James Henry Leuba

“ Aristotle characterised man as thinking-desire. In swinging back from Intellectualism to Voluntarism, modern psychology has accepted the fundamental truth excellently expressed by the Greek philosopher. ‘Will is not merely a function which sometimes accrues to consciousness, and is sometimes lacking; it is an integral property of consciousness.’ [5] Will without intelligence may be possible; but intelligence without will is not, not even in the case of so-called disinterested, theoretical thinking. There is, there can be, no thinking without desire, intention, or purpose. ”

“ Unorganised religiosity must be, it seems, the necessary precursor of organised Religion; it is its larval stage. But it does not by any means disappear from society when a system of definite relations with gods, or with impersonal sources of religious inspiration, has been developed. In all societies there is always a large number of people who live in the limbo of organised Religion. They are open to the influence of religious agents, in which they believe more or less cold-heartedly, without ever entering into definite and fixed relations with them. ”

“ We shall, however, have to remember that Religion is multiform, and that certain ideas, emotions, and purposes appear in it prominently at certain moments, and other ideas, emotions, and purposes at other times. ”

“ With regard to the relation of feeling to the will and to the intellect, it is to be observed that where there is desire for an object, there liking is present; and, conversely, where there is liking, there actual or potential desire is felt. ”

“ As the amazing discrepancies and contradictions offered by authorised definitions of Religion arise, in my opinion, primarily from a faulty psychology, a moment may profitably be devoted to an untechnical statement of the present teaching of that science upon the relation existing between the three acknowledged modes of consciousness—willing, feeling, and thinking. ”

“ To-day it has become customary to admit that ‘in Religion all sides of the personality participate. Will, feeling, and intelligence are necessary and inseparable constituents of Religion.’ But statements such as this one do not necessarily imply a correct understanding of the functional relation of the three aspects of psychic life. ”

“ As to sentiments and emotions, they involve ideas and conative elements in addition to sensations and feelings. An emotion is a reaction, the response of an organism to a situation. It is a form of action. Aristotle’s characterisation of man is thus seen to be adequate; it does not leave out the feelings, as it might seem at first. Thinking-desire includes the affection since it is included in desire. Every pulse of consciousness is psychically compounded of will, feeling, and thought. ”

“ In the ordinary sense of the word, however, no attitude is accounted religious unless it be grave and serious; the trifling, sneering attitude of a Voltaire must be thrown out if we would not strain the ordinary use of language. Moreover, there must be something solemn, serious, and tender about any attitude which we denominate Religion. ”

“ And it will, moreover, be clear that a purpose or an ideal, i.e. something to be attained or maintained, must always be at the root of it. The outcome of the application of current psychological teaching to religious life is, then, to lead us to regard Religion as a particular kind of activity, as a mode or type of behaviour, and to make it as impossible for us to identify it with a particular emotion or with a particular belief, as it would be to identify, let us say, family life with affection, or to define trade as ‘belief in the productivity of exchange’ ”

“ The adjectives passive and active might be used to separate amorphous from organised Religion, i.e. the feeling-attitude from the behaviour. ‘Passive,’ used in this connection, would mean simply that the person does not actively seek those advantages the gods might procure, but is content to be acted upon by them. ”

“ But this feeling of dependence really to give birth to Religion must provoke in one a reaction—a desire for deliverance.’ Very good, indeed! But, on proceeding, the reader discovers that the opinion the book defends is that ‘Religion is the outcome of an effort to explain all things—physical, metaphysical, and moral—by analogies drawn from human society, imaginatively and symbolically considered. ”

“ Successive moments can differ one from the other neither in the absence of one or two of these three constituents, nor in the essential relation they bear to one another—that is fixed and unchangeable—but only in the intensity and vividness of their respective components. ”