The Sphere of Religion 277 



by the Darwinian theory of evolution by the struggle for survival. 

 Religion is a w^ay of asserting this will to live. Though very 

 different from Kant's will to live well, religion would still, as with 

 Kant, be connected with will as what is primary in experience. 

 And, if the struggle for survival is the principle of evolution, what 

 the will proceeds upon seem? to be as real at least as anything else 

 with which we have to deal. Religion too for Leuba, as for Kant, 

 is essentially belief in a personal order, and, as he seems also to hold 

 with Kant that it is by purpose that we deal with reality, even if it 

 be only the purpose to survive, it is difficult to see how he escapes 

 Kant's conclusion that a realm of purpose is the most real. But to 

 Leuba science proves this personal order to be non-existent. Yet 

 belief in it persists, and it does so because it is a useful illusion in the 

 struggle with environment. Environment apparently is wholly 

 mechanical uniformity, but to conceive it in that way would crush 

 man's spirit. Therefore, he cherishes the illusion of a being who 

 gives him companionship and backing in the battle of life ; and 

 this is of the utmost value for bucking him up in the struggle 

 for survival. Further, the idea of having to deal with spirits 

 and not with mere dead things stimulates intelligence and feeling, 

 while the sense of superiority from associating with superior 

 persons creates an optimism and confidence of high dynamic 

 value. 



Here again it is apparent that the essential religious element 

 is an objective reference. The unreality of this reference Leuba 

 professes to determine psychologically. But, as a matter of fact, 

 on his theory the personal order, which he says religion affirms, 

 has every possible support from psychology ; and it is on the ground 

 of physical science, not psychology, that Leuba rejects it as illusion. 

 But, in that case, it cannot be religion alone that is thereby called 

 in question, for if our knowledge is all developed in the struggle 

 for survival, and if illusion will work better for it than reality, we 

 have not even a pragmatic test of reality. Real knowledge we 

 might perhaps not hope to obtain with powers which have been 

 evolved for so purely practical ends, but if we could believe, as 

 might seem natural, that success in the struggle would be deter- 

 mined by the extent to which our real environment was accepted, 

 and that illusion about it would be the most certain of all causes 

 which blot the living creature out of existence, we might have 

 assumed that the processes of our mind, even if they did not rise 



