GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

THE PROBLEM STATED 2Q
to give an account of any particular movement which we
may have set out to investigate we shall, if we adopt the
scientific method, find ourselves committed to following
a chain of linked movements which terminate only with
the first movement which initially set the machine going.
This movement was not itself uncaused; it was the effect
of a stimulus applied to the machine from without. You
wind the watch and the watch goes; you turn the crank
and the engine starts. Thus the typical scientific explanation
,of an event tends to look for the exciting stimulus to which
the event in question, whether it is the movement of a
machine, or the behaviour of an insect,
may
animal or man,
be regarded as a response.
Analogous to the explanation of the movements of a
physical thing in terms of their mechanical causation is
the explanation of the nature of a growing or developing
thing in terms of its origins. Let us, by way of illustration,
apply what I have called the scientific mode of explanation
to the case of religion. Confronted by the fact of the
religious consciousness, the anthropologist instinctively asks
where did it originate? and answers, among our savage
ancestors. The life of the savage, he will point out, is at
the mercy. of forces which he cannot control. His crops
are destroyed by rain or drought ; his communities decimated
by famine and pestilence. Accordingly, he "personalizes"
these hostile forces, projecting into them a whole hierarchy
of gods and spirits, some good, some bad, hoping by
prayers, offerings and sacrifices to win the favour of the
good and to avert the malevolence of the bad. Thus religion
originally arose from the savage's feelings of loneliness,
and fear, which prompted him to attempt the
propitiation, of the forces or beings who occasioned the
fear. Having discovered the origin of religion in the feelings
of fear, loneliness and helplessness, and in the need for
propitiation, we^ shall, adopting
the scientific mode of
explanation, proceed to affirm that fear and propitiation
are still its essential element to-day. Admittedly, they are
in various ways disguised and sublimated. Nevertheless,