The Sphere of Religion 267 



While there are still persons who regard religion as an intel- 

 lectual phenomenon, there has more recently been a tendency in the 

 opposite direction. It was not left to our time to discover that the 

 proper study of mankind is man, but, in our time, the conception 

 of this study has altered. The notion of normal human nature has 

 retired into the background and man is studied as a creature of 

 life-impulses, instincts, and complexes. This has tended to con- 

 firm a treatment of religion which is by no means new, which 

 ascribes to religion in particular much that is due to human nature 

 in general. And this is particularly easy to accept, not only because 

 it is the same human nature which works in religion as in all else, 

 but because religion tends to magnify its defects as well as its 

 virtues. 



This, too, is an error we might explain by saying that we are 

 not at peace with ourselves and responsive to higher things. But, 

 if we left the matter there, we should miss some considerations of 

 the greatest importance for the study of religion. 



In religion, as in all else, we ought to try to distinguish what 

 belongs to it as such from what is merely imported into it by 

 imperfect human nature. Mass opinion, for example, has often 

 assumed the authority of religion, and even cruelty has invoked its 

 sanction. But we ought to be able to distinguish religion as such 

 from .mass opinion and cruelty, just as we ought to be able to dis- 

 tinguish government as such from graft and wire-pulling. In a 

 general study of the subject we have to conceive religion widely 

 enough to include both St. Francis and the Grand Inquisitor as 

 religious men, just as, in a general study of politics, we must 

 include Abraham Lincoln and Boss Croker as politicians. Yet 

 we ought not to regard devotion to the Church as a state, which is 

 not really different from devotion to any other social unit, as 

 belonging to religion in the same way as devotion to the poor and 

 ignorant, any more than we should regard political corruption for 

 party or private ends, which is essentially the same as in the other 

 kind of selfish business, as belonging to the conduct of government, 

 in the same way as courageous devotion for patriotic ends. Yet 

 it is most necessary to remind ourselves that it is the same human 

 nature, with all its errors and imperfections, with which we have 

 to deal in religion as in all else ; and that, therefore, there is bad 

 religion as there is bad business or bad science or bad politics or bad 

 morals. Forgetfulness of this fact and the expectation that every- 



