The Sphere of Religion 265 



exclude all else, a discussion of the problem would be all the 

 more necessary, because, on matters on which we are apt to 

 err and on which we differ because we are not all considering 

 the same object, the mere discussing of our differences may be 

 valuable, even if the result should still leave much to be desired. 



Of this we have an example in the recent discussion of the 

 sphere of Physics. Though it seems to the superficial observer 

 a definite enough subject, the problems of whether it works with 

 facts of nature or ideas of mind, and of what is meant by its abstrac- 

 tion from mind and from changing incidents in nature, are far 

 from having been finally determined. Nevertheless, the discussion 

 of them has cleared away many errors which have sometimes been 

 elevated into dogmas. And if the sphere of religion is less definite 

 than the sphere of physical things and the study of it touches many 

 wider interests, and if this makes its sphere more difficult to deter- 

 mine than the sphere of physics, so much the more imperative is 

 it to distinguish as clearly as we can, and to discuss the difficulties 

 which hinder our further progress in definiteness. 



Runze is so far right that, if we look at theories of religion 

 historically, we can usually see that they have been largely deter- 

 mined by other interests than religion. As they were produced by 

 intellectual persons by the process of argument, this interest has 

 usually been intellectual, with the result that religion has been 

 conceived as a kind of reasoning. Thus the Rationalist view of 

 religion, as concerned with proofs about God as the maker of the 

 world, providence as the direction of it, and immortality as com- 

 pensation for its injustices and imperfections, and as mainly a 

 matter of " evidences," was due to preoccupation with scientific 

 discussions which had determined the interests and temper of the 

 age for the religious as well as the non-religious people. But 

 discovery of the influences which have affected the theory does not 

 deliver us from the necessity of discussing whether religion is of 

 this intellectual quality or not. The value of such a discussion 

 appears in the work of the greatest sceptic of the time — David 

 Hume. The rational element, he pointed out, is a very small part 

 of religion as it has appealed among men. Most of the rest he 

 regarded as superstition, judging it very much after the fashion of 

 his time ; but he also saw that religion was life, and that it was so 

 much the true greatness of man that, without it, man would scarcely 

 be human. And one of the chief causes of the barrenness of the 



