444 HISTORY OF RELIGION 



of the phenomena of religion; religion itself cannot be comparative. 

 The vagueness attaching to the term was not seldom an outward 

 sign of the inner confusion in which elements of description, criticism, 

 comparison, history, and philosophy were jumbled together. A 

 student occupied with a description of the Polynesian system of 

 tabus, a criticism of the accounts given by travelers and mission- 

 aries, a search for earlier historic forms of tabu in some of the islands, 

 or the ultimate cause of the tabu-conception, is not engaged in 

 comparative theology. He is cultivating this branch of the science 

 of religion when he compares the highly developed Polynesian 

 system with similar tabus in other times and places, and demon- 

 strates that certain ideas and customs, for example of modern India 

 or ancient Persia or Judsea, belong to the same order. 



Historical theology, or the history of religion, seeks to discover 

 the origin and to trace the growth of man's religious life. It seeks 

 to establish the sequence in time of religious feelings, thoughts, and 

 practices, and to discern the laws, if such there be, that govern this 

 sequence. It considers the material brought together, examined 

 and classified by the preliminary disciplines from the viewpoint of 

 historical development. It watches the operation of the religious 

 consciousness in its relation to other functions of man's social 

 life, and observes the psychological conditions determining its 

 course. It is not content with gleaning facts, weighing evidence, 

 describing conditions, and comparing and classifying phenomena, but 

 seeks to incorporate the facts as links in a chain of development, to 

 determine the inner connection as well as the chronologial sequence 

 of the facts, to find the place and relative significance of the condi- 

 tions described, and to discover the relationship indicated by the 

 similarity. But the history of religion does not attempt to estimate 

 the absolute value of any religious sentiment, idea, custom, or 

 institution. 



Philosophical theology, or the philosophy of religion, aims to dis- 

 cover the ultimate reality behind the phenomena of man's religious 

 life. This reality it may seek in the constitution of the human mind 

 or in the constitution of the universe. In so far as it endeavors 

 to find in man himself the cause of his religious consciousness, it 

 may be designated as religious psychology. This discipline not only 

 traces the religious phenomena back to the general peculiarities of 

 man's sentient, intellectual, and moral life in the various stages 

 of his development, but also undertakes to test their validity and to 

 estimate their intrinsic and abiding value. The observation of 

 morbid religious conditions in adults, the religious attitude of men- 

 tally immature subjects such as children and persons of retarded 

 intellectual growth, or the ideas and practices of uncivilized peoples 

 especially furnishes the religious psychologist with the means of 



