IX 



PSYCHOLOGY AND THE THOUGHT 

 OF GOD 



By William McDougall 



THIS article is my response to an invitation to 

 say what evidence in support of the theistic 

 hypothesis or the thought of God seems to 

 me to be yielded by psychology. Since psychology is 

 not yet a consistent body of generally accepted facts 

 and theories, since we have, rather, many psychologies 

 of widely different types, using widely different funda- 

 mental assumptions and pointing to general conclu- 

 sions as widely different as pure materialism and pure 

 idealism, I cannot pretend to expound the bearing of 

 psychology in general on the problem of theism. I 

 can only attempt to indicate concisely how my own 

 lifelong labours in psychology affect my own attitude 

 toward this problem. 



Let me say first that I have now and have always 

 had an open mind towards this great question. I am 

 and have always been agnostic; not In the negative 

 sense in which that word is often used, not In the sense 

 that I assert the impossibility of knowledge of God 

 or of well-founded belief In Him. I am agnostic In 

 the true sense; that Is to say I confess that I myself 

 have not found such evidence as convinces me of the 

 truth of the theistic hypothesis. I should add also 

 that I am not strictly neutral In this matter. I would 



143 



