268 Science Religion and Reality 



thing offering itself as religious ought to be admirable merely gives 

 an air of unreality to the whole subject. A vast number of things 

 profess to be religion, and our conception must be wide enough to 

 include consideration of them, just as a vast number of doubtful 

 doings profess to be politics, and our study of politics must not be 

 too prudish to admit them. But we ought also to have some 

 standard of what is genuinely and normally and rightly religious, 

 just as we should have a standard of the ideal originally expressed 

 by the word " politics." Or if a standard be too exact a measure 

 to obtain, we must at least discuss what religion ought to be as well 

 as merely what it is. 



For all these reasons, therefore, we must consider the theories 

 of religion, and not be superior to any serious thought upon the 

 subject. 



2. Religion as Belief in Gods or Observance 

 OF Cults 



Theories of religion may be divided according as they seek the 

 essential distinguishing mark in its outward beliefs or practices, or 

 in its inward faiths or emotions. Thus one is mor€ historical and 

 the other more psychological ; one considers what men worship, 

 the other how they worship ; one what they believe, the other how 

 they believe. It will be convenient, even though it cannot be 

 done with absolute definiteness, to divide theories accordingly, 

 and to consider these types in succession, beginning with the 

 former, which emphasises gods or cults. 



Probably the view which has found widest acceptance is that 

 the distinctive mark of religion is the belief in gods. This is taken 

 to belong to all religions and to belong to them only : and, in 

 that case, it would be what we need for marking off the sphere 

 of religion. 



It cannot be questioned that this belief is a very prominent 

 element in most religions. But, if we keep strictly to the idea of 

 gods as personal beings, there is at all events one religion without 

 it. Primitive Buddhism replaced at least all effective idea of gods 

 by a rigid law of requital ; and we may not exclude a religion 

 which has claimed so many adherents for so long a time. Nor can 

 we include all the objects of worship in other religions under the 

 conception of personal gods or even of their dwelling-places. 



