The Sphere of Religion 275 



so is the view that it is a mechanism which necessarily leads to 

 illusion, with this difference, that if error can be a part of the mind's 

 normal functioning, there seems little use discussing metaphysics 

 or anything else. More particularly illusion would then in no 

 way be the special mark of the sphere of religion, for what could 

 we assume to be excluded from its scope ? 



If, however, we consider the Hegelian form as including the 

 whole intellectualist type of explanation of religion, there is a theory 

 of religion as illusion of this form which has been much more 

 widely accepted and has had much more to say for itself. On this 

 theory, religion is a primitive, anthropomorphic kind of science. 

 The general type is fairly well represented by Comte's view of the 

 order of human progress. First, when the happenings of the world 

 were thought to be purely accidental, they were ascribed to the 

 caprices and interferences of personal beings like men themselves, 

 only more powerful. Religion is thus a theory of gods which 

 marked man's earliest study of his environment, but based on his 

 thoughts about himself. Second, after the idea of some kind of 

 order had arisen, the religious stage was followed by the meta- 

 physical, which explained the world on abstract mental and rational 

 principles. Finally, with the discovery of the fixed sequence of 

 events, metaphysics gave way to science, which offers the only 

 valid explanation by mechanical sequence, and which, having 

 reached the final method, is the final stage. 



So far neither religion nor metaphysics has departed before 

 science as darkness before the dawn, but both continue to ask 

 whether reality, in the last resort, is rational or merely mechanical, 

 and whether even scientists could get along without the freedom 

 and purpose they find it convenient to ignore. 



The theory has been many times criticised as a whole, especially 

 as a theory of knowledge, but the only point which concerns us 

 here is whether religion is merely outlived science, or whether 

 science is just science whatever be its conclusions, and religion 

 something other than a graveyard in which to bury its dead. True, 

 the theory leaves nothing at the end, save a world of mechanical 

 sequences in which religion could have no place and admits no 

 mind that could have any concern in it. But it only does this by 

 making the method of physics the measure of all reality, while we 

 are left with the question of whether even the method of physics 

 could have any value, if mind were merely an accidental equipment 



