The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

The Varieties of Religious Experienceclimate proves unfavorable to notions of the deity which at an earlierdate were perfectly satisfactory: the older gods have fallen belowthe common secular level, and can no longer be believed in. Todaya deity who should require bleeding sacrifices to placate him wouldbe too sanguinary to be taken seriously. Even if powerful historicalcredentials were put forward in his favor, we would not look at them.Once, on the contrary, his cruel appetites were of themselves credentials.They positively recommended him to men’s imaginations inages when such coarse signs of power were respected and no otherscould be understood. Such deities then were worshiped becausesuch fruits were relished.Doubtless historic accidents always played some later part, butthe original factor in fixing the figure of the gods must always havebeen psychological. The deity to whom the prophets, seers, anddevotees who founded the particular cult bore witness was worthsomething to them personally. They could use him. He guided theirimagination, warranted their hopes, and controlled their will—orelse they required him as a safeguard against the demon and a curberof other people’s crimes. In any case, they chose him for the value ofthe fruits he seemed to them to yield.So soon as the fruits began to seem quite worthless; so soon asthey conflicted with indispensable human ideals, or thwarted tooextensively other values; so soon as they appeared childish, contemptible,or immoral when reflected on, the deity grew discredited,and was erelong neglected and forgotten. It was in this waythat the Greek and Roman gods ceased to be believed in by educatedpagans; it is thus that we ourselves judge of the Hindu, Buddhist,and Mohammedan theologies; Protestants have so dealt withthe Catholic notions of deity, and liberal Protestants with older Protestantnotions; it is thus that Chinamen judge of us, and that all ofus now living will be judged by our descendants. When we cease toadmire or approve what the definition of a deity implies, we end bydeeming that deity incredible.Few historic changes are more curious than these mutations oftheological opinion. The monarchical type of sovereignty was, forexample, so ineradicably planted in the mind of our own forefa-296