SHORT PAPERS 



A short paper was contributed to this Section by Professor Alexander T. 

 Ormond, of Princeton University, on "Some Roots and Factors of Religion." 

 The speaker said that religion, like everything else human, has its rise in man's 

 experience. It has also doubtless had a history that will present the outlines of 

 a development, if but the course of that development can be traced. " But in the 

 case of religion our theory of development will be largely qualified by our judg- 

 ment as to its origin; while, regarding origin itself, we have to depend on hypo- 

 theses constructed from our more or less imperfect acquaintance with the races, 

 and especially the savage races, of the present. The primitive pre-religious man 

 is a construction from present data, and will always remain more or less hypo- 

 thetical. This will partially explain, and at the same time partially excuse, what 

 we will agree is the unsatisfactory character of the anthropological theories as 

 accounts of the origin of religion. But there are other reasons for this partial 

 failure that are less excusable. One of these is the rather singular failure of the 

 leading anthropologists, in dealing with the origin of religion, to distinguish 

 between fundamental and merely tributary causes. For instance, if we suppose 

 that man has in some way come into possession of a germ of religiousness, many 

 things will become genuine tributaries to its development that when urged as 

 explanations of the germ itself would be obviously futile. There must be a cause 

 for the pretty general failure to note this distinction which is vital to religious 

 theory, and I am convinced that the principal cause is a certain lack of psycho- 

 logical insight and of philosophical grasp in dealing with the problem of the first 

 data and primary roots of religion in man's nature. 



"In the first place, it is needful in dealing with the religion of the hypothetical 

 man that we should have some idea of what constitutes religion in the actual 

 man. Now, back of all the outward manifestations of religion, will stand the 

 religious consciousness of the man and the community, and it will be this that will 

 determine the idea of religion in its most essential form. The developed idea 

 of religion, therefore, arising out of this germinal impression, would take the form 

 of a sense (we may now call it concept) of relatedness to some being akin to man 

 himself, and yet transcending him in some real though undetermined respects. 

 Anything short of this would, I think, leave religion in some respects unaccounted 

 for; while anything more would perhaps exclude some genuine manifestations of 

 religion. 



" If the idea of religion arises out of an impression, then it will not be possible 

 to deny to it an intellectual root. I make this statement with some diffidence, 

 because if I do not misinterpret them, some recent psychologists have practically 

 denied the intellectual root in their doctrine that religion can have no orig- 

 inal intellectual content. If I am not further misled, however, these writers 

 would admit that a content is achieved by the symbolic use of experience. This 

 is perhaps all I need argue for here; since our epistemology is teaching us 

 that the distinction between symbolism and perception is only that between the 

 direct and the indirect; while here it is clear that its use in developing the signi- 

 ficance of the religious impression would have all the directness and, therefore, all 

 the cogency of an immediate inference. 



" Let us now restore the intellectual and emotional elements of religion to their 

 place in a synthesis; we will then have a concrete religious experience out of 

 which may be analyzed at least two fundamental factors. The first of these is 

 what we may call the personal factor in religion. We are treading in the foot- 



