150 HAS SCIENCE DISCOVERED GOD? 



merely higher developments of experiences and capaci- 

 ties present in rudiment in the animals. And to wor- 

 ship is to express actively the tendencies intrinsic to 

 the sentiment of reverence. Much has been made by 

 Dr. Rudolf Otto, in his Idea of the Holy,^ of what he 

 calls the feeling of the numinous. But I cannot see 

 that this implies any other emotional or perceptive 

 capacities than those sketched in my Social Psychology 

 as specially involved in religious experience.* The 

 same remark applies to that "sense of the beyond," of 

 the limitless, of the powers transcending our compre- 

 hension, in which others see the essential kernel of all 

 religion. And the alleged fact that all men need re- 

 ligion or a God does not (if it be a fact) seem to me 

 to imply any guarantee that the universe is such as to 

 provide satisfaction for that need. It might equally 

 well be argued that, since all children delight in fairy 



3 English Translation. Oxford Press. 1926. 



^ Otto claims to describe a mode of emotional experience that is 

 first, specifically and peculiarly religious, and secondly, carries with 

 it a guarantee of the objective reality of the object to which it refers. 

 I cannot see that he is successful in either part of this double project. 

 In describing this "element" in experience he writes: "The feeling of 

 it may at times come sweeping like a gentle tide, pervading the mind 

 with a tranquil mood of deepest worship." Also: "It has its wild and 

 demonic forms and can sink to an almost grisly horror and shudder- 

 ing." And he says many other things about it; all of which go to show 

 clearly that he is really dealing with a large range of complex emo- 

 tional experiences, the common factor in which is aiue or the "feeling 

 of the uncanny." He writes: "It first begins to stir in the feeling of 

 'something uncanny,' 'eerie' or 'weird.' It is this feeling which, emerg- 

 ing in the mind of primeval man, forms the starting point for the 

 entire religious development in history." This seems to me true 

 enough. But Otto goes on to say (and this is the pith of his argument) 

 that this "is only possible to a being in whom has been awakened a 

 mental pre-disposition, unique in kind and different in a definite way 

 from any 'natural' faculty. And this newly-revealed capacity, even 

 in the crude and violent manifestations which are all it at first evinces, 

 bears witness to a completely new function of experience and stand- 

 ard of valuation, only belonging to the spirit of man." In this I 

 cannot follow him. In my Social Psychology I have shown that awe 

 can properly be regarded as a synthesis of fear, curiosity and sub- 



