306 Science Religion and Reality 



to a higher form, and so in spite of all the progress of scientific 

 thought there remains this particular mental attitude which has been 

 called by Professor Otto the " numinous," (from the Latin word 

 numen, divinity), and he claims, and I think rightly, that in this 

 attitude we have a definite form of experience and a definite way 

 of experiencing reality ; not j ust a feeling that may vary from one 

 person to another, that may come and go and perhaps disappear 

 entirely with further mental development, but a way of experi- 

 encing reality on the same level with the cognitive attitude — the 

 attitude of knowing reality — and the other attitudes which I have 

 enumerated. The task of Psychology is partly to do full j istice 

 to this mental attitude by analysing it in as detailed a way as possible, 

 partly to link it up with other forms of experience not generally 

 recognised as religious. 



A great deal of work has been done by the method of the 

 questionnaire, in which the investigator sends out a series of 

 questions about their religious feelings to a large number of people. 

 One of the first to adopt this course was Professor Starbuck in 

 America, and in the first great book on the psychology of religion, 

 by Professor William James, Professor Starbuck's results were 

 largely used. James here marshals the evidence, and sums up the 

 characteristics of the religious life (independently of the discre- 

 pancies of creed) as including the following beliefs : " (i) That 

 the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe from which it 

 draws its chief significance ; (2) That unison or harmonious rela- 

 tion with that higher universe is our true end ; (3) That prayer or 

 inner communion with the spirit thereof — be that spirit ' God ' 

 or ' law ' — is a process wherein work is really done, and spiritual 

 energy flows in and produces effects, psychological or material, 

 within the phenomenal world " (" Varieties of Religious 

 Experience," p. 485). 



It also becomes clear from the evidence that the phenomenon 

 of conversion is a fundamental process in the religious life. Con- 

 version may be defined as a change of general mental attitude from 

 the merely naturalistic attitude towards life to a definitely spiritual 

 attitude. The individual finds the world so full of strange and 

 wonderful things that his mind is at first mainly occupied with 

 getting to understand and appreciate it in a profane way, but he 

 discovers that this is not sufficient to give him true happiness. In 

 spite of his most earnest endeavours to adjust himself to his physical 



