Earth Mother and her retinue, or of the personal mana embodied either in the strong man of the crisis or in the son of a divine house, or of the incarnate deity worshiped in the person of the ruler, or finally of the medieval king who still was held to be God's lieutenant. But Dr. Bussell notes with foreboding that he can find not one religious idea surviving in the body politic to-day, which idea is an effective element or motive of social harmony and cohesion.

In the same year the American Anthropologist published an article by Elsie Clews Parsons entitled "Links between Religion and Morality in Early Culture." The author is content simply to identify moral with social conduct and to give illustrations of the supernatural sanctions attaching to such conduct. These illustrations, from savage life the world over, occupy sixteen pages and only those are presented which bear witness to the connection of religion and morality. Some of the evidence shows how supernatural powers are invoked or otherwise sought in order to punish or otherwise control those who run counter to the prevailing rules and customs.

These articles, at any rate, assure the inquirer that the connection between religion and morals is regarded as a real connection. He turns hopefully therefore to books for a more detailed picture of the actual relationships. But in them he finds that the authors have slight interest in his problem, that the remarks they make regarding it are, as in the periodicals, generalities supported, if at all, by a few pages of evidence culled from many sources, and that no author has as his main theme the relation of religion and morals. An examination of a number of the more widely known books on religion and on morals soon makes clear the little that the modern investigator, with his scientific attitude and his new methods, has been able to do so far toward solving the problem and what have been his handicaps and shortcomings.

Almost a generation ago the relationship was discussed by Wundt in a hundred pages of the first volume of his "Ethics." His chief purpose in examining religion was to determine its ethical value. Ethics he defined in the terms we commonly

5 N. s., XVII (1915), 41 sq.

6 39-148 passim. Tr. from 2d German edition (1892) by Titchener, Gulliver and Washburn, in 3 vols. (London and New York, 1897.)

use, namely, virtues and vices. Custom consequently must be distinguished from morality. Religion he defined thus: "All ideas and feelings are religious which refer to an ideal existence." In order to determine the ethical value of religion Wundt found it necessary in his one hundred pages to examine the religion and morals of peoples both civilized and uncivilized, both ancient and modern. A complete presentation was naturally impossible, and he contented himself with stating the results of his study accompanied by such selections from the innumerable data as were consonant with these results. The following summary contains his main conclusions.

In the myths not only are religious, ethical and other elements included but at first there is no differentiation of one element from another. In time, however, the religious and ethical elements become differentiated and the ethical elements in turn become partially detached from the religious. Consequently no clearly defined distinction can be made between the sphere of religion and that of morality, and the connection between the two spheres varies in intimacy. Mythology, for example, shows on the one hand that gods and heroes possess evil as well as good traits. They are both courageous and cunning, both just and deceitful. Such evil qualities are bound to affect the ethical side of religion. On the other hand, the notion of deity includes not only the thought that the gods are representatives of some ideal or supersensible order but also the thought that they are patterns or ideals for men to copy. When the time comes, moreover, that men think of ideal moral exemplars or of an ideal moral order, that thought will find expression in religion. When does that time come? Nature gods as such never become really moral. As gods of lightning and of other natural phenomena they are too unlike man to affect his moral qualities. But when they become dissociated from natural phenomena and become real gods, they also become the "exalted exemplars of every sort of valued ability and men try to imitate that god-like life." It is obvious therefore that, although ethical elements may be found in any form of religion, the genuinely ethical religions are those in which the ethical has become predominant. Such religions are those of civilization and are initiated by a single personality that becomes the moral ideal.

There are at least two other noteworthy points of contact between the religious and the moral, according to Wundt. One point is that in the myth may be found ideas of reward and punishment which are meted out by superhuman powers, in accordance with human conduct. This belief came about as the notions of life after death got tied up with ideas of reward and punishment and with a heaven and a hell, so that there resulted, through the strengthening of moral impulses, the desire for good and the rejection of evil. The other point is that the idea of a great ancestor as an exemplar is a moral influence. For this ancestor worship, really filial piety, lies back of the respect paid to living parents and to the aged. It is this reverence for great ancestors that evokes a sort of religious reverence for rulers and other great living men. In fact there may result the actual deification of the ruler. The religious coloring thus given in the first stages of human development to the relation between the ruler and the ruled contributes to the establishment of a moral order in society and helps to evoke those impulses that manifest themselves in unselfish devotion to the good of others and to some general end.

Wundt summarized his discussion in these words: "The farther back we go, the more completely do the expressions of the moral and the religious feelings coincide. . . . Wherever religion has meant the postulating of an ideal order of the universe, the strongest religious motives have been furnished by moral requirements; while on the other hand, a firm belief in the existence of this ideal world has exerted an equally powerful influence upon the development of the moral life and of the moral ideas, partly by way of the conception of reward and punishment, but chiefly through the creation of ideally perfect moral exemplars."

Harold Hoeffding touched upon the relation of religion and morals in “Philosophy of Religion," which appeared thirteen years ago. Like Wundt he thought of ethics in terms of virtues and vices. He believed that religion in its lowest forms has no ethical significance, for the deities are powers on which man depends but are not patterns of conduct or administrators of an ethical world-order. Nevertheless, out of purely natural 7 Tr. by B. E. Meyer. (London, 1906.)

forces that could be defied or evaded the deities become ethical powers that men could not or would not defy, and so the great aims of human life become the aims of the gods.

years

Reference often is made to three American writers, Ames, Leuba and King, whose books on religion appeared a few after that by Hoeffding. E. S. Ames in "Psychology of Religious Experience "s took up the problem long enough to say that when custom attains moral character, morality being defined in terms similar to those used by Wundt and Hoeffding, religion centers in moral ideals and in rational methods of control. This process of ethicizing religion develops along with the practical and ethical development of the race.

J. H. Leuba in "Psychological Study of Religion” defined religion and morals more broadly than did the writings examined above. Religion is "that part of human experience in which man feels himself in relation with powers of psychic nature, usually personal powers, and makes use of them." Regarding morals he says, "The social life is the matrix of moral sentiments." Leuba is of the opinion that among savages it is common to find moral ideas and religious beliefs independent, although tribal customs and religion are connected closely since the gods help to enforce customs. "Morality and religion do not need each other in order to come into existence, but, when they have appeared, religious beliefs are speedily called upon for the gratification of moral needs."

Irving King in "Development of Religion "10 devotes more space to the topic of the relation of religion and morals than is given in any of the other books so far mentioned, except that by Wundt. He examines, in fifteen of the eighteen pages that make up his eleventh chapter, the personal morality of the Australians in order to support his belief that primitive custom has a positive moral worth, because it may furnish the raw material for the higher conceptions of conduct which are of such moment for the history of morals and religion. He concludes that "It is safe to say that, in the case of religion at least, the love of justice, mercy and human kindliness in general would never have developed as the expression of the 8 Boston and New York, 1910.

9 New York, 1912.

10 New York, 1910.

4

will of a deity except as they appeared in the special relations of human life."

The two dozen pages on the relation of religion and morals scattered through the first part of Dewey and Tufts' "Ethics "11 are suggestive. Ethics they define as "the science that deals with conduct, in so far as this is considered right or wrong, good or bad." As their discussion of morality advances from that of uncivilized groups onward, religion in each case receives attention. In speaking of life among uncivilized groups they voice the opinion that it is religion that gives the group "its highest authority, its fullest value, its deepest sacredness." Religion, then, is bound up closely with the group mores, and a new religion by its new demands may change the conception of conduct. In fact, as one studies various peoples it becomes apparent that religion is often the agency for evoking certain characteristics of the moral. Religion may emphasize the inward aspect of the moral. Religion may make clear the distinction between the higher or spiritual and the lower values of life. Religion may furnish the divine characters that become the ideals of conduct in this life. Among the Hebrews, for example, one finds that the moral ideals became a part of religion and thus their religion was ethicized. Their prophets were also moral reformers. On the other hand, among the Greeks religion became set to a great extent while the moral found a way of its own. Among us religion is confronted with a problem. Shall religion take on the newer ethical values: the scientific spirit that seeks to know the truth, the enhanced value of human worth and the consequent demands for higher types of social justice?

In the concluding paragraph of Part One the authors characterize the standpoints of religion and morals. The religious deals with man as related to the cosmos or to unseen powers, the relations being by kinship, or as subject, or as seeking more perfect fulfilment. The religious establishes fixed laws and sets up the awful choice between hell and heaven. But morality deals with men and their relations. The moral law can be approved, that is, criticized, and is stated in terms of rights and wrongs, goods and evils. Morality sets up principles and

11 London and New York, 1913.