FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTIONS AND METHODS 461 



society. Methodical research finds such abundant testimony to this 

 close connection of religion, in all its manifestations, with the mental 

 development of man, and such clear indications of the general 

 course of religious evolution determined by this growth of human 

 faculty, that it is obliged to proceed on the assumption of the validity 

 of the principle everywhere, even if the material should sometimes 

 be insufficient for demonstration, or apparent exceptions present 

 themselves. 



The psychological method sets forth and seeks to explain the 

 relation of the genesis and development of religion to the growth of 

 man's sentient, intellectual, and moral life. The fields in which this 

 method finds employment may be designated as child-psychology, 

 folk-psychology, pathological psychology, and the psychology of 

 genius. Much may be learned from observations of child-life con- 

 cerning the earliest stages of man's religion. Man, the individual, 

 runs quickly over the same course that is more slowly covered by 

 man, the race, and tITe mental processes of the race in its childhood 

 must have borne a close resemblance to those observable in the 

 child. It is necessary, however, to make allowance both for ancestry 

 and immediate environment. The psychical phenomena of collective 

 life which come nearest to those of childhood are presented by 

 peoples whose development, through unfavorable circumstances, 

 has been retarded. Here again the results of degeneracy must be 

 sharply distinguished from survivals. When more advanced religious 

 organizations, whether they be states with an official creed and cult 

 or purely cult-societies, are studied in their relations to the general 

 mental development, it is important to note the aesthetic and ethical 

 phases as well as the intellectual, and to observe the tendency of 

 tradition to incorporate and assimilate new ideas and practices, 

 after testing their practical effect, as well as its tendency to conserve 

 the past and to resist novelties when they arise. The obvious con- 

 nection between some phases of religion and a conception of the 

 universe based on the defective generalizations of astrology does 

 not lead the careful student to the hasty conclusion that either 

 priest or astrologer must have been guilty of a conscious and inten- 

 tional fraud. There is no more reason to doubt the sincerity of con- 

 viction and intellectual and moral integrity of the average sooth- 

 sayer, priest, magician, or witch of the past than of the average 

 official representative of any modern religious cult. 



Among the types of religious experience deviating from the ordin- 

 ary forms there are those that may be regarded as due to morbid 

 physical and psychical conditions, and there are others that are 

 due to the extraordinary development of the faculties which find 

 expression in the religious life. Unquestionably, hysteria, melan- 

 cholia, catalepsy, epilepsy, trances, and hallucinations have played 



