304 Science Religion and Reality 



there are other forms of experience in this attitude besides the 

 experience of complete dependence, and these additional forms of 

 experience have been well analysed and described by Professor 

 Rudolf Otto in his recent book, " The Idea of the Holy " (" Das 

 •Heilige "). He shows very clearly that the feeling of dependence 

 which is characteristic of the religious attitude is not one of merely 

 causal dependence, not the experience of being a link in a series of 

 causal processes, just a link on the chain of causation, but something 

 still more thorough-going, the experience of what he calls creature- 

 hood, that " It is God that hath made us and not we ourselves." 

 We have been made by Him and so we are completely dependent 

 upon Him in that sense, made by Him and therefore entirely in 

 His power. And then there are the further feelings called out in 

 our mind by that idea, the feeling of His infinite power, the feeling 

 of the tremendous, of complete otherness, something entirely 

 different from ourselves, the feeling of mysteriousness, of majesty, 

 and of fascination in which fear and attraction are blended. 



I am taking this particular line of approach to the problem, 

 because it seems to me that in this way one can avoid so much of 

 the arguing in a circle that is to be found in the historical approach, 

 which is the usual so-called scientific approach to the question of 

 the religious sentiment. Usually, we find introductory chapters 

 on lower forms of religious observance, and we have explained to 

 us how, in the course of evolution, there must have been a pre- 

 religious state in which magic figured largely. In magic the 

 individual attempted to get his own way with the powers around 

 him by spells and incantations, and then later, as a result of failure, 

 relative or absolute, of these spells, the individual turned from the 

 attitude of magic to the attitude of prayer or supplication, and at 

 the same time passed from polytheism to a form of monotheism. 

 Along this line of thought, according to this natural history of re- 

 ligion, one is given the impression that the higher forms of religious 

 feeling and religious insight are simply products of lower forms of 

 mental activity : religion has grown out of forms of consciousness 

 that could not themselves be called religious. In a similar w^y, 

 attempts have been made to explain knowledge as a development 

 out of mental processes that are not themselves knowledge, the 

 sense of duty as a development out of simpler mental processes not 

 themselves involving the feeling of obligation, the appreciation of 

 beauty as a development out of forms of mental experience not 



