3 1 8 Science Religion and Reality 



faith-healing, etc., are explicable in terms of early experiences 

 within the bosom of the family, in terms of the Oedipus complex 

 and psychological reactions thereto. The theory is a very com- 

 plicated one and cannot be dealt with in detail here.^ One may, 

 however, consider it in its most formal aspect, and point out that 

 the whole question of faith in terms of infantile experience is based 

 upon an original postulate. It is not necessarily based upon facts 

 at all ; facts may later on be discovered to support the special details 

 of the theory, but the general theory has its real basis elsewhere, in 

 the postulate that whatever is in the mind can be explained in 

 terms of previous experience. It is the postulate of determinism. 

 Some psychologists may think that determinism is on the road to 

 being proved through the further development of psychology. 

 That, of course, is reasoning in a circle, because what we do in 

 psychology is to look for causes of the various effects that we see, 

 on the basis of the postulate of determinism. In philosophy 

 there is the fundamental principle of sufficient reason (Leibnitz), 

 the principle that there is always a sufficient reason why anything 

 should happen rather than not happen. Determinism looks for 

 the sufficient reason in any particular case always in what has 

 already occurred. We therefore know beforehand, however 

 rapidly deep analysis may develop — and it is developing rapidly 

 every year now — we know beforehand that it will seem to restrict 

 ever more and more the doctrine of the freedom of the will. The 

 further psychology advances, the less will the idea of freedom, or of 

 spontaneity of the mind, be apparent. But the very fact that we 

 can predict this shows that it is not the result of psychological 

 advance. Psychology cannot either prove or disprove determinism. 

 More cautious psychologists adopt the doctrine of self-deter- 

 minism. They must adopt some form of determinism if they are 

 to be psychologists at all, in order to link up and co-ordinate mental 

 events within a wider system. But they take as their system not 

 the antecedent processes of the mind only, but the entire mind 

 right up to the present moment. The test of a determinist 

 doctrine is the power of prediction, and, in the case of mental 

 process, prediction is impossible unless we know every moment of 

 the person's life right up to the moment when the action w^ich we 

 are supposed to be predicting occurs. The act is then completely 



^ See especially S. Freud : Totem and Tabu, Group Psychology and the 

 Analysis of the Ego, and Das Ich und das Es. 



