that 
 reason is not a final stage of human development ; that 
 future progress in race qualities does not find its goal 
 in the dominance of reason. 
 
 To get this thought clearly before the reader, we must 
 refer again to the contrast between natural and acquired 
 characters. Civilization is objective, and its growth 
 depends upon the ascendancy of acquired traits. 
 Race progress, however, depends on improvement in 
 natural characters. If race progress is checked by 
 growth of civilization, we have degeneration of phy- 
 sique accompanied by social improvements. This is 
 what happens with the dominance of rationalism. 
 Mental progress is an economy; race progress is a 
 growth. The increase of economy is limited, while the 
 growth in energy, if kept along normal lines, may be 
 perpetual. The dominance of economy indicates a 
 diminution of energy ; while it brings real gains, it is a 
 mark of physical decline. That the rational attitude 
 t [129] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 is an index of decline in energy is illustrated by the 
 increasing hold it has on men as they grow old. When 
 a man passes the prime of life, physical vigor declines. 
 Economy thus becomes more prominent, until in old 
 age it is supreme. If rationalism and senility grow 
 together, it suggests that they have a common origin. 
 That senility is a waning of energy, everyone knows. 
 If it can be shown that growth in thinking powers has 
 the same origin, many mysteries hitherto unsolved can 
 be explained. 
 
 The plastic cell or organ has within it many possi- 
 bilities of activity. At the same time there is a lack of 
 definiteness in the direction activity may take. As 
 maturity approaches, possible directions of activity 
 decrease in number and grow in definiteness. The 
 useful movements are often repeated and each repe- 
 tition brings greater ease of execution; less useful, 
 sporadic acts become more and more difficult. 
 Energy thus flows along fixed lines and activity be- 
 comes determined. As the flow of energy diminishes 
 with age, activity falls into ruts. Varied activity 
 becomes increasingly difficult, and ultimately im- 
 possible. Lack of choice is thus a lack of energy 
 and plasticity. As old age approaches, the line of 
 least resistance is so well established that there is no 
 difficulty in forecasting the conduct. Failure of energy 
 
 nsoi 
 
SENILE DEGENERATION 
 
 is the cause of the determinism of old age, not any set 
 direction to activity given to the organism by its 
 heredity. Every cell gets at birth a plasticity and 
 susceptibility that is lost only as energy fails. 
 
 Few would deny these facts, I think, if they were 
 applied only to energy in its bodily form. The prin- 
 ciple is too patent to be gainsaid. Objection is more 
 likely to arise when it is urged that thought is a con- 
 sequence of bodily activity, that it follows the same 
 laws and is limited by the same conditions. Perhaps 
 this cannot be proved by direct observation ; but it can 
 at least be shown that changes take place in thought, 
 as old age approaches, analogous to those that ac- 
 company declining energy. Belief is active and easy 
 in youth : the viewpoint is fixed in old age. When 
 maturity is reached it becomes increasingly difficult to 
 change opinions, and in old age it is practically im- 
 possible to do so. This suggests that plasticity in 
 thought and action have the same basis, and that they 
 grow and decline under similar conditions. Opinions 
 are not unchangeable because of their logic, but because 
 the brain cells that form the physical basis have lost 
 their plasticity, and hence cannot make new combi- 
 nations. The once accepted must be retained because 
 there is a failure of surplus energy to force new associ- 
 ations. Ideas become inseparable in thought because 
 
 [131] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 the mind has not the energy to sever them. Unity 
 of ideas, therefore, is no evidence of the unity of under- 
 lying phenomena, nor does it afford any test of the 
 constitution of the mind. The ability to make dis- 
 tinctions is merely an index of the amount of effective 
 energy the organism possesses, and of the plasticity 
 of its cells. If the number of inseparable ideas grows 
 with age, and if there is no difference in the power ex- 
 erted over the mind by late acquired and early acquired 
 associations, there is no reason why explanations should 
 be sought for one group that are plainly not needed 
 for the other. The pressure of a deficit unifies the 
 action of each subordinated organ, and the degree of 
 definiteness increases as this pressure grows. Instinc- 
 tive action is an extreme form of this pressure. Here 
 the activity of a group of nerve centers is so fully 
 determined that one well-recognized action follows 
 their awakening. We think of fixed ideas as a stigma 
 of the insane ; yet all of us have fixed ideas stamped 
 on our thinking. The difference is that our fixed ideas 
 are useful and theirs are injurious. There is no dif- 
 ference, however, in the mode of acquiring them or of 
 the mechanism under which they act. 
 
 Determined action and fixed ideas are not the prod- 
 uct of any mechanism of heredity, nor are they due 
 to the constitution of the mind. They have their 
 
 [132] 
 
SENILE DEGENERATION 
 
 origin in objective conditions that act through the 
 pressure created by a deficit of energy. It is not the 
 completeness of the germinal elements in heredity, but 
 the lack of them, that makes determinate action pos- 
 sible. A moth does not fly towards a light because of 
 an inherited mechanism impelling this action. If its 
 mechanism were more complete it could fly away from 
 the light as easily as to approach it. The action of light 
 and heat make up for the defects of heredity, and 
 impel a definite action where otherwise no fixed re- 
 action would take place. The simple reactions due to a 
 deficit are equally objective, and help, as do tropisms, 
 to make up for the incompleteness of heredity. On a 
 simple heredity it is thus possible to build a complex 
 organism that meets the most varied conditions. We 
 do not need mechanisms when objective forces can be 
 made to effect the same ends. 
 
 183] 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 THE WILL 
 
 tf 
 
IX 
 
 The problem of religion is to make clear the relation 
 of degeneration to the will, and to show how the evils 
 of degeneration may be replaced by upbuilding tenden- 
 cies. Degeneration is almost universal, because every 
 disturbance in the balance of growth and all defects 
 in nutrition depress the individual affected below his 
 normal level. Subsequent growth does not remedy 
 these defects, but tends to exaggerate them. If de- 
 velopment is retarded, morbid degeneration sets in, 
 which ends in emotionalism, hysteria or insanity. If 
 development is accelerated, senile degeneration results. 
 This carries with it rigidity of parts and dominance 
 of instinctive, imitative and egoistic tendencies. With 
 heredity and the nutritive processes left to themselves, 
 an organism can scarcely fail to fall into one or the 
 other of these pitfalls. Some other force must be 
 evoked if the narrow path of normal progress is to be 
 followed to a stable goal in a higher life. What is this 
 force and how does it effect its ends ? 
 
 Action is either the result of antecedent conditions 
 working from the outside, or it is merely the expression 
 
 [137] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 of some internal reaction. Acts are determinate, not 
 because of any general law of universal causation, but 
 because some evolutionary process has eliminated 
 less effective ways of procedure. Determinism is a 
 goal, not a first principle. We reach it by growth 
 and change, not through primary forces or predeter- 
 mined causes. It has as many forms as there are 
 independent sources of activity, and we become wholly 
 determinate only as all of these are harmonized and 
 coordinated. 
 
 There are two kinds of determinism so prominent 
 that they cannot fail to attract attention. Biologic 
 determinism covers the whole range of heredity. Or- 
 ganic change follows definite laws, and its principles 
 are capable of definite enunciation. The germ cell has 
 various potentialities that work themselves out in 
 organic development and become manifest in every 
 normal being. Were all characters natural and all 
 acts instinctive, there would be no field left indeter- 
 minate by biologic evolution. The contrast of natural 
 and acquired characters is a recognition that there are 
 many acts not directly controlled by heredity. Ac- 
 quired characters must of necessity have some other 
 source and they grow in importance as organisms 
 rise in the scale of being. They indicate some form 
 of external determinism which supplements or dis- 
 
 [138] 
 
THE WILL 
 
 places the biologic determinism of lower organisms. 
 I cannot enter an exhaustive discussion of external 
 determinism ; but one aspect of it is so prominent that, 
 if not the sole form, it may be taken as a type of all 
 others. Economic determinism acts through nutrition 
 and other external objects that each organism must 
 exert itself to secure. The principle of economy is 
 back of all acquired traits, activities and knowledge. 
 Their force, however exerted, makes the economic 
 determinism that stands in contrast with the biologic 
 determinism imposed by heredity. The two are domi- 
 nant forces in man's determinate life; but they are 
 not the sole factors. The third is the will. Its work- 
 ings cannot be understood until the earlier and more 
 objective forms of control have their activity explained. 
 To call an act one of will when the forces of biologic 
 selection or economic pressure are operative, confuses 
 what otherwise would be a plain problem. If these two 
 great forces cover the whole field, there is no will in 
 any sense worth investigating. The will is a reality 
 when there are acts free from the pressure of either of 
 these forces. If we can get beyond heredity and beyond 
 the pressure of economic events there is a reality to 
 freedom that it is worth a struggle to realize. 
 
 What, then, is the essence of these two great forces, 
 and how can we know when we have passed beyond the 
 
 [139] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 realm of their activity? Biologic determinism is the 
 tendency in organic life to repeat the stages of develop- 
 ment through which predecessors have gone. This 
 constant repetition is the essence of biological heredity ; 
 and in so far as it is active, determinate action results. 
 Economic determinism, however, is due not to a posi- 
 tive, but to a negative principle. Regular action is 
 acquired as any part is brought under the pressure of a 
 deficit. Plastic action is indeterminate and may move 
 in any direction. Lessen the plasticity and action 
 becomes more fixed in kind and less open to variation 
 in its results. Complete determinism arises when a 
 long-standing deficit has reduced action to its simplest 
 form. Senile life loses all spontaneity, and a routine 
 is established as complete as that due to organic he- 
 redity. Biologic determinism is static, for its results 
 never vary except under morbid influences. Economic 
 determinism may be retrogressive, for the pressure of 
 deficit lowers the tone of an organism and forces it out 
 of the normal path. No matter how great the economy, 
 and hence the immediate advantage, loss of energy 
 and of plasticity have no compensations that keep an 
 organism from stagnation and decay. The best that 
 could come from complete biologic and economic deter- 
 minism would be a static condition. We must look 
 elsewhere for the principles of progress. These lie in 
 
 [140] 
 
THE WILL 
 
 some indeterminate field outside the province of these 
 two great forces. 
 
 A closer examination reveals the missing element 
 and shows how it works. What checks the growth of 
 the lower parts of an organism and thus makes for the 
 the appearance of higher powers is not any result of the 
 principles of heredity nor of any germ determinant 
 that limits growth. It is the appearance of new 
 organs turning surplus energy in other directions that 
 keeps older parts true to their normal development. 
 Parts remain normal only when they are under the 
 pressure of a deficit. Then only does biologic deter- 
 minism keep their growth in the right direction and 
 economic determinism force them to function in useful 
 ways. No organ will grow normally and become a 
 useful agent in survival with a surplus of energy to 
 disturb the regularity of its action. Normal growth 
 and activity continue only so long as new parts appear 
 to drain off this surplus through the indeterminate 
 activity which youth and plasticity stimulate. The 
 useful parts are the older ones acting under the pressure 
 of deficit. It is the mere activity of the newer part, 
 not its direction, function or regularity, that aids the 
 organism. 
 
 Indeterminate action is thus an essential element in 
 normal growth. Without it, the organism degenerates 
 
 [141] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 either in a morbid, or in a senile direction. It gives to 
 the partially formed and more plastic higher powers a 
 function in the place of what would otherwise be mere 
 waste. We must, however, call it indeterminate with 
 a qualification. It is indeterminate in relation to sur- 
 vival, but not in relation to distant ends and better 
 adjustment. Without the activity it promotes, future 
 normal growth would be prevented, and the possibility 
 of better adjustment denied. It can, therefore, be 
 called telic determinism ; for it creates adjustments by 
 opening up the line of future progress and by keeping 
 organisms true to it. The formless activity of to-day 
 through the growth of still higher parts is put under the 
 pressure of deficit. Activity thereby becomes fixed in 
 direction and determinate in purpose. Each newer 
 part in turn presses its predecessors into practical use 
 and takes on itself the function of regulating them 
 through new expressions of indeterminate action that 
 exhaust the stock of surplus energy. 
 
 This office of using up surplus energy and thus pro- 
 moting the normal activity of lower parts is the primary 
 function of the will. It is not an immaterial something, 
 nor a form of higher thought, but is the active expres- 
 sion of a partially formed, newer organ, with much 
 plasticity and of no immediate use. The will is not 
 the source of clear definite thought, nor is it the place 
 
 [1421 
 
THE WILL 
 
 where controlling motives arise. Thoughts come from 
 the intellect : motives arise through the emotions. 
 These are both within the realm of determinate action. 
 They result from the action of the older and less plastic 
 parts from which surplus of energy has been withdrawn. 
 Volition keeps growth normal. When this happens, 
 the much admired constituents of thought and activity 
 work out their normal destiny, keep mankind progres- 
 sive and make its collective efforts telic. We move 
 forward, not by conscious individual efforts directed 
 toward survival, but by the social results of activity 
 that has no immediate end. If pure thought and 
 utilitarian motives absorbed all of our energy, progress 
 would cease and degradation begin. 
 
 The will is thus the expression of a movement from 
 plastic to definite action, taking place when the higher 
 centers are forming. We should think of mental 
 activity not as the result of a definitely constituted 
 organ with specific and well defined parts, but rather of 
 a series of organs, some newly and partially made, some 
 normal and others in process of decay. Older parts are 
 gradually thrown off or absorbed. Newer parts in- 
 crease in the regularity and effectiveness of their acts 
 as their growth rounds them out and makes them 
 capable of performing the functions of older decaying 
 parts. The rise of a species in the scale of being de- 
 
 [143] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 pends on keeping up this series of changes by discarding 
 old parts and by reducing new ones to regular and useful 
 forms of activity. The changes are progressive so long 
 as new parts absorb the surplus energy and force their 
 predecessors into a compact group with related activities. 
 Two difficulties prevent a clear concept of the will. 
 The first is that it is thought of as immaterial and hence 
 without the physical background of other faculties. 
 The second is that we confuse moral judgments with 
 volitions. With passion and intellectual activity we 
 recognize the relation between the mental state and its 
 physical antecedents. By this means, passion and 
 intellect can be readily contrasted and their province 
 made clear. The will has no such method of recogni- 
 tion, and hence it is confused with matters of habit, of 
 passion, of intellect or any other propensity that 
 happens for the moment to command attention. This 
 indefiniteness must be set aside in the interest of clear 
 thought. We must think of the physical antecedents 
 of the will as clearly as we do of other native powers 
 and faculties. This antecedent is surplus energy. 
 Without vigor all acts are routine not involving volition. 
 The will is mind made active by surplus energy ; the 
 intellect is the mind acting under a deficit ; passion is 
 the mind controlled by its inherited mechanisms. 
 The intellect gets its force through the acquired char- 
 
 [144] 
 
THE WILL 
 
 acters that are objective in their origin. Passion is a 
 matter of heredity. It is the surplus of energy above 
 the demands of heredity and environment that makes 
 volition possible. Volition should therefore be asso- 
 ciated with strenuous, and not with moral, acts. Most 
 moral acts are habits and do not involve our highest 
 powers. Although valuable, they give no index of the 
 uplift that presses society forward to new goals. It is 
 the telic tendencies of surplus energy that produce epoch- 
 making social changes. The best measure of this 
 force is to be had in sports, athletic contests and sudden 
 emergencies that call forth all the powers of a man. 
 It is the will of the athlete, not his physical powers, 
 that gives him the victory. If we looked to him for 
 example of volition, instead of looking to the moral 
 recluse, we should have no difficulty in separating acts 
 of volition from those of the intellect. 
 
 Determinate action is not fixed in amount, but varies 
 with the energy of a man and the plasticity of his brain 
 cells. Men may be said to have two wills, the one a will 
 to believe, which manifests itself when they feel energetic, 
 and the other a will to criticize, which is potent when 
 they lack energy. A surplus of energy puts them in 
 one mood, while a deficit evokes the other. Most men 
 shift back and forth from one mood to the other as 
 their surplus energy varies and their health improves or 
 l [145] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 fails. It breaks no law to change from one of these 
 conditions to the other, since the cause lies either in 
 objective conditions, a nervous shock or some new 
 inspiration. Men are less determinate in youth than 
 in old age, and also less so in action than in thought. 
 The young of each generation are forced to think in 
 old forms by their elders, while their activities are shaped 
 by their own experience. Thought is thus more deter- 
 minate than activity, and from this difference arises 
 the struggle between belief and doubt, so much empha- 
 sized by religious experience. 
 
 Freedom is not the power to do what one pleases, but 
 the power to throw off depression and abnormalities. 
 It demands not the absence of control over individual 
 acts, but the power of a thorough regeneration. Voli- 
 tion, rightly understood, is the antecedent of regenera- 
 tion, not of acts performed by the parts of the brain 
 and body that have acquired definite functions. Its 
 essence is the exciting of activity among a new group of 
 brain cells, and the doing there of acts hitherto per- 
 formed in an older part. If all the brain had definite 
 functions set by heredity, no change of this sort could 
 be made. If, on the other hand, men in their ordinary 
 actions use but a fraction of their brain cells, only this 
 fraction will be definitely enough organized to be the 
 seat of regular functions. The unused cells can be 
 
 [1461 
 
THE WILL 
 
 made active by the presence of surplus energy, and this 
 activity once begun may replace that of older parts 
 with well defined functions. The possibility of regen- 
 eration exists if mental activity can be transferred from 
 one part of the brain to another. Such a change 
 demands surplus energy, plastic cells and some ex- 
 traordinary event to fix the attention and to arouse 
 activity. 
 
 When these three are in conjunction, marked trans- 
 formations of nervous activity and of mental concepts 
 result. The social process is so much more dominant 
 in thought than is heredity, that when a break is once 
 made, a thorough reconstruction of ideas and motives 
 is possible. Regeneration does not alter heredity. 
 It uses hereditary forces in a new way to modify the 
 action of the social process that controls thought. It 
 is no more a violation of the uniformity of nature than 
 a mutation is a deviation from organic law. Any 
 striking combination of events makes changes in devel- 
 opment that perpetuate themselves and thus prevent 
 a return to the former equilibrium. Regeneration is 
 an extraordinary event, but not in any way marvelous. 
 It is supernormal, but not supernatural. Men do not 
 violate the laws of nature by rising above the normal 
 any more than they do when they sink below it. Voli- 
 tion is more than activity. It is activity among plastic 
 
 [1471 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 cells forced on by the action of surplus energy. By 
 making will the psychic antecedent of regeneration 
 instead of an immaterial entity, religion avoids an 
 impassable philosophic barrier, and realizes an oppor- 
 tunity to verify its claims by evidence that no careful 
 thinker will reject. 
 
 1148 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 CHARACTER 
 
It is an error to think of the mind as having a definite 
 constitution either in a material or in an immaterial 
 sense. It is not a unit with definite, predetermined 
 expressions, but is a series of developing functions 
 forced into an imperfect unity by organic growth and 
 external pressure. In the growth of any being, the 
 earlier parts or stages are constantly disappearing 
 through disuse, metamorphosis and other means of 
 organic transformation. In their places come new 
 organs that do in better ways the acts performed by 
 their disappearing predecessors in the chain of organic 
 growth. Life and its functions are at no time confined 
 to any one of these links, but are aggregated in several 
 of them. A moving equilibrium is created that, with 
 losses and gains, takes the organism upward through 
 the series of changes demanded by its destiny. Each 
 new link has in it the same inherited possibilities. 
 It has neither more nor less than its predecessors had, 
 but antecedent growth and external pressure force it to 
 take on peculiar functions that complement those of 
 other organic parts. Its potentialities are thus devel- 
 [1511 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 oped or suppressed. With no other heredity than its 
 predecessors, it may grow in new ways and manifest 
 distinctive qualities. 
 
 Mind, as we find it in human beings, has qualities 
 that have developed at these stages or levels. Three of 
 these stages are so apparent that they can readily be 
 distinguished. The lowest level is seen mainly in the 
 instincts and emotions; the second is the intellect; 
 the third is the will. Of these the intellect is the normal 
 level, for through it our effective adjustments are made. 
 The instinctive and emotional level is plainly sub- 
 normal, for if we allow ourselves to be controlled by its 
 impulses, we degenerate. The will is the supernormal 
 level. It is here that new adjustments and fresh 
 thought take their rise. It differs from the lower 
 levels not in kind nor in its possibilities, but in the fact 
 that it is more plastic and that much of its activity is 
 still indeterminate. Its primary function is to be 
 active, not to perform specific tasks directly advan- 
 tageous in survival. By absorbing surplus energy it 
 keeps the lower faculties normal and thus adds to their 
 effective power. This indeterminateness is the cause 
 of the effectiveness of the lower organs. It thus gives 
 the appearance of a greater regularity of action than 
 exists. Only in the subnormal or degenerating parts 
 is the reign of law complete. Elsewhere there is plas- 
 
 [152] 
 
CHARACTER 
 
 ticity and indefiniteness of action and of results. This 
 is the essence of growth and from it the genetic concept 
 of life takes its rise. 
 
 This view of the mind could readily be illustrated in 
 many ways, but the concept is clear enough for present 
 purposes. Indeed, to some it may too clearly point to the 
 conclusion that it is at bottom the old material view of 
 life so often rejected by the leaders of religious thought. 
 There is an element of truth in this, — enough to con- 
 fuse many readers, — but there is also an important dif- 
 ference. The material concept of the mind originated 
 when chemistry was the leading science. Using its prin- 
 ciples as analogies, psychologists separated the contents 
 of the mind into elements similar to those found in 
 chemical analysis. The mind was thought of as a cru- 
 cible in which strange results sprang from a few ele- 
 ments. In this way a definiteness of construction was 
 given to the mind that was satisfying in its complete- 
 ness, but it failed to give a clew to the mind's real origin 
 or functions. A static mind built from external ele- 
 ments, and a genetic mind constantly rebuilt by its own 
 forces and antecedents, are radically different concepts. 
 A genetic mind has material elements, but they are 
 subordinate to the mental life and are constantly rebuilt 
 by it. This life comes from these elements, but is not 
 of them. The genetic always has some indeterminate 
 
 [153] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 factors permitting the reshaping of the whole as its 
 growth advances. Older parts give way to newer ones, 
 molded not by the material elements in their predeces- 
 sors, but by their mental life. In each new growth the 
 physical is less dominant and the mental more nearly 
 supreme. We cannot escape the material, but we need 
 not be controlled by it. 
 
 The genetic view of mind, instead of setting up con- 
 cepts and deducing principles antagonistic to religion, 
 emphasizes the same facts and reaches the same con- 
 clusions. Both emphasize an indeterminate element 
 in conduct. Through this, choices are made and the 
 possibility is afforded of reconstructing thought and mo- 
 tive in ways that make for higher life. They also have 
 in common the fact that control by the will is mainly 
 through acquired traits and sentiments. If all forces 
 acting on the will were natural and predetermined, there 
 could not be the prevailing emphasis on the educating 
 and strengthening of the will now found in religious litera- 
 ture. It makes this same thought emphatic to say that 
 the will is plastic and is shaped by present conditions, 
 not by predecessors in time and space. There is also 
 a like emphasis on the danger and prevalence of degen- 
 eration. Through retardation the lower levels of the 
 mind may remain too strong to be controlled by their 
 legitimate masters in the more plastic parts of the mind ; 
 
 [1541 
 
CHARACTER 
 
 or through premature acceleration the intellect may so 
 fully control the emotions that a selfish mental attitude 
 asserts itself. Finally, and most important, is the 
 thought of regeneration by which the old passes away 
 and the new comes to its full vigor. To be born again 
 is an old religious theme. The genetic organism is con- 
 stantly being reorganized. Older parts fall into decay 
 or are cast off. Newer parts take over the functions of 
 their predecessors. In other ways and under new con- 
 ditions they restore what is lost and elevate the whole 
 organism to a higher plane. The genetic mind has its 
 levels as well as the organism of which it is a part. In 
 normal growth the lower ones are constantly repressed, 
 and decay through disuse. There is thus a shifting 
 of control to the will ; the mind in consequence is made 
 over fully enough to be the psychical expression of the 
 new birth sought by religion. 
 
 This viewpoint, whether taught by religion or psy- 
 chology, emphasizes the importance of character. If 
 the higher levels of the mind were not plastic, if their 
 nature were predetermined by the germ cell or by the, 
 structure of the lower levels, our acts would be the re- 
 sults of past, not of present conditions. Without plas- 
 ticity there could be no growth in character. Hence 
 there could be no way for education to mold or for re- 
 ligion to regenerate. Growth in character is possible 
 
 [155] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 to the extent that the acquired powers of the will domi- 
 nate over natural traits. The lower levels of thought and 
 action whose activities are predetermined must be sup- 
 pressed ; their structure must waste away through dis- 
 use and their energy be absorbed in the newer activities 
 of the will. The decay of the old and predetermined 
 must go hand in hand with the formation of acquired 
 traits in the plastic parts of the brain. The will be- 
 comes definite in its action by assuming the functions 
 that in cruder ways the lower levels of the mind have 
 hitherto performed. 
 
 This transfer of function and control is the essence of 
 every uplift. When we see its effects we call it growth 
 in character, and we think of some immaterial change 
 as its cause. Could we measure the physical changes in 
 the structure of the brain as readily as we note their 
 effects on the activity of men we would see that the one 
 is as real as the other and that both are indications of the 
 reconstructive process accompanying normal growth. 
 The old decays ; the new increases in definiteness. It 
 takes on itself the burden of organic control and the re- 
 sponsibility for the continuance of vital processes. It 
 matters little whether we think of these changes as men- 
 tal or physical; as growth in character or in organic 
 function. The vital point is : the decay of the old and 
 the growth of the new, the loss of control naturally pre- 
 [156] 
 
CHARACTER 
 
 determined and the gain in control through acquired 
 traits, the transfer of functions from old, well estab- 
 lished parts to those that are plastic and fresh. 
 
 By these means the well-recognized levels of the mind 
 get the order of their importance reversed. The natu- 
 rally dominant emotions and instincts become subor- 
 dinated to the acquired traits of the will. On the lower 
 level, the emotions and the instincts are an expression 
 of the predetermined direction in which its activity 
 moves. They are, however, in a process of decay. The 
 organism would lose its adjustment, if other forms of 
 determined action were not devised. The intellectual 
 level lies in the mental powers created by the pressure 
 of deficit. Its objective expression is the social process 
 that supplements mental activity, rounds out its limita- 
 tions and makes the laws that give force to all of its ex- 
 pressions. What the instincts and emotions are to the 
 organic level, and the social process is to the intellectual 
 level, character is to the will. It changes plasticity and 
 mere activity into definite reactions which create adjust- 
 ments and replace the control formerly exercised by the 
 emotions and intellect. There is in this change nothing 
 new. All that is peculiar to will-power lies in the con- 
 stitution of any organic part. The same change of func- 
 tion from lower to higher levels has often before taken 
 place. Decay and growth have always been active. 
 
 [1571 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 The new is plastic and the old doomed to decay. The 
 difference is not in this, but in the completeness of the 
 changes involved. From an almost complete state of 
 predeterminateness, in which natural characters and 
 external pressure are dominant, a new control arises 
 that is largely plastic. In so far as it is predetermined, 
 conditions are made by the pressure of the social process 
 to a far greater degree than by organic antecedents. 
 Emotions and instincts are thus displaced by abstract 
 mental concepts and social ideals. These are the mold 
 in which character is shaped. A man of will should 
 have no natural emotions or inherited instincts strong 
 enough to control him. Their decay is the condition 
 on which his strength of character depends. 
 
 If the will is a mental level and character an index of 
 the reconstructions by which activities are controlled, 
 a new importance is given to the relation of higher to 
 lower levels and to the means by which transferences of 
 control from one to another are carried through. It 
 now becomes necessary to trace the physical antecedents 
 of thought. The decay or disuse of organs must precede 
 the reconstruction of mental life. The shifting of 
 growth from one part of an organism to others must re- 
 organize the mental phenomena their activity evokes. 
 As the instincts and emotions arise from the level where 
 decay and reconstruction are most evident, it is to them 
 
 [158] 
 
CHARACTER 
 
 we must turn in looking for the connection between 
 mental facts and vital processes. To most writers the 
 emotions and instincts seem unrelated. Discussions 
 throw little light either on the relations of instincts and 
 emotions to each other or to the underlying vital mech- 
 anism. I have found but one writer l who recognizes a 
 direct connection between instincts and emotions. The 
 relation he finds is not the same as suggests itself to 
 me, but the start he makes is an intelligent one. Mr. 
 McDougall thinks that each of the principal instincts 
 presupposes some kind of emotional excitement, so that 
 its activity is always accompanied by the emotion pe- 
 culiar to it. The emotion, if I understand him rightly, 
 is the mental expression of those organic facts whose ef- 
 fects we call instinctive. Instinct and emotion would 
 then grow and decay together, and be strong or weak 
 from the same group of vital conditions. To me, an- 
 other connection seems more probable. I would say 
 that instead of growing and decaying together, the 
 growth of emotion is an index of decay in the instinct it 
 accompanies. 
 
 To make my meaning clear and to give a clew to my 
 reasoning, I shall first state the general principle on 
 which it is based. An instinct is the mark of effective 
 activity ; a condition in which energy goes out fully in 
 
 *Se« McDougall, "Social Psychology," Chap. III. 
 [159] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 activity. The instinctive act is the most perfect of or- 
 ganic adjustments, and in it the amount of work done is 
 proportionate to the energy at the disposal of the past. 
 Were all acts instinctive, mental phenomena might be 
 clear, but they would not be emotional. The instinct 
 to keep an upright position under normal conditions 
 hardly enters into consciousness. When it is so weak- 
 ened that we fear a fall, it may be the source of a strong 
 emotion. 
 
 I would not say with Mr. McDougall that a dog barks 
 in pursuit of game because it has a social instinct, but 
 because its whole energy is not used up in the pursuit. 
 The aroused but unused energy flows over to other cen- 
 ters and awakens their activity. It is an old saying that 
 barking dogs never bite. I would interpret this to 
 mean that a biting dog is more instinctive, and that all 
 his energy goes out in activity. The instinct of the 
 barking dog partially fails, and the aroused energy is 
 used up in barking instead of biting. The domesti- 
 cated dog has degenerated from the earlier condition, 
 where energy and activity were coordinated. Energy 
 flows as in olden times, but the partial disuse of his or- 
 gans of pursuit makes an overflow of energy that is ex- 
 hibited in other parts as emotion. A squirrel that 
 buries nuts lacks emotion about them. The activity 
 runs its course instinctively, with so close a correspond- 
 
 [160] 
 
CHARACTER 
 
 ence between energy and activity that no surplus re- 
 mains to generate feeling. The instinct of flight is not 
 of necessity accompanied by fear. If the instinct works 
 perfectly, there is no emotion. The act of flight absorbs 
 the energy and puts the animal in a position free from 
 danger. It is the imperfect working of the instinct that 
 evokes fear. This emotion has its seat, not in the cen- 
 ters made active in flight, but in other parts to which 
 the overflow of energy goes. 
 
 The use of the emotion is that it arouses these related 
 parts and forces them to come to the aid of the instinc- 
 tive activities. Under emotion, either the whole organ- 
 ism acts, or many more of its powers are made effective 
 than is the case where an act is purely instinctive. 
 Emotional activity is more complex than instinctive 
 action. It arises when the organic mechanisms are being 
 displaced by the more conscious coordinations of the 
 higher centers. The old must to some extent decay to 
 permit this change. The less effective action of the old 
 leaves free a fund of energy that is used up in arousing 
 related parts. The resulting emotion concentrates the 
 attention on the instinctive act and brings to its aid the 
 whole conscious force of the organism. The newer parts 
 thus become trained to do the work of their decaying 
 predecessors and action is raised to a higher level 
 through the increase of its conscious elements. Emo- 
 m [161] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 tion is thus the mental sign of waste energy. Instinct 
 indicates efficiency. When it alone operates, the poten- 
 tial energy of the part and the amount of work done 
 exactly correspond. While emotion is waste energy, 
 it is of use in arousing related parts and in centering the 
 attention on the instinctive act, thus bringing the whole 
 organism into action. As a stage in development emo- 
 tion indicates that older parts are decaying, and that 
 their activity is being taken over by the higher, more 
 plastic centers. 
 
 Emotion has a suggestive power that makes the activ- 
 ity of newly formed organs definite. These in conse- 
 quence follow more closely in the line of their predeces- 
 sors. It is this suggestive power that gives the emotions 
 their greatest power. In every organic transition due to 
 the creation of new parts and the decay of the old they 
 bind the two together, keep up the continuity of the or- 
 ganism and shape the new in harmony with the old. 
 They cease to operate only when the reorganization is 
 so complete that the whole energy of the organism might 
 go out in new ways as effectually as in the old. This 
 point, however, never comes ; for the process of recon- 
 struction and advance is continuous. There is always 
 decay to create emotion, and there are always new parts 
 for it to direct. It is thus shifted from part to part and 
 expresses itself in new ways in each epoch of organic 
 
 [1621 
 
CHARACTER 
 
 growth. Its emphasis on organic needs is the primary 
 force that arouses the will to action. Were it the only- 
 force, the problem of the will would be simple. Each 
 new part, as it developed in determinateness, would re- 
 peat the selfsame activities to which its predecessors 
 were accustomed. The opposing force comes from what 
 we call character. Impulses and passions are natural 
 emotions whose direction is determined by the organs in 
 which they arise. The character elements are senti- 
 ments that stand in close relation to the intellect, where 
 acquired traits take their rise. These sentiments are 
 social in origin. On them we rely to stem the tide of 
 rising impulse and passion. 
 
 To explain the will is to show how these newly ac- 
 quired sentiments dominate in men over the more 
 powerful impulses that through heredity control the or- 
 ganism. We get a solution of this difficulty, not by think- 
 ing of the will as an immaterial force, but as a plastic 
 expression of forces determinate only in so far as they 
 have been organized as social sentiments. When a con- 
 flict comes between acquired sentiments and natural im- 
 pulses, the will acts with the sentiments and against the 
 impulses. To say this is not to restate the problem in 
 other words, but to divide it into two parts. The moral 
 education of a man might be complete and his social sen- 
 timents strong. Yet, if he had no surplus energy to 
 
 [163] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 reenforce them, they would be powerless in a conflict 
 with impulse and passion. The indeterminate forces 
 of the will are an index of surplus energy. If men were 
 normal, every lower part would be under the pressure of 
 deficit. All surplus energy would be concentrated in 
 the plastic parts as a reserve force to be used when the 
 sentiments arouse its activity. What the strength of 
 the moral sentiments is, and what is the amount of sur- 
 plus energy, are two distinct problems. The one de- 
 pends on education and the other on the physical nor- 
 mality of the man. There can be no effective volition 
 if surplus energy is absent. Its action, if present, would 
 be indeterminate without the growth of moral senti- 
 ments. If it acts with the acquired sentiments and 
 against natural impulses, we can be sure that normal 
 people will act right if properly educated. It becomes 
 doubly sure in the case of degenerates that they will act 
 from impulse and not from education. Hence the need 
 of the opposition to degeneration which is the essence 
 of religious activity. 
 
 [164] 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 INSPIRATION 
 
 s 
 
XI 
 
 The most difficult of religious topics is yet to be dis- 
 cussed. It is difficult, not from any intrinsic reason, but 
 because religious people distrust scientific analysis. If 
 one religiously inclined states his experience, he finds 
 that he has gained nothing by a frank confession. He 
 will more likely feel a loss of self-respect by recognizing 
 the similarities between what to him is sacred and what 
 is plainly a degenerate state in those with whom he is 
 compared. Inspiration is an emotional state and shows 
 the peculiarities of other emotions. Abnormalities do 
 not follow distinct laws of their own. They are merely 
 exaggerations which, because of their striking features, 
 can be more easily studied than can the less obtrusive 
 normal phenomena from which they are differentiated 
 and derived. The road to the knowledge of the normal 
 is through the abnormal. Only after the abnormal 
 symptoms of emotion are well understood can they 
 be separated from religious emotions and the ways 
 pointed out by which the latter may be developed. 
 
 If inspiration is normal and not a fancy, it is possible 
 to show how its force and its frequency may be in- 
 
 [167] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 creased. What is more important, it is possible to help 
 others develop inspirational moods and to get the advan- 
 tage that flows from them. At present our methods of 
 propagating religious ideas are sadly deficient. Until 
 other means are found of helping people to intensify 
 their spiritual convictions, religion will continue in the 
 state of decline so evident in recent years. Any cause 
 fights a losing battle that does not win converts. Our 
 vital experience dies with us unless revived by others. 
 It ceases to have value as evidence unless it be made a 
 matter of heritage. We must therefore analyze reli- 
 gious feelings to get the key to their revival in others. 
 Seeming losses will be transmuted into gains if in the 
 end sound methods of propagating religious feeling are 
 found and used. 
 
 To realize this advantage, we must utilize the genetic 
 concept of the mind which has been presented. The 
 mind is not a unit with an innate constitution and a 
 multitude of derived consequences. It is a series of 
 growths, each with the same organic background. 
 These function in different ways because of differences 
 in antecedent conditions and external pressure. There 
 are plastic indeterminate parts, and those falling into 
 decay. Every one has a normal level where action is 
 effective, a subnormal level where degeneration has be- 
 gun, and a supernormal level, — too plastic to have its 
 
 [168] 
 
INSPIRATION 
 
 action predetermined and too incompletely formed to 
 displace its predecessors in their useful, well-established 
 acts. The forward movements of the organism, how- 
 ever, consist in displacing these decaying parts or in 
 limiting the scope of their activity. This process in- 
 creases the functions and definiteness of action of the 
 newer parts. Thus readjustments to the environment 
 are made and a high standard of efficiency attained. 
 
 This view assumes practical value when we regard 
 the will as the supernormal element, thus separating 
 it from the intellectual process of which it is usually 
 regarded a part. The will thus becomes the seat of sur- 
 plus energy, the only part in the normal man where 
 surplus dominates. The instincts and animal emotions 
 are in a state of organic decay while the intellect is 
 under the pressure of deficit. The action of the will 
 thus has distinguishing characteristics which enable us 
 to determine what are true volitions in contrast with 
 the impulses coming from the lower organs. Both 
 types of action figure in consciousness. They seem so 
 much alike that we think of all action as willed. They 
 differ radically, however, in their background. Im- 
 pulses come from below and are marked by their organic 
 origin, or they arise from the external pressure that 
 evokes the action of the intellect. In the one case 
 they are instincts, emotions and passions ; in the other 
 
 [1691 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 they are utilities having force through the values they 
 create. In both cases action is determinate and readily 
 referable to the external causes in which it originates. 
 These organic, economic and social impulses make up 
 the great mass of our acts. We should contrast them in 
 their totality with true volitions which come from the 
 will and hence are free from the pressure, organic or ex- 
 ternal, that makes them measurable forces. 
 
 The first essential in grasping this contrast is to real- 
 ize that volition takes its rise, not in reason, but in sur- 
 plus energy. The will does not act on experience or 
 proof, but from a primary impulse aroused by free energy. 
 Its usefulness is not in what it does, but in the absorp- 
 tion of energy that keeps the lower organs normal by 
 forcing them to work under a deficit. The start of 
 volition is thus in energy; its end is in a sentiment. 
 Any repeated act gains emotional power, and thus an 
 impulse is generated that acts like other impulses in a 
 steady, persistent manner toward given ends. At any 
 moment the force of the will lies in the sentiments that 
 its repeated acts have formed. So long, then, as surplus 
 energy flows normally through the will, there is a growth 
 of acquired sentiments and an increase in their domi- 
 nance over natural impulses. Once check the flow of 
 surplus energy and character degenerates. Control 
 then becomes emotional or intellectual. In the latter 
 
 [1701 
 
INSPIRATION 
 
 case, senile traits steadily increase until old age comes 
 on, with its rigidity of thought and action. Volition 
 is thus a definite process, beginning in surplus of energy 
 and ending in sentiments. If this be granted, we can 
 hope to explain what gives volitions their direction. 
 
 First of all, I shall enunciate a principle that will 
 clarify our view of essentials. Reason has no direct 
 influence on the will. Its influence is corrective, not 
 formative. Volition makes sentiments and through 
 them beliefs. Reason chooses between beliefs, but it 
 originates nothing. It merely decides between thoughts 
 and opinions already formed. Reason is an expression 
 of deficit and gets its force by weeding out what some 
 more original power creates. Between the many dif- 
 ferent directions in which indeterminate activity goes 
 out, it forces choices which make volition seem to be its 
 product instead of its superior. In the virgin soil of a 
 plastic mind beliefs grow lavishly. They are not the 
 result of evidence nor of experience, but of rapid organic 
 growth. To act is to believe. In this state of mind 
 the young go along until they stumble on some limita- 
 tion arising from lack of energy. Then beliefs begin 
 to clash. The weaker go to the wall, for they are least 
 capable of resisting the pressure of deficit. When we 
 pride ourselves in getting the greatest return for the 
 least effort, we are plainly under the pressure of want 
 
 [171] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 and far from that primal state where energy dominates. 
 The utilitarian cramps our concepts so much that we 
 lose sight of our earlier, more energetic state. We even 
 go so far as to esteem personal relics of it as marks of 
 degeneration. These latter states are more effective, 
 but they are neither higher nor primal. We must look 
 in some other quarter than reason to find their source. 
 It is also plain that if surplus energy and its plastic 
 manifestations are the source from which new thought 
 arises, children are more normal than their elders. 
 Their simple faith is nearer the source of inspiration 
 and of new thought than is the logic of later years. 
 With them to think is to act. Simple suggestion is 
 transformed into action by the force of the surplus 
 within them. To act is to create a sentiment in favor 
 of the action. This tends toward its repetition and 
 increase in power. Suggestion is thus the intermediary 
 between surplus energy and sentiment. It is the force 
 that gives direction to the activities of the will and 
 gradually transforms them from indeterminate to 
 determinate action. 
 
 It is customary to think of suggestion as a lower, 
 rather than a higher, power. This is because it was first 
 brought into prominence by the study of degenerate 
 types. It is regarded as a force appearing when the 
 normal action of the higher faculties is interrupted. 
 
 11721 
 
INSPIRATION 
 
 This fact should not cause us to disparage its origin, but 
 should help us to classify the various forms of suggestion 
 and thus bring them into contrast with the pressure of 
 deficit that all intellectual action manifests. Where 
 plasticity and surplus exist, suggestion forestalls the 
 rational process which acts with precision only when 
 plasticity and surplus fail. The degenerate goes wrong 
 not because the power arousing action is of a low 
 nature, but because his ill-balanced condition makes 
 adjustive acts impossible. The child who is led by 
 suggestion would also be eliminated but for the pro- 
 tection of his elders. Even the man of genius is not 
 safe unless he keeps himself out of places where the 
 struggle for life is severe. Suggestion is not so perfect 
 a tool as reason, but it is the original shaping power in 
 plastic minds. When it leads to the creation of senti- 
 ments it is a potent force for progress, the only one that 
 moves in the right direction. When new situations 
 stimulate an unexpected and extraordinary manifesta- 
 tion, or when an unforeseen social situation arises, 
 reason, forethought and prudence fail to give a solution. 
 Suggestion must replace them. The narrow, safe path 
 of reason is surrounded on all sides by the diverging 
 paths of suggestion. These often lead into difficulty, 
 but they may also open the road to a better life. 
 Two forms of suggestion are obviously useful. Or- 
 [173] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 ganic suggestion is the power over our plastic higher 
 faculties exercised by the definite impulses of our lower 
 nature. It is suggestion that in the decay of older 
 organs induces the newer ones to take on their activity. 
 There would be no link between the old and the new 
 by which normal progress arises if this force of sugges- 
 tion were not felt and its dictates followed. Social 
 suggestion is equally prominent. We see it on its bad 
 side when a mob overthrows social law and eagerly 
 follows ways that are crude but energetic. We see it, 
 however, much more frequently on its good side when 
 it strengthens social usage and keeps men within the 
 bounds of law and morality. For much of the good 
 men do they can give no adequate reason. The influ- 
 ence of others, through precept and example, deter- 
 mines acts more frequently than men realize. If we 
 were careful to distinguish suggestion from reason, the 
 dominance of suggestion even in normal men would 
 be evident. It directs surplus energy toward its ends 
 and is never absent except when men fall into the grip 
 of old age. 
 
 From the standpoint of religion neither of these well- 
 recognized forms of suggestion is of use. They are 
 more likely to repress religious expression than to evoke 
 its higher manifestations. Organic suggestion gives 
 force to passions. Social suggestion strengthens rou- 
 
 [1741 
 
INSPIRATION 
 
 tine discipline in ways that kill the spirit, even though 
 it may save the letter of the law. The prophet who 
 seeks inspiration subdues organic suggestion by a 
 meager diet, and avoids social suggestion by a life of 
 solitude. In this he is wise, for both organic and social 
 suggestion must be displaced before natural suggestion 
 can begin its forceful but disruptive activity. All 
 men feel the stimulating, suggestive power of nature. 
 They realize that their best thoughts are evoked when 
 under its influence. Given surplus energy as a condi- 
 tion, and nature as an environment, these forces are at 
 a maximum that guide and elevate our thought. Senti- 
 ments are thus created that become a bulwark against 
 depression when routine living is once more resumed. 
 It is this state that is the essence of inspiration. When 
 we feel it our religious sentiments grow. As a result 
 we are raised above the normal and substitute distant 
 for immediately useful ends. 
 
 It would be useless to analyze religious inspiration 
 unless we also show ways by which consciously to attain 
 it. The transformation of inspiration from an acciden- 
 tal to a social force depends on the creating of regular 
 avenues of approach. The full development of this 
 province is a task larger than I can undertake, but there 
 are some facts whose bearing is so plain that they should 
 not be neglected. Suggestion is an offshoot of surplus 
 [175] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 energy. When vital forces are at a minimum or on a 
 downward curve, all energy is exhausted in performing 
 the mechanical operations that sustain life. Under 
 these conditions the instincts, emotions, rational 
 thought and like expressions of deficit dominate too 
 fully to permit any waste of energy along untried lines. 
 An upward curve of energy gives the freedom from 
 mechanical control that makes volition possible, and 
 favors conditions that evoke suggestion. Most men 
 are subject to irregularities in their supply of energy. 
 Sickness, disaster, bad food, and many other conditions 
 produce this result. In consequence, most men at 
 intervals pass from one extreme to the other. Down- 
 ward curves bring doubt, fear and depression ; upward 
 curves create men anew and give the higher powers an 
 unwonted supply of energy. It is during the domi- 
 nance of the upward movement that suggestion is 
 potent and new beliefs are readily formed. The many 
 plans of recent origin for the suppression of pain and 
 the inculcation of invigorating belief have their bases 
 in this thought, even if the mode of expressing it is so 
 immaterial that the physical background of the mind 
 is ignored. To keep the thought of pain out of the 
 mind when depression tends to make it vivid, and to 
 utilize the early epochs of recovery for presenting 
 suggestive ideas, are two rules that work wonders in 
 
 [176] 
 
INSPIRATION 
 
 rebuilding the higher life among those temporarily 
 depressed. 
 
 The apparent miracles of new types of belief are 
 readily explained if the relation of suggestion to surplus 
 energy is once understood. Prominent as are these 
 cases, they are less significant than the working of the 
 same principle in normal people, in their periods of 
 growing vigor. Natural suggestion, with its power of 
 inspiration, comes to them in times of energy ; it pushes 
 them into a contact with nature by its propelling force. 
 All men might feel its promptings if surplus energy 
 were not so freely used in the pursuit of material ends 
 or of social dominion. We get inspiration when we cut 
 down our wants and isolate ourselves, not because these 
 ends are bad, but because they exhaust energy. It is 
 stored-up energy that brings on states of inspiration. 
 We can, therefore, create inspiration just as we can 
 avoid the thought of pain. In the reconstruction these 
 two changes bring is the hope of religion and the promise 
 of a better life. 
 
 [177 
 
CHAPTEE XII 
 
 HISTORIC OR STATE RELIGION 
 
 « 
 
XII 
 
 I have kept in the background the actual develop- 
 ment of religion, because the thread of human progress 
 is lost in a recital of confusing facts and present creeds. 
 Our first task has been to outline the basal ideas on 
 which religion rests. We must now bring these ideas 
 into harmony with religion as we find it expressed in 
 historic institutions and voiced by prevailing religious 
 sentiment. Natural and historic religion, instead of 
 being harmonious growths, seem to be antagonistic 
 tendencies. They have little in common but a name. 
 The causes of this divergence are not hard to find ; and 
 if they are once clearly presented, the conciliation of 
 the two becomes possible, even if its realization is 
 remote. The essential difference arises from the fact 
 that natural religion is an expression of surplus energy, 
 while historic religions have assumed their well-known 
 forms under the pressure of deficit. Had the history 
 of national resources been different, religion would have 
 become, not an expression of sorrow, but of joy. 
 
 These evils and the race antagonisms they provoke 
 made each nation a coherent group and forced men to 
 
 [181] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 subordinate themselves to the needs of the state. The 
 duty of sacrifice was in its origin political, and becomes 
 religious only because of the close union between the 
 two. The fierce struggle for national independence 
 evoked sacrifice just as it did bravery, and the two 
 qualities grew together as national conflicts increased in 
 violence and frequence. Sacrifice becomes a virtue 
 only under the pressure of want, and must have as a 
 background the presence of war, famine, disease and 
 national disorder. Historic religion is state religion 
 because it reflects the ideas imposed by race conflicts 
 and emphasizes the virtues they bring forth. 
 
 We may well regard the historic and the prehistoric 
 epochs as stages in economic development from which 
 two types of religion have risen. By this I do not 
 mean that there ever was a natural man of the kind 
 Rousseau pictures, nor even a natural religion like that 
 of the theologians. Both of these concepts present 
 man as he would be in a naturally Utopian environ- 
 ment, or in a developed economic regime. If we would 
 picture with any accuracy the prehistoric man, we must 
 strip away all traits acquired in this advanced regime 
 and all political and moral advantages flowing from it. 
 This process, if thoroughly applied, would give results 
 so peculiar as to have little value. We cannot recon- 
 struct or revive the natural man. To bring him back 
 [182] 
 
HISTORIC OR STATE RELIGION 
 
 would be a loss, not a gain. Yet there are elements in 
 this early situation so clear and striking that to neglect 
 them would make history unexplainable and give a 
 wrong interpretation to human nature. By making 
 prominent the traits that survive, instead of emphasiz- 
 ing the details of the long epoch in which these traits 
 arose, we falsify history and present an artificial man. 
 But we do, by this means, reach the essence of man's 
 progress. The description of a long series of events in 
 many changing environments would obscure this 
 progress and defeat our purpose. Natural characters 
 reflect a single possible environment. This we should 
 try to reconstruct, even if the effort yields a mere 
 Utopia. 
 
 The essentials of this pictured prehistoric state should 
 be thought of in terms of health rather than in those of 
 welfare. Man's constitution shows that he is a long- 
 lived being. For his development there must have been 
 a period when the natural span of life was more fully 
 realized than in the recent past. Disease in its present 
 forms is a result of historic conditions. Especially is 
 this true of the great epidemics that have so much 
 shortened life. Filth comes mainly through overcrowd- 
 ing; contagious diseases could not have antedated it. 
 When the world was sparsely populated and the natu- 
 ral surplus large, a mature old age must have been 
 
 [1831 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 the general expectation. Infant mortality was doubt- 
 less large ; but this would not have much influence on 
 social organization if this dangerous period was fol- 
 lowed by a long period of vigorous manhood. Old age 
 would also, as with animals, quickly lead to death. 
 The young and vigorous would thus set the pace and 
 shape social and religious usages. Then youth and 
 vigor were long and old age short ; now, youth is but 
 a passing moment and old age an enduring, hopeless 
 epoch. With us the senile hand is on every institution 
 and influences every social event. It is not to be won- 
 dered that religion has reflected this change and has 
 become a thing of age and grief. 
 
 The economic conditions of early times also empha- 
 sized joy above sorrow. Nature was irregular in the 
 bestowal of its gifts. Periods of abundance and want 
 followed each other with great frequency. But when 
 nature gave, it gave freely. Periods of plenty were 
 free from worry. They became the occasions of great 
 festivals that aided much in shaping early institutions. 
 Memory dwelt on the joy of living during its best mo- 
 ments, rather than on the reviving of the evils incident 
 to periods of want. Distress and woe must become 
 chronic before they mold social thought. This can hap- 
 pen only after the social surplus has been appropriated 
 by dominating groups. So long as all participate in 
 
 [184] 
 
HISTORIC OR STATE RELIGION 
 
 the surplus their lives will be shaped by its pleasures. 
 Chronic poverty is due to a pressure which could not 
 have been felt before historic institutions deprived the 
 poor of their share of the free gifts of nature. 
 
 Religion under these conditions becomes the inspiring 
 uplift of life, not a preparation for death. It arose and 
 expanded with the increased vitality of spring, with the 
 freshening influences of outdoor life, with the songs and 
 festivals of the harvest, with the sports and amusements 
 of public gatherings, with the joy of victory and the 
 pleasures of prosperity. Some of this religion has re- 
 mained in a subdued form and has become a part of 
 modern life; but most of it was crushed out in the 
 struggle of later religions to reduce life to a simple moral 
 basis. In the pagan times it still held a place, for 
 morality had not yet been differentiated from public 
 life. But to the Hebrew prophets it became idolatry, 
 and was swept aside in the endeavor to secure a clearer 
 concept of God, a purer morality and greater social 
 justice. 
 
 Had economic conditions been normal and had a 
 long, prosperous life been the reward of right action, 
 the new morality might have been blended with 
 existing social institutions. Each would thus have 
 felt increased vigor. Health, prosperity, justice, mo- 
 rality and the joy of life could have been blended into 
 
 [185] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 a higher harmony, of which religion would have been 
 the best expression. The economic shortcomings of 
 the localities in which civilization arose did not permit 
 this. Western Asia was in a state of physical decline 
 during the period when its civilization was forming. 
 A reduction of rainfall was coupled with a type of 
 agriculture that wasted resources. Nation after nation 
 became the seat of civilization, only to go down before 
 the pressure of want brought on by reduced rain 
 supply and bad use of the soil. The resort to irriga- 
 tion gave only temporary relief, for in the end the 
 crushing power of failing resources makes futile even 
 the best of plans. A secondary result of these condi- 
 tions was a constant unrest of nations with resulting 
 feuds and wars. No nation can have a normal growth 
 with poverty-stricken neighbors trying to displace it. 
 War, therefore, became the glory of nations, and 
 pillage was more honorable than industry. To these 
 evils were added the great plagues arising from the 
 increasing contact with semitropical regions. Famine, 
 war and disease became scourges, making life so inse- 
 cure as to seem worthless. With the terrors of death 
 ever imminent, it was inevitable that religion should 
 reflect the change. A future life and its rewards 
 became the compensation for the trials and suffering 
 bound up with present existence. 
 
 [186] 
 
HISTORIC OR STATE RELIGION 
 
 In the midst of these changes, and reflecting the 
 ideas that sprang from them, the Jewish nation arose 
 and became the mold in which modern religion took 
 its form. Judea was an isolated valley with enough 
 resources to create a national life, yet not large enough 
 to resist invasion. The growth of commerce brought 
 tropical diseases from which the land would have 
 been exempt if the earlier isolation could have been 
 preserved. But worst of all was the steady increase in 
 the extent and duration of periods of drought. These 
 led to famine and destitution, which became objects of 
 anticipation and dread. Under these conditions men 
 were powerless. The prophet had only to persist in his 
 prediction of disaster to have some one of the great 
 national evils — war, pestilence and famine — come to 
 his aid and establish his reputation. It is hard to con- 
 ceive of evils worse than those steadily augmenting 
 during the period of Jewish history, or in which men 
 could be more helpless. Morality could delay, but it 
 could not prevent the inevitable downfall that the 
 whole region had to face. The prophets chose the 
 only road open to salvation. But even this could do 
 no more than relieve the momentary pressure on 
 individuals or on localities. The general decline and 
 the growing disorder went on unabated. 
 
 The general demoralization of the Roman epoch 
 [187] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 was the natural fate of regions thus afflicted. Declin- 
 ing resources, contagious disease and war could not 
 but destroy the basis on which long life and prosperity 
 depend, and take from people the accompanying joys 
 of living. Roman history is that of an age when 
 dominant races lived on plunder and pillage. Each 
 military epoch exhausted the stored wealth of preced- 
 ing years and forced the people into viler and more 
 slavish conditions. Diminishing resources compel men 
 to resort to exploitation and to shorten life by its 
 oppressions. 
 
 The Christian epoch brought no permanent relief. 
 It had to face the same economic conditions and be 
 molded by them. In some respects it made matters 
 worse ; for the general expectation of an early millen- 
 nium led men to accept evils that would have brought 
 immediate revolt without the hope of the life to come. 
 Christianity did not bring a new philosophy of life 
 nor furnish the starting point for a revolt against 
 oppression. It did not even lead to a revival of old 
 morality, such as was to be found in the religion of 
 the prophets. In its theology, the old philosophy of 
 deficit had a stronger hold than with the pagan nations. 
 The prophets were men from the country. They were 
 inspired by the natural suggestion that goes with 
 great vitality. The new leaders were men of the 
 
 [188] 
 
HISTORIC OR STATE RELIGION 
 
 cities, with no natural background to arouse revolt 
 against its misery and vice. The conditions they saw 
 were to them an inevitable result of man's depravity ; 
 and they were led by this belief to an even worse view 
 of life than their predecessors. Exploitation had no 
 social traditions to check it, and disease baffled the 
 knowledge of the day. Famine and pillage could end 
 only in poverty. The consequent loss of national 
 spirit demoralized men so much that their natural 
 resistance to oppression failed to assert itself. 
 
 It is not surprising, therefore, that Christianity 
 succumbed to this pressure and became the medium 
 through which old ideas were strengthened and propa- 
 gated. Sacrifice was ennobled, and the primitive 
 thought of an atonement was so vividly presented that 
 the sayings and spirit of Christ were dimmed. The 
 church made no break in the continuity of the old 
 social thought and life. It had no institutions other 
 than those grafted on it from the heathen world, no 
 philosophy that reflected its founder's thought. The 
 power of defeat, the growing dread of death and the 
 emphasis of sacrifice warped its institutions until they 
 expressed the reverse of what Christ taught. Nor 
 have organized revolts and secessions from the church 
 affected much. Protestantism was a political and 
 economic revolt from the South. The new school of 
 
 [189] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 theologians were more pronounced advocates of the 
 old thought than were their predecessors. The breach 
 between God and man was made broader and more 
 formidable than ever. Pictures of future misery got a 
 new emphasis, history was ransacked to show man's help- 
 lessness, sacrifice was extolled as the cardinal virtue, 
 and hardship as the only road to morality and character. 
 This is the philosophy of deficit expanded and aug- 
 mented. There was no break in the continuity of 
 historic religion. Protestantism is merely its fulfill- 
 ment and goal. The old grind of misery, with its 
 resulting theory of life, was destined to persist until a 
 new basis for civilization arose in the growing surplus 
 of Northern nations. Germany and England were 
 outside the region of drought and failing resources. 
 With their rise a reorganization of political institutions 
 began to conserve instead of destroy liberty, health 
 and capital. This steady stream of prosperity has 
 created new modes of thought and undermined the 
 old philosophy of deficit so long the terror of man- 
 kind. Prosperity, liberty and cooperation furnish 
 a principle more potent than the dread of want. When 
 we accept it, we shall rebuild on safe foundations, and 
 make religion a higher expression of manhood than 
 it could become while state religions and ascetic morality 
 suppressed the vigor, joy and freedom of normal life. 
 
 [1901 
 
CHAPTEE XIII 
 
 SOCIAL RELIGION 
 
 9 
 
XIII 
 
 In the preceding chapter I have contrasted two 
 types of religion. Both have a basis in objective con- 
 ditions, and elements of each must be present in all 
 organized religious manifestations. Natural religion 
 — the religion of vigor and joy — springs out of the 
 surplus of nature and the plasticity of youth. It 
 shows itself where material conditions are stable and 
 long life is the reward of effective action. Primitive 
 religion in its social aspects was of this type. From 
 it we can infer what would have been its force and 
 character if growth had not been interrupted by the 
 strenuous events of later times. Historic religion does 
 not spring from these conditions of surplus, but from 
 a deficit. The nations that were to shape religion 
 lived in regions where resources were failing and dis- 
 ease on the increase. To these evils were added race 
 hatreds and instability of government that brought 
 on wars, with resulting pillage and destruction. Re- 
 ligion was forced to reflect these changes. In the 
 regions where these evils were greatest, a body of doc- 
 trine and practice grew up that has since then been 
 o [1931 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 expressed in religious institutions. Drought, disease, 
 war and other evils of a state of deficit being domi- 
 nant in Western Asia while our religion was forming, 
 we must turn to these regions to discover the forces 
 that compelled religious thought to develop as it did. 
 The lack of a clear demarcation between church and 
 state forced religion to become a mere adjunct to 
 patriotism and to express its needs. The difficulty of 
 maintaining national independence led to a similar 
 subordination of the individual to the state, and forced 
 the emphasis of valor and self-sacrifice as virtues. 
 The resulting changes in thought, feeling and education 
 have passed on from age to age and from nation to 
 nation with increasing emphasis, until they have 
 colored all religious expression. Ages of failing re- 
 sources have made men feel that life is not worth 
 living, that virtue has no reward except beyond the 
 grave. 
 
 Despite clearness and power, state religions, with 
 their emphasis on individual sacrifice, have never been 
 able fully to satisfy the religious instinct of men. 
 There has been a constant tendency to revert to a 
 natural religion in which joy, liberty and inspiration 
 were prominent. This struggle has been especially 
 keen in the Northern nations where stable economic 
 resources enabled men to displace many of the sources 
 
 ri94i 
 
SOCIAL RELIGION 
 
 of misery that depressed the Southern nations. Were 
 state religion and natural religion to fight out the 
 battle for supremacy in nations where the dominance 
 of man over nature is nearly complete, there is little 
 doubt of the outcome. Natural religion would assert 
 itself and profoundly modify present religious institu- 
 tions. But there is little likelihood of such a struggle. 
 The contest will not be so much between these con- 
 testants as between them and another type of religious 
 expression. State religion is a result of war and 
 want: natural religion arises out of contact with 
 the surplus and vigor of nature; social religion is 
 quite as clearly based on the thought of peace and 
 plenty. A religion of joy, a religion of sacrifice and 
 a religion of service are contrasted ideals, each domi- 
 nating in its own fitting circumstances. 
 
 The religion of service could have no better exposition 
 than in the teachings of Christ. What we need is 
 not to formulate a clear statement of it, but to find 
 conditions and institutions to make it effective. Chris- 
 tianity in this sense is not an historic institution. It 
 is an ideal that has fought a losing battle with state 
 religions, encrusted in historic institutions and made 
 vigorous by the failures of men in ages of disease and 
 want. The sayings of Christ seem Utopian even to 
 those influenced by them. To the mass of men they 
 
 [195] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 are meaningless, because they are not impressed by 
 such striking pictures as those enforcing a religion of 
 sacrifice. To be a hero, to struggle for victory, to die 
 for one's country, have vivid meaning. They give an 
 impetus to activity which the truer but less picturesque 
 ideas of service do not arouse. 
 
 It is difficult to associate Christ with a purely social 
 religion because His teachings have been overshadowed 
 by the striking events of His death. For this reason 
 we do not see the fundamental opposition between 
 what He taught and what His death has been made 
 to teach. If Christ's doctrines had been handed down 
 to us by a Plato instead of a Paul, or by one who 
 knew only of His life and not of His death, Christ to 
 us would be a social leader, preaching isalvation only 
 in terms of love, cooperation and service. Salvation 
 through sacrifice, especially through a blood atone- 
 ment, would be a repugnant doctrine from the dread 
 of which He wished to free the world. There is noth- 
 ing more paradoxical in history than the rise of the 
 dogma that a gulf is placed between God and man, 
 which can be bridged, not by love, but only by the 
 death of one who strove to fill the gap in the other 
 way. This glaring antinomy in religious thought 
 must be removed before social religion can be put on 
 a sound basis. If Christ's doctrine be that of salva- 
 
 [1961 
 
SOCIAL RELIGION 
 
 tion through love, the path is open to reconstruct 
 religion in ways that meet modern needs. If this is 
 not His view, a vague, perhaps hopeless, epoch of 
 religious confusion must lie ahead. 
 
 Bible readers fail to realize the opposition existing be- 
 tween the accounts of Christ's life, teaching and aims 
 and those of His death. If the last chapters of each 
 of the gospels were omitted, if we could see Him as the 
 disciples must have seen Him before they were in- 
 fluenced by His death, we should certainly view Him 
 as a man who believed in humanity and expected its 
 elevation to purity and morality through love, peace 
 and service. A purer social religion could not have 
 been preached than that He presented. Such of His 
 sayings and parables as have reached us all emphasize 
 this view. Yet Paul, influenced more by His death 
 than by His life, drew from this life a meaning and 
 gave to it a theological setting that stands in strange 
 contrast to what must have been an earlier view of 
 His life and teaching. The disciples were rightly 
 offended with this presentation, until they were drawn 
 into the social atmosphere that made Paul and subse- 
 quently made the Christian church. I make this con- 
 trast, not to discredit Paul and the church, but to 
 explain them. Paul's interpretation was a social 
 necessity. On no other basis could the church have 
 
 [1971 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 grown. Yet, with all its force and clearness, this 
 interpretation misrepresented Christ in many funda- 
 mental points and gave a renewed vigor to doctrines 
 He opposed. 
 
 To see the truth of these statements the social con- 
 ditions and mental attitude of Paul's age must be 
 pictured. Centuries of famine, disease and war had 
 broken down the national life of the peoples over 
 which Rome ruled and had blotted out the hopes, 
 moral and social, that had come from earlier times. 
 A religion was needed, dissociated from prevalent 
 failures and disasters from which there was no hope 
 of relief. That the world is a place of misery is not a 
 doctrine of Christian origin; it was but a common- 
 place thought in the age that gave birth to Christi- 
 anity. Such also was the doctrine of a gulf between 
 God and man. War, famine and other evils in this 
 view come from God and are indications of His dis- 
 pleasure. To picture a new way of reconciling God 
 was the only escape from these difficulties that har- 
 monized with current religious thought. A hope was 
 thus created that did wonders in an age when evil 
 and fear were dominant. By itself Christ's social 
 philosophy would have gone down in the chaos of 
 universal ruin. Paul's hope and faith did what Christ's 
 teachings alone could not have done. The Christian 
 
 [198] 
 
SOCIAL RELIGION 
 
 church under his guidance reconstructed society and 
 made the modern renaissance of thought possible. 
 Christ's death was thus of saving importance to the 
 race. There is a practical groundwork for the doc- 
 trine of the atonement that cannot in the abstract be 
 given it. His death raised humanity from the lowest 
 position into which men could fall, and permitted a 
 shifting of the base of civilization to other regions with 
 stable institutions. 
 
 The early Christians were in the midst of the de- 
 pressing events accompanying the downfall of civili- 
 zation. The hopeless outlook forced on them the 
 belief that a betterment must come from without and 
 not from within this civilization. Who could believe 
 in works at a time when every endeavor ended in 
 dismal failure ? Christ's resurrection turned men's 
 thoughts away from their misery and awakened the 
 hope of a speedy second coming through which evil 
 was to be displaced and an age of peace and love in- 
 augurated. With this new faith, every war, plague, 
 famine or other disaster was taken as an indication of 
 the end of the natural regime and the approach of the 
 new epoch. The more the tribulations, the nearer the 
 redemption. The passing of twenty centuries has 
 changed this outlook. Civilization is no longer cen- 
 tered in regions of waning resources and of increasing 
 
 [199] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 misery. The new regions have no fear of drought 
 and famine; disease has been checked and life pro- 
 longed. Civilization has overcome the obstacles that 
 blocked its path in Western Asia. A long upward 
 movement is in prospect, instead of the rapid plunge 
 into ruin that seemed inevitable in the first century. 
 We should alter our conception of Christ to fit this 
 situation. The second coming will mark the fulfill- 
 ment of the hopes of civilization, art and science, not 
 their failure. The social philosophy of Christ will thus 
 triumph over the cruder concepts of His death. The 
 unity and peace of the world will come, instead of its 
 destruction. The crucifixion was a temporary ex- 
 pedient which hastened the changes that make Christ's 
 social ideals workable. Christ's life was for the world. 
 His death was for His age and its civilization. 
 
 At the end of two thousand years the striking result 
 of Christianity has been the shifting of civilization 
 from the South to the North. The economic signifi- 
 cance of this lies in the growing resources of the North 
 in comparison with their decrease in the South. In 
 the new region there was too much rather than too 
 little rain; and a better food supply was afforded by 
 the cereals of the North than by the root crops of the 
 South. The North of Europe could not, however, have 
 risen to its present commanding position without an 
 
 [200] 
 
SOCIAL RELIGION 
 
 impetus from the South. Had the Northern region 
 been completely isolated, its rise would have depended 
 entirely on its internal resources. Its civilization 
 would have been limited to arts, foods and material of 
 its own origin, and its people could scarcely have 
 risen above a state of savagery. While the North 
 had the climate that makes prosperity permanent, it 
 had indigenous few of the crops or animals on which a 
 great civilization depends. These were from Western 
 Asia, or at least came north with Southern civilization. 
 To an equally great degree did the arts, trades and 
 ideas of civilized life come from the Southern races. 
 These could not have developed in the cold North, or 
 at least would have been absent for ages. Northern 
 prosperity is thus a union of Northern resources and 
 Southern arts, foods, animals, tools and culture. Had 
 the two failed to blend, there would have been an 
 insurmountable obstacle to the continuance of culture. 
 Only five regions had conditions favorable for great 
 civilization : China, India, Western Asia including the 
 Mediterranean basin, North Europe and America. 
 India and China were already filled with a teaming 
 population and had not in themselves the elements 
 for further progress. America could not be reached, 
 and probably could not have been utilized until after 
 the transformations that the rise of civilization in 
 
 [201] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 North Europe would make. America, even more 
 strikingly than North Europe, was a land of resources. 
 But it likewise lacked the adjuncts in native food, 
 animals and arts that permit their utilization. The 
 only hope of a permanent civilization lay in its trans- 
 ference to North Europe. The prospect of this would 
 seem hopeless; for to the people of the South the 
 Northern races seemed as savage as the Indians do to 
 us. For ages Northern tribes had been pressing south, 
 and with them in their natural state nothing but 
 brutality could follow their dominance. 
 
 If the transference of civilization had not been 
 accompanied by the rising missionary spirit of the early 
 Christians, it is easy to picture what would have 
 happened to Southern civilization. Its resources would 
 have continued to fall off, the ravages of disease would 
 have increased, and war would have become increasingly 
 brutal and destructive. A situation like that in Arab 
 countries would ultimately have arisen and have 
 remained permanent. The rise and decline of Mo- 
 hammedanism showed what could happen to any 
 civilization that has its base in the dry regions of the 
 South. Under these conditions, Christianity might 
 have created a Spain, but it could hardly have done 
 better. The dogmatism of arid regions would cer- 
 tainly have prevented the rise of science, and without 
 
 [202] 
 
SOCIAL RELIGION 
 
 it any amount of resources could yield nothing but 
 failure. 
 
 The natural obstacle to the progress of civilization 
 lay in a doubly contradictory situation. The only 
 place where civilization could begin its rise must fail 
 because of the niggardliness of its economic situation; 
 the regions where its permanence was possible lacked 
 the cultural conditions for its rise. The miracle of 
 civilization consists in the solving of this contradiction 
 by uniting abundant resources with the arts and cul- 
 ture making them available. This I believe is a fair 
 interpretation of twenty centuries of Christian prog- 
 ress, measured by to-day's standards. Only when it is 
 substituted for the defective view of the first century 
 can Christianity be placed on a firm basis. 
 
 There are bound up in Christian thought two dis- 
 tinct plans of salvation. The orthodox view has the 
 degenerate conditions of the Roman world as a back- 
 ground. It appeals to the emotional type of man 
 these conditions produced. If instead of saying Christ 
 died for sinners we say He died to redeem the degen- 
 erate, we put the problem of this religion in a scientific 
 form. Its emotional awakening creates character and 
 evokes motives, causing the spiritual to dominate over 
 the degenerative forces of a world of deficit. It was 
 this religion that gave new life to the Roman world 
 
 [203] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 and supplied the impetus carrying civilization from 
 the pessimistic South to the optimistic North. It is 
 almost a universal religion because degeneration is so 
 widespread and its emotional psychology so deep- 
 seated. It must, however, be regarded as a temporary 
 necessity, approved as a last resort and not as a chosen 
 plan. It does not reflect the religion of the normal 
 man, nor does it manifest the social spirit of Christ's 
 teachings. Another and purer religion lies in the 
 background. This is obscured in the Old Testament 
 by the devices of priests, and in the New by the enthu- 
 siasm of Paul's disciples. The normal life of a stabler 
 civilization is helping us to reconstruct it and to put 
 in practice doctrines distinctly Christ's. The Holy 
 Spirit He promised is with us as the social spirit. In 
 it we have a natural guide to conduct and an effective 
 stimulus to cooperative action. 
 
 This view does not detract from the dignity and 
 beauty of Christ's death, but adds to it. When He 
 cried, "My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" did He 
 regard the forsaking to consist in His physical death 
 or in the failure of His social philosophy ? If He were 
 in earnest about His teaching, He could hardly have 
 thought its failure of little importance, compared with 
 His life. And yet the conventional view makes Him 
 forget His gospel in His hour of agony and think of 
 
 [204] 
 
SOCIAL RELIGION 
 
 its pain. It will not wrench nor weaken the story of 
 the Passion to set aside this interpretation, and to 
 have Christ dread the cross, not because it meant a 
 physical death, but because it would revive and seem 
 to put His stamp of approval on a religion He con- 
 demned and hoped to replace. To die to save civili- 
 zation would have had no meaning to the early Chris- 
 tians who felt keenly the need of a reconciliation with 
 God. To us, however, the false light in which Christ 
 let Himself be put by a striking death is but an exem- 
 plification of His doctrine of service. His real mission 
 will be fulfilled by a second coming to which the first 
 is but preliminary. Meanwhile the basis of endur- 
 ing progress has been secured. In this we can not 
 only participate, but can promote by the social service 
 which His life so amply illustrates. 
 
 [205] 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE SOCIAL MISSION OF THE CHUECH 
 
 
 
XIV 
 
 The preceding discussion has revealed an economic 
 environment and a body of psychic reactions that afford 
 new principles of religious activity which should make 
 religion an active force and give its plan of salvation 
 a background worthy of consideration. Degeneration 
 and regeneration are realities ; the power to resist the 
 one and to gain the other is equally real and must 
 have a place in every scheme of social progress. A 
 deficit of energy brings degeneration: a surplus of , 
 energy, evoking will power, leads to regeneration. 
 Enthusiasm and missionary spirit come with the growth 
 of physical vigor. We can expect it to develop a re- 
 ligious expression if the thought of redemption can be 
 put in a social setting. As a plan of progress, religion 
 emphasizes the incorporation of the weak into society. 
 If the degenerate cannot be aroused, strengthened and 
 made normal, if on the contrary he must be eliminated, 
 religion will have no place in the Utopia toward which 
 we are moving. Progress by elimination and progress 
 through redemption are opposing concepts, one of 
 which must be proved wrong by the trend of events. 
 p [2091 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 If Christians, adhering to an unsocial concept of religion, 
 fail to show that redemption for the masses is attain- 
 able, they must not find fault if the ideal of an 
 unsocial superman displaces that of service. The 
 social plan of redemption will be tested in this century 
 as the hope of personal salvation was tested by the 
 facts and conditions of the first century. A new 
 missionary movement is demanded in our age. To suc- 
 ceed, this must have the vigor and clearness of thought 
 that Paul gave to the first extensions of Christ's in- 
 fluence. The impress of past centuries has put modern 
 religion in as helpless a condition to meet present emer- 
 gencies as the Jewish religion was in the first century. 
 The work that Christ began could not be fully devel- 
 oped in the early centuries because of adverse economic 
 conditions. It can, however, be successfully com- 
 pleted now because favorable environing conditions 
 have replaced race antagonisms with a spirit of social 
 cooperation. This has opened the road to social re- 
 generation as contrasted with social elimination. To 
 meet this new situation is the religious need of the 
 day. Success or failure are alternatives that will make 
 Christianity dominant or will displace it as an encum- 
 brance to progress. 
 
 There are many analogies between the present situa- 
 tion and that which Christianity faced at its birth. 
 
 [2101 
 
THE SOCIAL MISSION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 The present crisis, although of another character, is 
 fully as grave as that of the first century. Disease, 
 famine, war and failing resources made impossible an 
 advance in civilization in the Southern regions, then 
 its center. A new region must be opened up and new 
 races must be elevated from barbarism into the position 
 of standard-bearers of culture. To-day, we have no 
 fear of war, famine, disease or failing resources. The 
 advance in knowledge has guarded men against these 
 evils ; but it is none the less true that civilization must 
 be extended to other regions and races, or it will go 
 down as it did at Rome. Prosperity checks the birth 
 rate and promotes race suicide to such a degree that if 
 new races cannot be raised to take the place of those 
 dying out, there will be a decline in civilization to the 
 level existing before the rise of Christianity. All of the 
 earlier missionary efforts will be in vain unless methods 
 are devised to arouse new classes, races and nations 
 with the same success with which our ancestors were 
 awakened in earlier epochs by the prevailing forms of 
 religious propagation. If laborers remain outside the 
 church, if immigrants are not assimilated into our na- 
 tional life, or if we fail to do for Africa, India and China 
 what the early Christian missions did for our German 
 ancestors, a slow but certain death awaits the church, 
 no matter what may be its success in other fields. No 
 
 [2111 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 headway is possible unless there come modifications 
 of attitude and doctrine that will make the church a 
 force among races and classes it at present fails to 
 reach. 
 
 Our condition can be most simply and clearly con- 
 trasted with that of the first century in terms of 
 the economic stages of progress. In early times, 
 men were in a pain economy. This means that 
 their energies were much more fully directed to the 
 avoiding of enemies and dangers than to the pro- 
 duction of goods. The primitive man was weak in 
 comparison with the energetic animals surrounding 
 him. He had to escape from them rather than fight 
 them. Fear was thus a dominant motive. Enjoy- 
 ment came only in the intervals between the dangers 
 that beset his path. These conditions and the mental 
 attitude that accompanies them were exaggerated by 
 the environment of the race during the period of Rome's 
 decline. Disease, famine, war and unstable government 
 tend to make fear prominent as a motive. It keeps 
 the effects of these evils constantly before men and 
 forces them to endure long epochs of suffering and 
 want. Experience, history and long-standing psychic 
 reactions all united in emphasizing the same facts and 
 in creating the same mental atmosphere. To men 
 molded by these conditions the early centuries of 
 
 [212] 
 
THE SOCIAL MISSION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 missionary endeavor were directed. The gospel of fear, 
 then advanced, matched the conditions, the civiliza- 
 tion and the thought processes with which men were 
 familiar. The twentieth century, however, differs from 
 the first in that a pleasure economy has displaced 
 the pain economy then prevailing. The thoughts 
 and activities of men are now turned toward the 
 pleasures of life. Those activities have become su- 
 preme that help men to increase their joys. It is 
 true the advance has not gone far enough completely 
 to set aside want, war and disease ; but at least enough 
 progress has been made to protect most men from 
 their evils. They seldom rise to the point where 
 they disturb our regular activities and the flow of 
 pleasurable goods that follow. 
 
 The movement in this direction has gone far enough 
 to enable us to see both the advantages and the evils 
 by which it is accompanied. The good lies in our 
 security, our pleasures and our freedom from want 
 and disease; the bad lies in the fact that the pursuit 
 of pleasure does not arouse the energies nor concen- 
 trate them enough to keep men normal nor to make 
 them progressive. Our economic wants do not awake 
 men's activity in the forceful, direct way that the fear 
 of enemies, of nature or of disease did in earlier times. A 
 pleasure economy fails at the point where the older 
 
 [2131 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 pain economy was most successful. Concentrated 
 attention, quick and forceful action, a willingness to 
 submit to discipline, a love of local usages and an en- 
 thusiasm for national ends came as a part of the regu- 
 lar reactions of a life controlled by danger and pain. 
 The seeker for economic goods, freed from these long- 
 standing evils, shows no such qualities. He is not as 
 eager to work as he was to fight, nor will he submit 
 to the industrial discipline he would accept without 
 question if he were a soldier. He works carelessly, 
 shows little desire for efficiency and will not limit his 
 use of goods so as to preserve his health. 
 
 I do not wish to charge economic materialism with 
 all the evils that are to-day becoming manifest. Our 
 vice and crime are due to a degeneration that has its 
 causes largely in the past. A pleasure economy would 
 ultimately displace the tendencies that end in vice and 
 crime. Its real evils do not lie here, but in the lack 
 of concentration of activity that keeps men normal 
 and thus tends to make the race progressive. We 
 need strong, vivid ends for our activity as much as 
 ever, and there is nothing in material wants that 
 arouses them. If they come in our new civiliza- 
 tion, they will appear in motives a pleasure economy 
 has no tendency to promote. 
 
 The results of this failure of a pleasure economy to 
 [2141 
 
THE SOCIAL MISSION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 arouse motives and to set definite ends clearly before 
 men are reflected in the devices at present used to 
 make men effective. Society still resorts to old methods 
 to create discipline and to generate activity even when 
 it relies on utilitarian motives to supply our economic 
 needs. A compromise has been worked out by which 
 the motives of a pleasure economy are supplemented 
 by the driving power of the old regime, in the form of 
 fear. Pain is not now prominent enough to concen- 
 trate men's energies; but fear, as contrasted with 
 actual pain, has lost little of its force. It lies back of 
 the discipline and concentration of energy now mani- 
 fested both in individual and in national activities. 
 The advanced nations seldom feel the miseries of war ; 
 yet the fear of war is the prominent motive in national 
 effectiveness. Patriotism manifests itself in fortifying 
 the Panama Canal and in building huge warships more 
 readily than in conserving our forests or in lengthening 
 human life. Each nation centers its activities on 
 preventing a corresponding progress on the part of 
 others and can be stimulated to extraordinary energy 
 only by the constantly reappearing dread of foreign 
 aggression. No political motive has arisen that will 
 unite a nation and arouse its latent energies compa- 
 rable with the effect of a foreign war or even the fear 
 of one. Men who would not submit to an industrial 
 
 [215] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 discipline of ten hours a day will accept a much severer 
 military discipline without a murmur. They have their 
 characters built up by war or the fear of it in a way 
 that no industrial program could enforce. 
 
 The present religious program also gets its power 
 through fear. Without a vivid concept of future pun- 
 ishment the church would fail in the discipline it holds 
 over its members. Its morality is largely built upon 
 unseen relations that could not be made effective if fear 
 were not a prominent motive. The same basis is found 
 for the motives causing the accumulation of capital. 
 Capitalism is often viewed as primarily the result of 
 production on a large scale. Yet the discipline that 
 creates qualities so definitely associated with it comes 
 from saving, which in turn is evoked by the fear of 
 future want. As soon as men lose their fear of pov- 
 erty, they cease to save and will no longer submit to 
 the discipline that makes capitalists a force and gives 
 to industry its present form. Capitalism will die out 
 much more readily through the loss of discipline that 
 follows the cessation of saving than through any revo- 
 lution its opponents may provoke. Nor are the social- 
 ists on any other basis than the classes they would dis- 
 place. Class antagonism and the fear of oppression 
 are as prominent elements in the discipline they evoke 
 as is the fear of want among the capitalists, the fear 
 
 [216] 
 
THE SOCIAL MISSION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 of war among patriots or the fear of the future among 
 religious people. 
 
 There is no discipline worth considering in education, 
 in morality or in political life that is not the outcome 
 of aroused fear. A physical emancipation from want 
 has come, |but no psychic emancipation from fear. 
 Until we understand what this means we can get no 
 measure of the changes that separate the first century 
 from the twentieth. The concentration of energies 
 is as important as ever; but no method of bringing it 
 about or of creating a new form of discipline has yet 
 been devised to replace the motives of fear. These 
 are a psychic inheritance from the distant past, and 
 they reflect an attitude hostile to future progress. 
 Through the discipline of fear we may be able to hold 
 our own, but never to escape from our present complex 
 economy into a real peace economy where social motives 
 instead of social antagonisms control. A peace econ- 
 omy must be more than a Utopia of satisfactions. It 
 must create a discipline more rigid than that of fear and 
 give to men that concentration of energies which evokes 
 their best powers. Society cannot become telic until 
 our psychic powers are reshaped to meet present con- 
 ditions. No amount of material progress can com- 
 pensate for mental stagnation. 
 
 The economic basis of a peace economy is readily 
 [2171 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 understood, and is fairly well worked out. Economic 
 wants generate efficiency, and efficiency demands co- 
 operation. The three combined give us wealth and 
 prosperity. The psychic reactions of men in a peace 
 economy are hard to present, because so little advance 
 has been made in breaking from the discipline that fear 
 generates. It will seem like mere theory to offer a con- 
 trasted scheme, but there is no other way in which the 
 needs of progress can be set forth. The first step is to 
 realize that a peace economy does not demand a new 
 group of psychic qualities, but merely a change in the 
 dominance of qualities already formed. It would be a 
 long, tedious process to make the changes involved, if 
 they had to be created by evolution. If, however, 
 the need is not a creation, but a change in the dominance 
 of opposing groups of characters, the transference of 
 mankind from a pain to a peace economy may be 
 worked out in a relatively short period. Fear reactions 
 are no more fundamental, no more deeply ingrained, 
 than are the social impulses to which they stand op- 
 posed. The social life of men has run along parallel 
 with their misery and fears, and both phases of psychic 
 development have had a long period in which to grow. 
 Primitive life shifted men from one group of conditions 
 to the other, thus making the one group or the other, 
 for the time being, dominant. We have thus a double 
 
 [2181 
 
THE SOCIAL MISSION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 psychic nature only single phases of which are mani- 
 fested at a given time. An economy with a surplus 
 tends to make us social ; an economy of deficit arouses 
 conflict and gives a dominance to pain reactions. The 
 problem of social advance is thus on its material side 
 to keep out of conditions of deficit and to get within the 
 realm of surplus. On its psychic side, however, the 
 problem is to keep our social nature dominant, and to 
 suppress the fear reactions that nature has implanted. 
 How then, in a realm like the present, partially of 
 surplus and partly of deficit, can we make the social 
 within us permanently dominant ? — this is the problem 
 that religion has to solve. 
 
 The starting point of this movement must lie in 
 economics, because our economic interests give the 
 most obvious motive for becoming social. Economic 
 desires create interest in objects and the means of 
 obtaining them. We may, therefore, say that desire 
 leads to interest, and interest to knowledge and effi- 
 ciency. The measure of knowledge and efficiency is 
 twofold. Nationally, it is wealth; individually, it is 
 health. As nations grow wealthy and men become 
 healthy, we may be sure knowledge and efficiency are 
 on the increase, and that a movement has been started 
 in the direction of universal peace. National peace 
 makes men wealthy; mental peace makes them 
 [219] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 healthy. I make this contrast between the national 
 and individual measures of progress because they are so 
 often confused. By the old standard, men thought 
 God was with them when they and their families pros- 
 pered. This crude measure was good enough for primi- 
 tive epochs, but to-day progress demands not indi- 
 vidual wealth, but a large social surplus utilized for 
 the good of society. As an individual measure, health 
 is much better than wealth. Social health cannot 
 exist without social wealth, but it may well exist with- 
 out large fortunes. Moreover, when we have social 
 wealth, the higher test of progress is health. This, 
 measured statistically, means longevity. No test is so 
 good as a low death rate and a long working period. 
 Health, wealth and efficiency are the basis of normal 
 life. When we have these, we may be sure that degen- 
 eration, depravity, vice and crime will cease to be 
 bars to social progress. A society, dominantly normal 
 in its attributes, will thus replace the present one. In 
 this a new group of social usages and traditions will 
 grow up in favor of peace. The normal man is emo- 
 tionally social. There is, consequently, in him a con- 
 flict between his social emotions and the habits, tra- 
 ditions, philosophy and logic impressed upon him by 
 deficit and fear. All acquired traits have had their 
 origin in the ages of deficit in which humanity has 
 
 [220] 
 
THE SOCIAL MISSION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 lived. They harmonize with the psychic fears these 
 ages have generated. The motive for their upbuilding 
 is lost when fear and pain cease to control men, and the 
 crust they have formed in thought and habit is sure to 
 be broken by the rise of social emotions. The conflict 
 that disturbs the mental peace of men is between this 
 crust of acquired tradition and the newly aroused emo- 
 tions. The result is a regeneration, a new birth, or 
 whatever name men apply to the radical reconstruc- 
 tion of thought and activity following the transference 
 of dominance from emotions of fear and conflict to 
 those of peace, harmony and joy. This change may be 
 wrought in many ways, but the essence is a feeling of 
 freedom from the thraldom of external codes and in- 
 ternal fears. From Paul to Christian Science, believers 
 in a new birth emphasize the coming of mental peace 
 and the freedom from the "law." Fear goes, and with 
 its departure old habits and traditions lose their seem- 
 ingly absolute character. New activities and modes of 
 thought rise to replace them. 
 
 This is the essence of the mental reconstruction taking 
 place when men become normal and hence emotionally 
 social. If the analysis is correct, the "new birth" is 
 not to be worked for. It will come of itself if men are 
 made normal. Nor are we to regard it as the impress 
 or gift of a higher power. The reconstruction and the 
 
 [221] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 peace it brings come because of what we eject from our 
 lives, not from what is put in by outside powers. The 
 break is in the economic and biologic determinism that 
 control through deficit and fear, not through any 
 inherent power they have over men. We are free when 
 we make our own traditions and codes instead of sub- 
 mitting to external pressure and the dominance it 
 imposes. 
 
 To make these facts effective in religion, a contrast 
 must be made between the personal and social mission 
 of the church. Each individual is born in a fear econ- 
 omy, and needs to have his fear of the future removed. 
 The church does for him personally what saving does 
 for the fear of want, or battleships do for the fear of 
 foreign foes. The social mission of the church, however, 
 is not to make men religious, but to make men normal. 
 I say this consciously, because the religious awakening 
 comes from within and can be wrought only by indirect 
 means. The normal man is a religious man because 
 his emotions are social, and because they clash with the 
 economic and biologic regime imposed by heredity and 
 external conditions. To make men normal is to start 
 a train that leads to religious awakening. These in- 
 direct means will make more converts than the emphasis 
 of fear. When such methods are employed, conversion 
 will be a permanent change in mental attitude, and not 
 
 [222] 
 
3 
 
 THE SOCIAL MISSION OF THE CHURCH 
 
 a temporary upheaval. Missionary movements suc- 
 ceed only as they carry to new races and classes the 
 underlying means for their betterment. Religion is 
 contagious when these are secured. We can plow the 
 land, but the fruit comes in its own way. 
 
 ^ 
 
 £ 
 
 There is, however, one more step needed to make 
 church work practical. The best evidence that reli- 
 gious movements are succeeding is that they make men 
 live longer. A steady increase in the length of life 
 has followed the spread of Christianity. When the 
 average life of man has been increased to sixty years, 
 the advantages of normal living will be overwhelming, 
 and the strength of forward social movements corre- 
 spondingly increased. Health is thus the test of 
 normality, and the church can safely be sponsor for 
 social movements that improve it. On this basis must 
 the social program of the church be built. Many evils 
 are beyond our present power to remedy. We cannot 
 therefore make their removal part of a working pro- 
 gram for the twentieth century. But the crimes 
 against health are plainly within our control. We 
 cannot make every one wealthy, but there is no need of 
 poverty. Neither do we need to crush the life of chil- 
 dren in factories, nor to lower the vitality of women by 
 long working hours. A standard of living capable 
 of maintaining health and welfare is not merely an 
 
 [2231 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 ideal, but a perfectly workable plan. These and other 
 economic reforms lie at the basis of all home missionary- 
 efforts, just as the health, security and happiness of 
 other races is the essence of successful work abroad. 
 Christianity needs, not preachers, but workers. Its 
 supremacy can come only as civilization and culture are 
 socialized and the economic world so transformed that 
 the minimum of to-morrow's welfare will include more 
 of health and comfort than the maximum of to-day's 
 standards. 
 
 [224] 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE SOCIALIZATION OF RELIGIOUS 
 THOUGHT 
 
 J? 
 
XV 
 
 If the social view of religion is to prevail, not merely 
 is a new basis for religious activity needed, but also a 
 radical modification in religious thought. As has been 
 shown, thought has three stages : the traditional, or 
 theological stage, the metaphysical or deductive stage 
 and the pragmatic or social stage. In the first, social 
 control lies in authority; in the second, it lies in the 
 antecedents of actions ; and in the third, it is in their 
 results. While activity has in many ways passed over 
 into the third stage, religious thought is still in the first 
 and second stages. A religion of authority still makes 
 a strong appeal ; a metaphysical religion deducing its 
 principles from a first cause or the ultimates of the uni- 
 verse also has great vitality. A social religion, how- 
 ever, seems to lack the clear, decisive elements giving 
 force to authoritative and rational religion. 
 
 Authoritative religion has its basis in social tradi- 
 tion. It comes from the distant past and is colored by 
 primitive modes of thought. Its appeal is largely to 
 tradition, imitation and the feeling of submission that 
 long periods of disaster and oppression impose. Its 
 
 [2271 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 basis, however, has been seriously weakened by the 
 inroads of skepticism. In consequence, it would cer- 
 tainly die out if a union had not been made between it 
 and the metaphysics of rationalism. God, as cause 
 and creator, is the kernel and the goal of metaphysical 
 thought. The gods of national tradition are thus 
 displaced by the one God of infinite power and knowl- 
 edge. This God is then united with traditional mo- 
 rality and made to give it an authoritative support. 
 This metaphysical concept of God, coupled with 
 traditional morality, viewed as a divine revelation, 
 gives the basis of current religious thought. All the 
 force of the first two stages of thought is thus given to 
 religious concepts. Reenforced both by tradition and 
 reason, and blended with a lofty idealism, they are 
 hard to analyze, to dislocate or to transform. 
 
 Rational religion is strong where social religion is 
 weak. Social religion lacks authority and has no 
 rigid logic to make it effective. Social concepts grow ; 
 they are not made nor can they be coercively impressed. 
 They are based on the agreements of past experience, 
 verified by the current events in which all participate. 
 The broader, deeper and more harmonious the social life 
 of mankind is, the clearer do the social ideals stand 
 forth and the more widespread is their influence. Social 
 concepts appeal ; they do not command. They arouse 
 
 [228] 
 
SOCIALIZATION OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 energy and direct activity; they do not repress, re- 
 strict nor define. Were all men normal, healthy and 
 active, their force would be irresistible; for then men 
 would be aroused by the same motives and struggle 
 for the same ends. It is the opposition, the conflict, 
 the degeneration, the differences in race, type, class 
 and language that keep men so much isolated that com- 
 mon ideals and aspirations do not arise. Every barrier 
 broken down between races, classes or languages leads 
 to a blending of the thought and ideals of the united 
 group. 
 
 The effect of this social process is apparent in many 
 fields. From them we can see the way it will work in 
 religion when the same process transforms, blends and 
 unifies the various types of religion now contending for 
 supremacy. A socialized world can no more have a 
 dozen religions than it can have a dozen sciences in 
 one field. As in medicine, there may, for a time, be 
 a group of contending factions, but the growth of knowl- 
 edge gradually forces them into unity, in which the 
 half truths of each faction are transformed into the 
 full truth of a united science. Arguments, proof and 
 authority have little weight against the forces that are 
 socializing thought, and thus bringing unity into 
 religion as in other fields. The belief in one God 
 results from a social tendency, not from a metaphysical 
 
 [229] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 argument, nor from an authoritative tradition. So 
 also there can be but one morality, and this will be 
 made effective by the motives that prompt men to 
 lead normal lives. Normality and morality have a 
 common origin. Whatever raises the standards of 
 normal life gives more force to morality and makes its 
 rules more universal and coercive. A truly social 
 morality will be more authoritative than any tradi- 
 tional code could be. At the same time, its basis will 
 be so clear and attractive that no resistance to its dicta- 
 tion can arise. What men must do, and what they 
 desire to do, will be so blended that no one will know 
 which force determines his acts. 
 
 The present situation is confused by the way in which 
 religious problems are faced. The early history of the 
 race shows many religions, each with its own gods 
 struggling for supremacy. There is also a marked 
 contrast in primitive moralities, due to the concrete 
 ways in which moral problems arose. In addition to 
 this, the social philosophy of each nation began with 
 generalizations about local conditions. These were 
 transformed into universal philosophies without an 
 adequate survey of the larger field to which they were 
 applied. Each language was also formed by the situ- 
 ation in which the race using it arose, and its ideas 
 reflect the experience of this race in its local position. 
 
 [230] 
 
SOCIALIZATION OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 Religion shows the effects of all these difficulties, and 
 judging from them there seems to be no unity to reli- 
 gious thought. Worst of all were the evils brought on 
 by the subordination of religion to the state, for this 
 made national contests appear to be religious and forced 
 nations to increase their religious antagonisms so as to 
 give a firmer background to national life. The natural 
 process of blending religious ideas was blocked for ages 
 by the patriotic aspirations of nations and differences 
 in race and language. We thus seem to have religious 
 conflicts where in reality none exist. Students of 
 religion must be social before they are historical if they 
 wish to see the beauty and harmony of religious con- 
 cepts. Thought blends as nations and localities are 
 united into larger areas. The common elements of 
 many local situations become the ideals and standards 
 of the larger group. In the end there can be but one 
 economic group with the whole world as its habitat. 
 Morality and religion must be reorganized so that 
 they match this situation. When this happens there 
 will be no opposition to their dictates nor any tend- 
 ency to split up society into religious and moral fac- 
 tions. Unity, harmony and elevation are clearly visible 
 goals in each of these fields. They will come as 
 thought, activity and language are made to express 
 general instead of local situations. 
 
 [2311 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 The situation that the early church faced had in it all 
 these difficulties. The many national gods and reli- 
 gions created dissensions and opposition that were 
 hard to placate. Differences in language also added 
 much to the confusion, for each language crudely 
 expressed the new religious thought. The statement 
 of the apostle that "In the beginning, the Word was 
 with God, and the Word was God " does not mean 
 much to-day. The God concept has won out and the 
 Word concept has blended with it or disappeared. The 
 contrast, however, was real to the early Christians. 
 They used different languages in which the God con- 
 cept but partially developed, and as a result each group 
 wanted to have the new ideas expressed in the concrete 
 fashion to which they were accustomed. The blending 
 of races, nations and languages always brings on these 
 conflicts. Each group tries to defend its position by 
 argument. The result is that religious controversy is 
 aroused where no basis for it exists. Words and ideas 
 cannot be defined and defended on any metaphysical 
 basis. The problem of words is one of use, not of logic. 
 We employ words until better ones are presented. 
 They shift in meaning as the social background is more 
 clearly defined and the area enlarged over which each 
 language and group of ideas extend. The dictionary 
 gives the best evidence of this growth. Words remain 
 
 [2321 
 
SOCIALIZATION OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 in use as long as they express ideas or adjustment. 
 They drop out when more effective ways of expression 
 are devised. Language tends towards a state where 
 each thought has its word and each word expresses a 
 distinct thought. As this goal is approached, con- 
 troversy ceases and the common elements of thought 
 are elevated into a secure position. Religion gains 
 nothing by disputations that after all reflect only the 
 defects of language or the imperfect socialization of 
 thought. 
 
 That which has been true of the elevation of Chris- 
 tian thought in the regions dominated by it is equally 
 true of the progress yet ahead by which the whole 
 world will be united in one religion. The gods of India, 
 China and regions yet to be religiously socialized will 
 be displaced by the same process that has forced the 
 Western world to accept a single supreme God. The 
 disintegration of the older religious and moral thought 
 will follow the coming of Western enterprise, education 
 and science. The same blending of ideas and ideals 
 will result that followed the changes in the Western 
 world by which its unification and elevation were 
 wrought out. To alter Eastern religions means to 
 wipe out Eastern disease and to bring security, pros- 
 perity and education to regions that now lack them. 
 One God will come with one economic system, one type 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 of government, one science and one literature. The 
 unifying forces are active in all these fields. They are 
 delayed by argument and controversy. Our interest 
 should lie, not in getting this inevitable unity, but in 
 making it express in its various fields the highest 
 thoughts that life, vitality and genius can attain. 
 
 The most difficult of all religious concepts to socialize 
 is that of God. The early Gods were national and were 
 associated with the power and grandeur of nations, or 
 they were a protection against primitive fears. In 
 both cases the demand is for a powerful master who 
 protects and upbuilds. From these, thought advances 
 readily to the concept of God as creator and judge. 
 They presuppose the same dominance of God over 
 nature and man as was accepted by the earlier reli- 
 gious thought. A rigid group of divine attributes is 
 predicated from which all else is derived. Coupled 
 with revelation, this view presents a God of authority 
 and thus gives a background for a moral code un- 
 changeable and inflexible, because of divine origin. 
 
 A social concept of God loses this definiteness. It 
 cannot be made the basis of argument, and it lacks the 
 authority that makes the earlier concept so satisfying 
 to nations in conflict and to individuals in sin and de- 
 spair. To make its basis clear and to show how it grows 
 we must first think in terms of a united society from 
 
 [2341 
 
SOCIALIZATION OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 which discord and fear have been banished. Social 
 forces now suffice to create the peace and harmony that 
 to earlier races seemed only possible through external 
 coercion. In such a society God will be transformed 
 so as to reflect the thought stages of each individual in 
 his development. There are many social concepts of 
 God, but between them there is no opposition. The 
 change follows the assent in thought that comes with 
 social progress. It comes to the individual as he passes 
 from youth to maturity, from ignorance to knowledge, 
 from poetry to prose, or from depressed to exalted 
 mental states. There is no real opposition between 
 a pantheistic concept of God and a unitarian concept, 
 nor between them and a telic concept. Change the 
 thought of a man and he will alter his concept of God 
 from one basis to the other without conflict or argument. 
 As society progresses and as the men who compose it 
 become more normal, the same concept will be held 
 by all at maturity. Every one in his development 
 will go through all the epochs of thought development 
 out of which this higher concept has arisen. The social 
 concept of God is a blend of all the views of Him that 
 appeal to men in any stage of their progress. The 
 clearer and more definite each of these elements is, 
 the more perfect and elevating is the joint result. 
 How this process works in places where discord, fear 
 [2351 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 and argument present no obstacles is to be seen more 
 clearly in other social concepts that have been put on a 
 stable basis. The most social of all ideals is that which 
 man holds of woman. He sees woman, not as she is, 
 but as he pictures her. This vision is due to the many 
 ways in which the beauty of woman is presented. 
 If one view of woman were declared orthodox and all 
 others opposed or excluded, the ideal of woman would 
 be lowered and its power to restrain men correspond- 
 ingly reduced. There is no opposition to the various 
 views of women given by art. They blend into a com- 
 posite picture and create a powerful social force to 
 restrain the brutality and passion of men. So is it 
 with the concept of God. Gods are in opposition only 
 in national contests. They are made diverse by every 
 struggle or argument into which men enter. Lift the 
 obstacles that struggle and argument impose, and the 
 unifying tendency becomes supreme. God now reflects 
 all the moods and aspirations of men and from them an 
 ever nobler concept emanates. The higher the level of 
 thought, the more is His unity and glory reflected in it. 
 The socializing of religion is not a project for the 
 future, but a process already well under way. Few 
 realize that we have a modern gospel that is more effec- 
 tive, even if less authoritative, than the older gospel from 
 which it sprang. The hymn book is the most inspired 
 
 f236l 
 
SOCIALIZATION OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 part of religious literature. This is due to the fact that 
 its contents are the fittest survivals of modern endeavors 
 to arouse religious enthusiasm. No one hymn contains 
 all the truth, and each hymn contains some error or at 
 least some defect in its viewpoint. As a basis for 
 authoritative statement they would be sadly wanting, 
 and yet when a congregation sings a dozen hymns, 
 all are elevated in spirit by the united effect of the 
 service. Hymns blend so that the joint effect is that 
 of the best element in each of them. This does not 
 make rigid theology, but it arouses effort. It makes 
 men social and creates a feeling of unity and a spirit 
 of cooperation. Poetry has also been effective in pro- 
 moting a social view of religion and in giving to God 
 qualities that appeal to men. Even where the poet's 
 concepts have lacked some of the higher attributes, his 
 ideal of God has done much to keep men religious. A 
 religion of nature is better than a religion of strife. 
 The poet has dwelt nearer to God than the theologian 
 and felt more completely His impress. There is no 
 opposition between the various religious concepts of 
 literature any more than there is in the hymn book. 
 They blend and elevate, and thus stand in contrast to 
 the dogmas that disrupt and depress. 
 
 In these and other ways a natural religion has been 
 formed that is a religion of appeal in contrast with a 
 
 [237] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 religion of authority. Social religion cannot furnish 
 premises for argument nor can it put restrictions on 
 conduct. It arouses what is in man and gives a stim- 
 ulus to activity. Authority suppresses ; nature evokes, 
 animates and unifies. The passing from the discord of 
 primitive life to modern social unity weakens authority 
 and tradition, but the losses thus sustained are more 
 than made good by the uplift coming through free- 
 dom, vigor and telic activity. The road from strife 
 to peace runs also from restraint and servility to 
 inspiration, hope and faith. Authority suppresses 
 what inspiration evokes. The two are opposing phases 
 of religious progress, one of which must disappear before 
 the upward movement of modern thought. 
 
 The feeling in favor of authoritative religion comes 
 largely from the belief that it furnishes the only adequate 
 foundation upon which the moral code can rest. What 
 is there to put in the place of the ten commandments 
 is a question put with earnestness by many who fail 
 to see any other basis for a moral code. The reasoning 
 of the metaphysician has the same thought in the back- 
 ground. He believes that in proving the existence of a 
 God he is saving morality from the quagmire into which 
 utilitarianism and other inductive schemes of morality 
 would put it. Deductive thinkers are primarily moral 
 and not religious teachers. They think that sound 
 
 [238] 
 
SOCIALIZATION OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 morality must have some antecedent principle or sanc- 
 tion. The moral imperative was nearer to Kant's 
 heart than other principles, and this basis of morality 
 he believed he had saved from the destruction which his 
 critical method wrought against other dogmatic prin- 
 ciples. Nor has the moral attitude of the leaders of 
 science been different from that of philosophical 
 teachers. The one thing they have feared has been 
 that in the general destruction science was making 
 morality would suffer because no new basis had been 
 given it. Herbert Spencer broke in on the plan of his 
 philosophy and published the " Data of Ethics " out of its 
 order because he felt that a crisis in morality had been 
 brought on by the inroads science was making on tra- 
 ditional beliefs. He too wanted to find an antecedent 
 principle from which morality could be derived, and felt 
 as keenly as did Kant that without some such support 
 morality would degenerate. This unanimity of opinion 
 in favor of a morality that depends on antecedent prin- 
 ciples makes it hard to present a morality based on its 
 subsequent effects. The change in thought must, how- 
 ever, be made if morality is to be transformed from a 
 personal to a social basis. Social morality gets its 
 force from its consequences ; it has no antecedent prin- 
 ciple from which it is derived nor any authoritative 
 sanction by which it is enforced. 
 
 [239] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 To present clearly the social basis of morality a con- 
 trast must be made between culture and morality. 
 Civilization and culture are carried along and improved 
 by objective means. Cultural attitudes are acquired 
 and come to each individual not as a part of his hered- 
 ity, but from his education and environment. Culture 
 and civilization survive even if the race that embodies 
 them goes down. There has been a series of culture- 
 bearing nations, each imparting its civilization to the 
 next, but not its physical heredity. Our culture is 
 not due to our racial ancestors, but to Greece, Rome 
 and other ancient civilizations. Culture is thus objec- 
 tive and may exist along with a decline in physical 
 traits. In fact, race suicide and culture are so inti- 
 mately connected that the one rarely exists without 
 the other. Morality, however, has race perpetuation 
 as its end and test. The test of morality is not happi- 
 ness and culture, but increased vigor and longevity. 
 The test of vice, on the other hand, is decreased vitality 
 and early death. "The wages of sin is death " is an 
 old observation and as true to-day as ever. In favor 
 of morality increased efficiency, vigor and longevity 
 are always working. Against vice elimination is active. 
 The moral is therefore that which gives vigor, while 
 vice is that against which elimination is at work. 
 Morality is therefore not made by an argument nor 
 
 [2401 
 
SOCIALIZATION OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 derived from an antecedent principle. It is not even 
 an intellectual act, but the result of evolutionary and 
 eliminating forces. Where a new morality is forming 
 there is a modification of type due to the elimination 
 of the vicious and the growing vigor of the virtuous. 
 Contests in morality are a struggle between types each 
 striving to make its views the social standards of the com- 
 munity. Morality is built up around the family as a cen- 
 ter and it commands the specific things that preserve and 
 elevate it. The improved family becomes a type, and 
 the group struggle that follows is the basis of morality. 
 This can be plainly seen in present moral struggles, 
 of which the temperance problem is an illustration. 
 Mothers want to preserve their children and rear them 
 with increased vigor and longer life. The saloon is an 
 obstacle to this that must be displaced in the fight for 
 family preservation. Temperance adds to life and 
 vigor. The use of alcohol reduces both. In every 
 community where this opposition exists there is a type 
 formation which ends in a contest between the abstainer 
 and the drinker. Back of all arguments are these racial 
 differences with a struggle and a class differentiation 
 that ends in the domination of one faction. Social 
 differences may be settled by reason and compromise ; 
 moral differences lead directly to struggle and coercion. 
 The forces back of morality are thus not reason and 
 b [241] 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 authority, but the increase of vigor and the elimination 
 of the unfit. We need look no farther than this to 
 find the basis of the coercion that moral codes exercise. 
 Attractive morality represents only the early stage 
 of moral progress before differences in type are clearly 
 manifest. Repressive morality is sure to follow, because 
 it is the only means by which social unity can be main- 
 tained. The family must be strengthened, even if it 
 be at the expense of culture. 
 
 The process, however, does not stop here, but is made 
 social by a change in attitude towards the means by 
 which family life is maintained. Attractive morality 
 and coercive morality are remedial and not construc- 
 tive ; they induce people to leave the bad or prevent them 
 from securing it. Social morality is constructive and 
 displaces the evil instead of keeping men from it. All 
 evil is specific and local. It has definite economic and 
 social conditions as its antecedent. These can be at- 
 tacked and removed. When a community attains this 
 viewpoint, it thinks less of coercion and more of construc- 
 tive measures that free society from long-standing and 
 deep-seated barriers to a moral uplift. Constructive 
 morality is, however, both attractive and coercive. 
 Every public measure to remove disease, degeneration, 
 vice and crime must be general in its application and 
 hence coercive ; yet the coercion is not exercised against 
 
 [242] 
 
SOCIALIZATION OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 individual acts, but against bad social conditions. So 
 also is it attractive ; yet the appeal is not to personal 
 happiness, but to public welfare. Social morality thus 
 has in itself all the elements for its upbuilding. It does 
 not need antecedent tradition, superior authority nor 
 external sanction. 
 
 Natural religion and morality make two inherent con- 
 stituents of social religion. Both are to be found in 
 the earliest religions, and they have continued as prom- 
 inent elements ever since. A religion of appeal and a 
 coercive morality arouse men and elevate social religion. 
 The third element is of later origin. No name has been 
 given it, since it has appeared under such different as- 
 pects that it seems to have no unity. To bring its con- 
 stituents into closer harmony, I shall call it Social An- 
 ticipation. It might be called utopism, but this would 
 give it an unreality that it does not deserve. We think 
 of Utopias as artificially constructed societies so different 
 from the present that to enter them human nature 
 must be modified and society revolutionized. Such 
 radical reconstructions reveal only in part the real forces 
 back of social anticipation. All to-morrows are the 
 basis of hope and the generating ground of faith. Nor- 
 mal men modify to-day's acts by the faith and hope that 
 needs to-morrow for their fulfillment. The future is in 
 the present and thus helps to construct itself. 
 
 [243T 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 In religion these anticipations become the doctrine of 
 a Messiah, a looked-for leader who will displace despair 
 and defeat with courage and accomplishments. The 
 origin of this anticipation is obscured by the claim that 
 the predictions about Christ did not arise out of a natural 
 inclination to seek for help and an equally natural belief 
 that it would come. Yet nothing is plainer than that 
 the depressed, hopeless condition of the Jewish nation 
 must lead to such anticipations. Human hopefulness 
 revolts against failure ; it sets up goals to strive for. 
 National ideals are anticipatory, and from them come 
 some of the strongest motives that elevate human- 
 ity and give stability to political institutions. It is 
 equally clear why after the death of Jesus, the Christ 
 ideal should become prominent. Christ was to return 
 immediately and in great glory. All the failures of the 
 past were to be wiped out in the reconstruction and re- 
 demption He was to bring. The Christ of the future 
 thus displaced the Jesus of history in the thought of the 
 early Christians ; with the change came hope in the place 
 of despair. All this was a natural movement which 
 elevated and strengthened the church until it changed 
 its basis from anticipation to tradition. It thus became 
 an authority that depressed, instead of a hope that 
 strengthened. The old spirit and enthusiasm would 
 come again if this process were reversed. We can have 
 
 [244] 
 
SOCIALIZATION OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 an upbuilding religion only when it looks to the future 
 and arouses faith in human betterment. 
 
 The crust of religious tradition and the doctrine of 
 total depravity have kept the social anticipations of 
 modern races from assuming a religious form. Religion 
 separated from national aspirations has remained static. 
 The tendency towards social anticipation has been ac- 
 tive in forming Utopias and in creating ideals about the 
 natural man and the brotherhood of men. The demo- 
 cratic spirit has done much to arouse anticipations of 
 social reconstructions which blend and elevate human- 
 ity into a harmonious whole. The growth and stability 
 of modern nations has also helped to turn men's atten- 
 tion to the future. Each nation has bright hopes of 
 what is to come and expects an increase in power and in- 
 fluence that will transform and elevate the whole world. 
 To-day anticipation is largely centered about socialistic 
 schemes and gives them vitality. Socialism is a com- 
 bination of an economic program of reform and of an 
 ideal reconstruction of society that is to follow. With 
 its present emphasis on class struggle it is antagonistic to 
 religion; but when class struggle has disappeared and 
 the material obstacles to social progress are surmounted, 
 social anticipation will be more prominent. Religious 
 and social aspirations will then harmonize. Socialism 
 will go the road of previous reforms. As the economic 
 
 [2451 
 
THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RELIGION 
 
 program for which it stands is worked out or displaced 
 by a better one, the social background will blend with 
 other movements of a similar nature and lead to a 
 religious upbuilding. All progress starts with a definite 
 scheme of economic reform coupled with new hope of 
 social reconstruction. The economic part of the pro- 
 gram depends for its success on definite changes. 
 When these are made, there is a residue of social 
 anticipation which unites with earlier anticipations to 
 create higher social ideals. The same anticipation 
 which shows itself in national life, in political reform 
 and in socialism is also beginning to show itself in city 
 life. This new unit about which social interests grow 
 unites a program of improvement with anticipations of 
 a higher social life. City planning, health and prosper- 
 ity give a new direction to social ideals which in the end 
 will be transformed into a religious movement to recon- 
 struct what is within man as well as what is about him. 
 The new City of God will not only be well planned, 
 healthy and prosperous, but will also be the center of 
 spiritual aspiration. 
 
 More powerful than any of these hopes and a com- 
 plement to them is the thought of bodily and mental 
 evolution as voiced by the eugenic movement and the 
 disciples of a superman. Like other reforms, they start 
 with a program that makes them antagonistic to religion. 
 
 [2461 
 
SOCIALIZATION OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 
 
 This especially is true of the superman concept, which 
 has been made the base of a self-centered morality. 
 There will be a direct clash between social morality and 
 the unsocial morality at present associated with the 
 concept of a superman. The conflict, however, is with 
 the two types of morality and when social morality 
 shows its superiority, the thought of a superman will 
 survive the defeat of its morality. The Christ ideal is 
 the superman viewed socially. Christ is one type of 
 leader for the human race in its ascent, physical, men- 
 tal and religious. The other type is the self -centered 
 egoist who moves up through the elimination he creates. 
 The contrast between progress by redemption and pro- 
 gress by elimination will be amply illustrated in the 
 struggle between these two views. Both, however, 
 contain social anticipation in a clearer and more vivid 
 form than any antecedent social movement. Out of 
 this transformation a movement in thought is coming 
 that will force religion to discard traditions and dogmas 
 that separate it from other social ideals. The blending 
 of all social aspirations is but a matter of time. When 
 it comes, social religion will have its full growth and be 
 the expression of the forces that upbuild men and make 
 social thought dominant. 
 
 [247] 
 
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