I. Definition Difficult but Necessary 



Because the world is one and known to our minds as one universe 

 of discourse, no subject of study has absolutely determined frontiers. 

 We have to draw them to meet the needs of our limited minds. 

 We ought to do it according to real differences, but as there 

 is no ultimate separateness in things, or in our experience, we are 

 apt to leave matters out in a way to make our study one-sided, or 

 to include what is alien and to make it confused. Even a subject 

 so well defined as Physics has been shown in our day not to have 

 escaped either danger ; and in a subject like religion, enormously 

 varied in its manifestations, both in respect of outward forms and of 

 inward manifestations, and more widely concerned with the world 

 as a whole and the mind as a whole, the difficulty is manifestly 

 greater, and in practice the results have been more misleading. 

 Some writers, in consequence, have abandoned the hope of finding 

 any mark which shall be common to all religious phenomena yet 

 distinguishing them from all else. Thus Professor Runze, in a 

 recent book on the psychology of religion, after passing in review 

 a long list of definitions of religion, concludes that no definition 

 or description of religion can include all the manifestations of it, 

 without being so general as to be utterly useless for distinguishing 

 them from other phenomena as specially religious. Instead of 

 attempting such a task, he proposes, as the better way, that we 

 find guidance in the right kind of interest. The one require- 

 ment, he says, is to have a soul at peace with itself, so as to be 

 responsive to the great things in life. Then, without being able 

 to define its sphere, we shall have sufficient practical acquaintance 

 with religion to know when we are within its special territory and 

 when we are wandering into other fields. This may seem vague 

 guidance, but every other central human interest, he says, is in the 

 same position. And, moreover, he takes it to be a happier position 

 than might appear. Natural science, for instance, can no more be 

 defined, so that everything belonging to it shall be included and all 

 else excluded, than religion, but, if we have a scientific interest and 



